Rajsko

Rajsko is a village some 5 miles southwest of the city of Auschwitz. Most of its population was deported/resettled in 1941/42. The Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS established its “Sanitary and Bacteriological Testing Station Southeast” there in 1943 (“Hygienisch-bakteriologische Untersuchungsstelle Südost der Waffen-SS”). It served primarily to conduct experiments on a number of vaccines in development, among them some against typhus. Furthermore, this institute analyzed thousands of blood and stool samples of Auschwitz inmates who had contracted typhus and had been admitted to the camp hospital. They were allowed to leave the typhus ward only once the typhus bacterium had been demonstrably cleared from their system. The files from this testing station have survived. These are altogether 151 volumes, which contain some 110,000 laboratory tests, among other things. These documents, now stored in the archives of the Auschwitz Museum, demonstrate that thousands of Auschwitz inmates were treated for the disease over extended periods of time and with no efforts spared. This is a resounding refutation of the myth that seriously sick inmates, unfit for labor, were killed as useless eaters.

(For more information, see Rudolf 2019, pp. 152-154, 308.)