Pierre Berg - Scheisshaus Luck

UNTERMENSCH/UNTERMENSCHEN(German) Subhuman/s, used generally to refer to prisoners and Jews.

VERBOTEN(German) Forbidden.

VORARBEITER(German) Foreman.

WEHRMACHTGerman Armed Forces.

ZYKLON-BCrystalline hydrogen cyanide, used in the Nazi gas chambers. Originally developed as a pesticide, and first used in September 1941 on Soviet POWs.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berg, Pierre.

Scheisshaus luck : surviving the unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora / Pierre Berg with Brian Brock.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8144-1299-2

1. Berg, Pierre. 2. Auschwitz (Concentration camp) 3. Political prisoners—France—Biography. 4. World War, 1939–1945—Personal narratives, French. I. Brock, Brian. II. Title.

D805.5.A96B465

2008

940.53’18092—dc22

[B]

2008003779

© 2008 Pierre Berg.

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

Printing Hole Number

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

SS Captain Alois Brunner was the Commandant of Drancy from June 1943 until August 1944. When the Germans took over the Italian zone of France, he was sent to Nice to oversee the roundup of Jews. Brunner was responsible for deporting 24,000 people from Drancy to the extermination camps.

The name of the Man from the HKB is Siegfried Halbreich, a Polish Jew who was incarcerated at Sachsenhausen and Grossrossen before being shipped to Auschwitz. Before-During-After (Schor Press) is Mr. Halbreich’s autobiography chronicling his Holocaust survival. Mr. Halbreich has lived across the street from me in Beverly Hills, California, for the past thirty years.

Once the Nazis occupied France in 1940, Pierre Laval used his media empire of newspapers and radio stations to support Philippe Pétain and the Vichy government. For his effort, Laval became the head of the French government. He enabled the Gestapo to hunt down members of the French Resistance in unoccupied France (southern France). He also created the Vichy Milice, a paramilitary force, which in conjunction with the French police rounded up many French Jews and left-wing activists and had them shipped to concentration camps.

Vidkun Quisling was the leader of Norway’s Nasjonal Samling (National Socialist) Party, which the Nazis declared the only legal party after their invasion in 1940. In 1942, Quisling was installed as prime minister.

The camp referred to, E715, wasn’t a Stalag but a subcamp of Stalag VIIB, the largest POW camp in Germany. E715 housed British and British Commonwealth soldiers.

There is no official record of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler visiting the I.G. Farben plant or Auschwitz in the spring of 1944; it is possible this was one of his doubles.

On August 2, 1944, 2,897 Roma (Gypsy) men, women, and children were taken from their camp in Birkenau and gassed. Their bodies were incinerated in pits because the crematoriums weren’t functioning at the time.

Werwolf was a Nazi guerilla/terrorist movement formed by Heinrich Himmler in 1944 to harass Allied troops in occupied parts of Germany.

1. Andre Śellier, A History of the Dora Camp: The Story of the Nazi Slave Labor Camp That Secretly Manufactured V-2 Rockets, foreword by Michael J. Neufeld, afterword by Jens-Christian Wagner, trans. Stephen Wright and Susan Taponier (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, published in associated with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2003); Yves Beón, Planet Dora: A Memoir of the Holocaust and the Birth of the Space Age , introduction by Michael J. Neufeld, trans. Yves Beón and Richard L. Fague (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997); Georges Wellers, De Drancy aÀuschwitz (Paris: E´ditions du Centre, 1946); reissued under the title of L’étoile jaune à l’heure de Vichy: De Drancy aÀuschwitz (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1973); Paul Steinberg, Speak You Also: A Survivor’s Reckoning , trans. Linda Coverdale with Bill Ford (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2000), originally published as Chronique d’ailleurs (Paris: Editions Ramsay, 1996); Antoni Makowski, “Organization, Growth and Activity of the Prisoners’ Hospital at Monowitz (KL Auschwitz III),” in From the History of KL Auschwitz , vol. II, ed. Kasimierz Smolen, trans. Kryztyna Michalik (Kraków: Panstwowe Muzeum w Oswiecimiu, 1976), pp. 121–195.

2. Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991).

3. Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity , trans. Stuart Woolf (New York and London: Collier’s, 1961), p. 66 (quotation).

4. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), RG-238 (War Crimes), microfilm publication T-301, Records of the United States Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, Nuremberg, Relating to Nuremberg Industrialists (NI), roll 84, NI-10186, frames 382–383, 565–566, Monowitz Hospital Book, 15 July 1943–27 June 1944, hereafter T-301/84/NI-10186/382–383, 565–566. Pierre Berg telephone interview, 13 June 2004; Levi, Survival in Auschwitz , pp. 39–50; on hospital blocks, Makowski, “Organization, Growth and Activity of the Prisoners’ Hospital at Monowitz (KL Auschwitz III),” p. 129. Two more blocks were added before Monowitz’s abandonment in January 1945.

5. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives, Moscow Central State Osobyi (special) Archives, Record Group (RG-) 11.001 M.03, Zentralbauleitung der Waffen SS und Polizei Auschwitz, fond (record group) 502, opis (inventory) 5, delo (file) 2, roll 70, Rundschreiben Nr. 8013/44, IG Auschwitz Werksluftschutzlei-tung, Dürrfeld, Betr.: “Sichtbares Warnsignal,” 25 Aug. 1944, p. 43; on the documented air attacks, see Joseph Robert White, “Target Auschwitz: Historical and Hypothetical Allied Responses to Allied Attack,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies ( HGS ) 16:1 (Spring 2002): 58–59.