Free Auschwitz by Laurence Rees

reached the far wall a small-caliber gun (used in order to minimize the noise) would be held close against their head by an SS executioner and they would be shot.
    But it was not just the inmates of Auschwitz who suffered in Block 11—this was also the location of the Police Summary Court for the German Kattowitz (the former Polish Katowice) area. Thus, it was possible for Poles arrested by the Gestapo to come straight to Block 11 from the outside world without passing through the rest of the camp. One of the judges in such cases was Dr. Mildner, an SS Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) and State Councilor. Perry Broad, a member of the SS who worked in Auschwitz, described how the sadistic Mildner liked to conduct his business.
    A youth of sixteen was led into the room. Unbearable hunger had driven him to steal some food from a shop—he therefore fell into the category of “criminal” cases. After reading the death sentence, Mildner slowly put
the paper on the table and directed his penetrating gaze at the pale, poorly clad boy standing there at the door. “Have you a mother?” The boy lowered his eyes and replied in a quiet voice: “Yes.” “Are you afraid to die?” asked the relentless bull-necked butcher, who seemed to derive a sadistic pleasure from the suffering of his victim. The youth was silent, but his body trembled slightly. “You shall be shot today,” said Mildner, trying to give his voice a full, fateful significance. “You would be hanged anyway, someday. You will be dead in an hour.” 42
    According to Broad, Mildner particularly enjoyed talking to women immediately after he had sentenced them to death: “He would tell them in the most drastic manner about their imminent death by shooting.”
    Yet, despite the horrors of Block 11, Auschwitz—at this stage of its evolution—still clung to some of the attributes of a traditional concentration camp such as Dachau. Nothing illustrates more clearly this lack of conceptual difference than the fact that—contrary to popular myth—it was possible in those early months to be incarcerated in Auschwitz, serve time there, and then be released.
    Just before Easter of 1941, Władysław Bartoszewski, 43 a Polish political prisoner, was in the hospital in Block 20 when two SS men approached him. “They told me, ‘Get out!’ I didn’t get any explanation, didn’t know what was happening. It was a shock, because there was a change in my situation, and my colleagues around me didn’t know what was going to happen. I was terrified.” Bartoszewski soon learned that he was to be taken to appear before a panel of German doctors. On the way to see them a Polish doctor—an inmate—whispered to him, “If they ask you, say you’re healthy and that you feel well, because if you say you’re sick they won’t release you.” Bartoszewski was shocked at the sudden news that he might be able to leave the camp. “Are they to release me?” he asked the Polish doctors in wonder and excitement; but they just replied, “Shut up!”
    One major obstacle now stood in the way of Władysław Bartoszewski’s release—his physical state.
    I had great boils on my back, on my hips, on the back of my head and nape of my neck. These Polish doctors put a lot of balm on me and
powdered the boils so I’d look a little better. They told me, “Don’t fear, they’ll not look too closely at you, but you shouldn’t say anything, that would be against the rules, because no one is sick here, right?” Then they took me before the German doctor and I didn’t even look at him. The Polish doctors were eager and said, “Everything’s OK.” And the German doctor just bowed his head.
    Having passed this cursory medical examination, Bartoszewski was taken to the camp chancellery where the clothes he was wearing when he