Family Camp, at Auschwitz

Starting on 6 September 1943, Jews from the Theresienstadt Ghetto in what is today Czechia were deported in large numbers to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp and lodged there in the so-called Family Camp. More such transports arrived in December 1943 and May, September and October 1944.

On 10 and 11 July 1944, some 7,000 Jews quartered in that camp section are said to have been murdered in gas chambers. Even earlier, a number of these Jews were allegedly gassed, and most Jews of the transport arriving after that date are said to have suffered the same fate.

To support the mass murder claim, two main witness accounts are quoted:

• The demonstrably false report authored by Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, a version of which was later included in the so-called War Refugee Board Report.
• The testimony of Otto Wolken, which is littered with demonstrably false claims.

The orthodoxy’s claim that inmates regularly registered at Auschwitz and admitted to the camp could at some point be killed without leaving a documental trace is simply wrong. Once people were part of the camp bureaucracy, extensive paperwork was produced, and many entries in various logs were created if the status of an inmate changed, including and especially in cases of death, for any reason.

In addition, inmates arriving at the Auschwitz Camp were usually placed in a six-week quarantine (some claim six months), and Jews coming from Theresienstadt were no exception to that rule. During that time, they could not leave their camp section; hence even Jews otherwise fit for labor were, technically speaking, “useless eaters” during that time. But most importantly, the mere fact that there was a quarantine period demonstrates that Jews were expected to survive and work; why feed them through weeks of quarantine, only to later send them to gas chambers? It would have been wasteful and pointless.

Unfortunately, documentation about the inmates deported from the Theresienstadt Ghetto is incomplete. From the extant documents, one can conclude, however, that a wanton killing of these Jews, which would have affected many fit for labor, is highly unlikely. As a group, their fate can be deduced as having been altogether innocuous. Many more were transferred to other camps than previously assumed, and even those inmates considered “unfit” for anything – infants, young children and geriatrics – were generally left unharmed.

In July of 1944, the Family Camp was dissolved, and its inmates transferred to other camp sectors or away to other camps. That space gave way to an urgently needed transit camp for female prisoners, which temporarily housed Jewesses deported from Hungary. After going through quarantine, they, too, were eventually transferred to other labor and concentration camps throughout Germany, as a part of at least 280,500 Auschwitz inmates who can be demonstrated to have been transferred away from Auschwitz in 1944/45. And that list is almost certainly incomplete.

(For details, see Mattogno 2016a, pp. 144-167; 2023, Part 2, pp. 289-310.)