The Number of Victims at the Buna/Monowitz Concentration Camp
Estimates of the number of deaths at I.G. Auschwitz vary considerably. A principal reason for this divergence is the systematic destruction of files that was carried out shortly before the war ended, both by the SS and by employees of I.G. Farben. Thus a historic reconstruction of the number of deaths must rely in large measure on estimates: In addition to the incomplete card index of prisoners that has survived and the “death books” of the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp, data on the number of prisoners murdered in the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp is based mostly on estimates made by former inmates. These estimates range from a minimum of 23,000 to a maximum of 40,000 dead. In the historical research, the estimates range from 10,000 dead, the figure used by the Polish historian Piotr Setkiewicz, to “in total, 30,000 prisoners who died as a direct result of their work for the IG,”[1] as assumed by Bernd C. Wagner.
Wagner’s calculations yield “for 1943 a figure of 7,200 and for 1944, 16,800, that is, a total of 24,000” prisoners who perished at the I.G. Auschwitz construction site,[2] which tallies surprisingly closely with the figures given in the witness testimonies of surviving prisoners.[3] Moreover, these figures, Wagner says, also correspond to the contemporary sources on the number of inmates selected from the prisoner infirmary by the SS doctors in the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp for transfer to Birkenau for extermination or, during the initial phase, for transfer to the main camp. The surviving transfer lists of the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp for the period from November 1, 1942, to October 1944 contain a total of about 7,293[4] names or numbers of prisoners who were “transferred” to Birkenau or, in the initial phase, to the Auschwitz main camp. This number does not include the camp selections, to which, according to Wagner’s estimates, “several thousand victims also fell victim.”[5] Further, he says, “the people who died or were murdered directly on the plant grounds also” would have to be added on; in the death book of the concentration camp, the number of these victims would have to be set at “at least 1,647.”[6] Wagner regards the “assumption of a figure of about 23,000 to 25,000 dead” at the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp as confirmed by the records and other documentation that escaped destruction. To that, one would have to add the prisoners who died in the coal mines of I.G. Auschwitz at subcamps: “several thousand additional prisoners,” in Wagner’s estimate.[7]
Setkiewicz’s calculations, on the other hand, assume the “transfer” of around 7,200 to 7,300 prisoners from the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau and to the Auschwitz main camp, of whom no more than 20 percent survived.[8] Another 1,670 dead are, as Setkiewicz emphasizes, documented by the death book of the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp.[9] He estimates at 800 to 1,000 the number of prisoners who were selected in places other than the prisoner infirmary and killed. In addition, there were at least 2,400 prisoners selected in the camp in 1943 and 1944. The figures precisely documented over an extended period of time by the two prisoners Felix Rausch and Stefan Heymann, which were discovered in 1947, hidden in a latrine on the camp grounds, also argue for the lower estimates of Setkiewicz, who assumes that there were at least 10,000 dead at the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp. These secretly recorded statistics, however, document only the selections conducted by the SS in the prisoner infirmary. They did not include selections conducted in the camp in places other than the prisoner infirmary, which remain an instability factor because they are only incompletely documented in other materials that survived. For these reasons, the number calculated by Setkiewicz—10,000 deaths at the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp—is to be regarded as absolutely the lowest conceivable estimate; Wagner’s count can be considered far more probable.
At the I.G. Auschwitz plant construction site, many inmates died in accidents at work, but the most common causes of death were emaciation and untreated illnesses. The average length of survival for the prisoners was three to four months at Monowitz.[10] In the coal mines that were operated by Fürstengrube GmbH, an I.G. Farben affiliate, at the Fürstengrube and Janinagrube subcamps, the concentration camp inmates had to do slave labor in even more extreme conditions, and there the average survival time was only four to six weeks.[11] At the Günthergrube mine alone, which also belonged to Fürstengrube GmbH, the mortality rate was somewhat lower because the food supply and hygienic conditions were less catastrophic.
More research, using all available sources, is required to gain a more precise picture of the numbers of deaths at the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp and at the three subcamps with coal mines belonging to the I.G. Farben concern (Fürstengrube, Janinagrube, and Günthergrube), which were part of the subcamp system of Auschwitz III.
(SP; transl. KL; based on Florian Schmaltz: Die Totenzahlen des KZ Buna/Monowitz)