Let’s take Victor Capesius.
He is the SS major and the pharmacist in the Auschwitz concentration camp. He stands on the dødsrampen and selects with a clue the women, children, old and weak, must be immediately executed in the gas chambers.
After the Second world War opens up the man is a beauty saloon for the bourgeoisie in the city of Reutlingen.
Let us take Carl Clauberg.
He is a doctor in Auschwitz and sterilizes here of thousands of women by injecting the formalin up in their womb. Many of the women died in the medical experiments in Block 10.
After the war and Russian captivity reduces the Clauberg himself as a gynecologist.
– the Vast majority of people, who worked to eradicate the jews, gypsies and other prisoners in Auschwitz, were completely normal people. Studies after the Second world War have shown that they do not deviate from the normal concept, says Peter Langwithz Smith.
Peter Langwithz Smith. Photo: Christer Holte
for more than 50 years, the 74-year-old author tried, in vain, to understand how velbegavede and normal people consistently could engage in that would wipe out an entire population of 11 million jews with gas and the germans pushed back.
Peter Langwithz Smith is 74 years and resident in Esbjerg. He is a retired associate professor in German and Danish. Since he was a young man, he has been interested in nazism, the concentration camps and post-war transitional justice, with the executioners.
Peter Langwithz Smith is the author of a book on the CONCENTRATION camp Neuengamme and two books about Auschwitz.
In march 2019 published the book ’The Housing’ of Auschwitz on the People’sPress. The much acclaimed book are on the whole, 765 pages.
Peter Langwithz Smith is today considered to be the author in Scandinavia, as at most of the infamous death camp.
Peter Langwithz Smith organizes each year travel to Auschwitz together with the travel company Papuga.
On its long-standing work with the grim subject matter, says the author:
-You need to have a professional filter, when you write such a book. I have been hardy in the heart. But when I hold lectures on the subject, so it can be difficult to keep the emotions back.
Special mishandlingerne of the children and the medical experiments on the prisoners have touched me deeply.
Peter Langwithz Smith strikes out with his arms.
– Could you for heaven’s sake just make it clear that the whole bunch were psychopaths. So it makes some kind of sense. But we are talking generally about people who were quite normal before the war, and resumed a perfectly normal life after the war. They had families, were loving spouses and sweet to their children.
– I am learning for example, never understand how the SS executioners at Auschwitz one day be able to take on the summer party with their secretaries. The next day continued the officers with the gassing of thousands of prisoners, while the secretaries renskrev detailed reports of what was happening of atrocities in the camp.
– I have knowledge of 25 SS-doctors. Only one of them refused to take part in the killings. Another doctor says: ‘After three-four days have you gotten used to it.’
It tells something about menneskesindets depth and something about the crowding. They must have thought that they did the right thing, and that they performed an important war effort. Apparently there are no limits to how nasty we humans can be without to take damage from it, says Peter Langwithz Smith.
Lejrkommandanten Rudolf Höss is arrested after a year on the run. He was later sentenced to death and hanged in front of the entrance to the krematorierne in dødslejren.
the Author notes that the atrocities did not take place in direct combat operations.
I can understand that there can be terrible things, where the soldiers are in battle, where your adrenaline pumps around your body, and you are stressed out. But it was precisely not the case in Auschwitz.
the Extermination of the jews and gypsies is planned with German thoroughness, which at times is totally absurd.
Photo: Keystone
Peter Langwithz Smith teeth another cigarette. Under the long-standing work with the book ‘The housing’ went the consumption of Kings from 20 to 40 in a day.
– Let me give you an example of German thoroughness. The extermination of jews was not in the budget. How could you finance the extermination? After all, it was left to the jews themselves pay for the operation of the train to Auschwitz. They would however only pay for a one-way ticket.
There was negotiated a reduction in price with the German state railways for larger groups. Children under five years of age traveled free. Then were the prisoners placed in the kreaturvogne and driven to certain death in Auschwitz.
