Glossary

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Robert Waitz (1900–1978)

 a  “I noticed at Monowitz that various diseases became widespread according to season. In summer, for example, there were many cases of diarrhea. The reason for this lay in the entirely insufficient diet of the prisoners. In addition, a diet suitable for human beings must be balanced in its composition (a certain percentage of animal and vegetable albumens, vitamins, etc.), and this was not the case with the prisoners’ food. For example, their food contained no albumens at all. In addition, the bread was terrible. Further, the prisoners were undernourished in any case, which, in consideration of the diet described above, made the people particularly liable to diarrhea. I further noticed in cases where I used the stomach pump on prisoners that they had hardly any stomach-acid. Intestinal juices were just about nonexistent as a result of the unhealthy and unnatural way of life. Due to the bad sanitary conditions the danger of infection was particularly serious here. The prisoners in the diarrhea ward were extremely timid and frightened. Upon admission to this ward the prisoners were generally put on the so-called nil-diet, i.e. they received nothing at all for two days. Hardly any prisoners returned from the diarrhea ward in a healthy state, since their stay there had weakened them to such an extent that they had to expect that they would be summoned for a selection at any moment, i.e. that they would be sent to Birkenau for gassing, as a result of their inability to work.”

(Robert Elie Waitz, affidavit November 12, 1947, NI-12373. Archive of the Fritz Bauer Institute, Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, Case VI, PDB 75 (e), addendum, 213, 17 pp., here pp. 3–4 of original.)
 

 b  “Professor Waitz proved as good as his word. Every evening I was able to, I crossed to the hospital, by the eastern perimeter of the camp. Although he was often busy treating people, the Professor would smile and gesture to me to take some soup and bread. As a Prominent, he always had a good ration of food.

So it was my friendship with Professor Waitz that saved my life.”

(Knoller, Freddie (with John Landaw): Desperate Journey. Vienna – Paris – Auschwitz (London: Metro, 2002), p. 181.)

“Under normal conditions, 90 percent of the entire prisoner strength at Monowitz would have to have been sent to hospital. [...] Members of the I.G. could not possibly have failed to notice that after a certain period a certain language was no longer to be heard on the building-site.”[1]

 

Robert Elie Waitz was born in Neuvy, France, on May 20, 1900. After finishing high school in 1917, he studied medicine in Paris, where he received his M.D. in 1931. In 1933, he became an associate professor at the Université Strasbourg. After the German invasion of France in May 1940, he was active in the French resistance movement, where he rose to the position of head of the Franc-Tireur movement in the Auvergne region. As such, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Clermont-Ferrand on July 3, 1943, and put in prison in Moulin. On September 10, 1943, he was taken to the Drancy transit camp and from there was deported to Auschwitz on October 10, 1943. As soon as he arrived, he and 250 other Jews were selected by the SS for the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp. There, Robert Waitz became a prisoner-physician for the in-house clinic in the camp’s prisoner infirmary.  a  Under the worst conditions—only a little aspirin and charcoal were available for treatment of the results of cold, hard labor, and malnutrition—he did his utmost here to help his fellow inmates  b : according to their statements, he established a laboratory,[2] and numerous survivors speak of the help he provided, without which they would have perished. In addition, Robert Waitz evaded the order to carry out a selection himself, saying that “they all are fit for work, they only need some rest.”[3]

 

On the death march in January 1945, Robert Waitz, together with many other Monowitz prisoners, was forced to walk to Gleiwitz, and from there they were transported in open cattle cars to Buchenwald. There he worked as a volunteer in the typhus ward until he was liberated by the U.S. Army in April. Prof. Dr. Robert Waitz returned to Strasbourg, where he became a full professor at the university in 1946. In addition, he was president of the Amicale d’Auschwitz, a Chevalier of the Legion d’honneur, and a holder of the French Resistance Medal and the Croix de la Valeur militaire. As early as 1947, he published an account of his time and work in the prisoner infirmary of the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp. Robert Waitz died in 1978.

(SP; transl. KL)



Sources

Freddie Knoller, oral history interview [Eng.], June 13, 2007. Archive of the Fritz Bauer Institute, Norbert Wollheim Memorial.

Robert Elie Waitz, affidavit, November 12, 1947, NI-12373. Archive of the Fritz Bauer Institute, Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, Case VI, PDB 75 (e), addendum, 213, 17 pp.

Robert Elie Waitz, hearing of witness, November 27, 1952. HHStAW, Sec. 460, No. 1424 (Wollheim v. IG Farben), Vol. I, pp. 139R–142R.

Robert Waitz, examination by the judge on June 26, 1962, in Frankfurt am Main, Auschwitz Trial, LG Frankfurt am Main, 4 Ks 2/63. Archive of the Fritz Bauer Institute, FAP-1, HA-68, pp. 12791–12795.

 

Literature

Komissar, Vera: På Tross av Alt. Julius Paltiel – norsk Jøde i Auschwitz [1995]. Trondheim: Communicatio, 2004.

Knoller, Freddie (with John Landaw): Desperate Journey. Vienna – Paris – Auschwitz. London: Metro, 2002.

Steinberg, Paul: Speak You Also: A Survivor’s Reckoning. New York: Henry Holt, 2000.

Waitz, Robert: “Auschwitz III/ Monowitz.” In: De l’Université aux Camps de Concentration. Strasbourg: Faculté de lettres Université Strasbourg: Témoignages strasbourgeois, 1947, pp. 467–499.

Waitz, Robert: “Auschwitz III, Monowitz.” In: Leon Poliakov / Josef Wulf, eds.: Das Dritte Reich und die Juden. Berlin: Arani, 1955, pp. 267–272.

[1] Robert Elie Waitz, affidavit, November 12, 1947, NI-12373. Archive of the Fritz Bauer Institute, Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, Case VI, PDB 75 (e), addendum, 213, 17 pp., here p. 6 of original.

[2] Cf. Robert Elie Waitz, affidavit, November 12, 1947.

[3] Robert Elie Waitz, hearing of witness, November 27, 1952. HHStAW, Sec. 460, No. 1424 (Wollheim v. IG Farben), Vol. I, pp. 139R–142R, here p. 141. (Translated by KL)