Purdue University Press spoke with author Susanne Barth about her new book From Schmelt Camp to “Little Auschwitz”: Blechhammer’s Role in the Holocaust, the first in-depth study of the second largest Auschwitz subcamp, Blechhammer (Blachownia Śląska), and its lesser known yet significant prehistory as a forced labor camp for Jews operating outside the concentration camp system
Q: Could you give a brief description of your book?
A: The book reframes the history of a Nazi forced labor camp for Jews and later Auschwitz subcamp in Blechhammer (Blachownia Śląska) in Upper Silesia. Set up adjacent to a synthetic fuel plant in March 1942, it first belonged to a system of labor camps for Eastern Upper Silesian Jews under the auspices of Himmler’s Special Commissioner SS Brigadeführer Albrecht Schmelt, known as Schmelt camps. As these camps operated outside the concentration camp system, we find unusual perpetrator types in them, like police guards and randomly recruited civilians as camp leaders. A focus of the book is to examine these perpetrators’ crimes and interactions, and the multi-faceted ways in which they enabled the genocide of the Eastern Upper Silesian Jews (plus about 10,000 Jewish men taken off deportation convoys from western Europe before they reached Auschwitz). It also investigates complicit actions by the fuel plant’s executives, factory guards, and workforce. The book’s second part analyzes the camp under Auschwitz rule from the takeover in spring 1944 to the death march of January 1945. Finally, it seeks to render the victims’ perspective by reconstructing the fates and daily struggle for survival of the men, women, and children held in Blechhammer.
Q: What made Blechhammer particularly significant within the Schmelt Camp system?
A: Blechhammer was attached to one of the most important synthetic fuel plants in Silesia. While the vast majority of Schmelt camps was liquidated in 1943 and 1944, Blechhammer soaked up substantial numbers of prisoners and developed into one of the largest and, presumably, the largest Schmelt camp. Blechhammer not only exploited Jewish unfree labor, but also took over functions in the Holocaust on a broader scale. For example, in the camp’s SD school civilian camp leaders were instructed how to murder prisoners or select them for Auschwitz. The delegation of genocidal tasks to “ordinary” civilians was a crucial step in compensating personnel shortages in Schmelt’s system. Furthermore, Blechhammer replaced the Sosnowiec ghetto’s central transit camp during an uprising in summer 1943. In this makeshift transit camp, the Jewish population of liquidated Eastern Upper Silesian ghettos was selected for either labor camps or Auschwitz, and newborn babies were killed on the spot. Blechhammer thus facilitated the continuation of the mass murder of the Jews of Eastern Upper Silesia at a time when Zionist resistance groups made a last, desperate stand against the Nazis.
Q: What is the goal of your book? What motivated you to write it?
A: With this book I hope to provide an in-depth history of the camp not just to an academic audience but also to the families of former Blechhammer prisoners and the general public. The overarching goal is to spread knowledge about “forgotten” camps like Blechhammer and to help integrate them more into scholarship on the Holocaust.
My great-grandfather’s story motivated me to write this book. Having been arrested for political reasons, he was first sent to Auschwitz and was later forced to work for the Reich Highway Company on construction sites in Heydebreck and Blechhammer.
Q: What are a few things that are being studied for the first time in this book?
A: Among the most important things that have not been in the focus of researchers so far is the role of the German order police in Schmelt camps, their murderous violence against Jewish inmates, and how they taught civilians to follow their example. The SD school set up in Blechhammer for this purpose was a phenomenon I could not find parallels to in the existing scholarship on the subject.
Q: Would you tell us about microhistories, such as what they are, why they are important, and how they relate to your work?
A: The concept of microhistories evolved in the 1970s to represent the experiences of everyday people or minorities from a grassroots perspective as opposed to previous historical narratives tending to focus on decision-makers in the center of power. Microhistories analyze smaller events to better understand general developments and their impact on people’s lives. I applied this concept to my research on Blechhammer to address this largely unknown camp’s functions in the Holocaust, to make the extensive local network of perpetrators and collaborators visible, and to include the victims’ perspective.
Q: Is there anything that shocked or surprised you while working on this project?
A: It did not really come as a surprise, but I was still shocked about the extent of complicity in atrocities against Jews and other non-Germans at the plant’s management level. The same applies to the German and ethnic German workforce, who obviously knew about the mass killings at Auschwitz and often maltreated or murdered prisoners on their own initiative.
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