There was not a single employee of the railways, who, after the war was convicted of war crimes, says a hovedrystende Peter Langwithz Smith.
Dødslejren developed according to the author very quickly to an isolated parallel societies, where the madness grew, morality was dissolved, and the proportions of the split in all directions.
– It should definitely be a doctor, which stood on the dødsrampen and determined which prisoners should gasses. Women with children were sent immediately in the gas chamber together to avoid too much outcry, if one tried to separate them. Later used also, however, dentists and pharmacists on dødsrampen. But it was extremely important for the nazis that was used by academics to this completely grotesque selection of human destinies.
Picture: Morten Langkilde
The west jutland author teeth yet a smoke. The smoke seeps up in the long nicotine-yellowed PH-lamp over the workbench in the living room. So he tells ahead about Heinrich Himmler, who was the commander of the SS and responsible for, among other things jødeudryddelsen. He should personally give permission, if a female prisoner to be sentenced to caning his bare backside.
– Himmler detailed the zeal took place, and at the same time had to keep togtransporter back, because the camp could not reach to execute the thousands of prisoners, that constantly arrived. The ovens, as the bodies were burned in, broke down due to overload.
It is of course absurd beyond limits.
the Auschwitz camp was built in 1940, approximately 60 kilometers west of Krakow, in German-occupied Poland. The nazi elite corps, the SS stood behind the camp, up drive also.
In 1942, Auschwitz 2 – Birkenau – built as a pure extermination camp with gas chambers and crematoria. A large number of satellite offices were regularly added to the main camp.
It is believed that about a million jews and gypsies died in Auschwitz. A further 100,000 political prisoners and Russian soldiers died in the camp.
In the periods were killed, up to 10,000 prisoners per day at the camp.
When the Russian army liberated the camp 27. January 1945, there were about 6,000 survivors and emaciated prisoners left in the camp. SS executioners and their henchmen had long since fled.
It is estimated that around 8,000 served in Auschwitz.
Only 15 percent of them were later prosecuted. 25-30 persons were sentenced to death and executed.
Only three Danish citizens were prisoners in Auschwitz. All three are in day of the dead, recounts Peter Langwithz Smith.
——— SPLIT ELEMENT ———
Of all the genocide around the world, there is nothing to commensurate with the atrocities that took place during the holocaust in the Second world War.
Americans killing indians, Pol Pot, the regime’s terror in Cambodia, Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Nothing comes remotely close to it, as nazi Germany had started in, says Peter Langwithz Smith.
He is referring to, that there was a concrete governmental decision behind that 11 million jews and gypsies in Europe should be eradicated. It was not a impulshandling, that grip on themselves.
Franz Hössler, the former SS commandant of the kvindelejren in Auschwitz. Photo: Ullstein Bild
– the Nazis needed some scapegoats, which one could make responsible for everything, and so was the road map to send the jews in the gas chambers. There was no one who tried to stop it or said: Now it enough. The madness was running loose with unabated for several years.
– Can it happen again?
– I do not think that it can be made in the form, as we saw with the Holocaust during the Second world War. It will the world community, after all, not accept. There is I know not at the to be built gas chambers anywhere in the world. In our technological society would such mass killings, also be difficult to keep secret.
But I see anti-semitism springing up in several countries. Jews are being killed simply because they are jews. But also other groups are marginalized in these years. They must not take part in the same benefits as the rest of the population. It kind of worries me very much. But there is still a big difference, if you discriminate against sections of the population, or you will destroy them.
-do you Think that your books can change the world?
– It is important to know its history. It happened during the Second world War affect our lives today. Europe might have looked like in a completely different way. I have a naive hope that I can be with to tell the story, so we don’t get a repeat of the atrocities.
– Have we learned anything?
– Yes, but unfortunately not enough …
Peter Langwithz Smith went from smoking 20 cigarettes a day to 40, while he wrote the comprehensive book ‘Death’s abode.’
——— SPLIT ELEMENT ———
