The Histories of Auschwitz IG Farben Werk Camps 1941-1945

The first full, wide-ranging study of the activities of the German IG Farben company in Auschwitz during World War II.

The History of the IG Farben Werk Auschwitz Camps, 1941-1945, by Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum historian Piotr Setkiewicz, is the first in-depth study of the history of the synthetic rubber and fuel plants that the German cartel built in Oświęcim during the Second World War.

The authors of previous studies have used the history of the IG Farben plant (and the adjacent Auschwitz III-Monowitz concentration camp) to illustrate issues connected in varying degrees with their principal research interests. Information about the plants can thus be found in a great many studies of the German chemical industry or the occupation population policy in the territory annexed to the Third Reich, as well as in popular overviews of the history of the extermination of the Jews, detailed studies of the Auschwitz concentration camp, or accounts of the trials of the Nazi war criminals.The majority of these researchers only devote a dozen or so pages to the plants. This means that their treatments are either superficial or touch upon highly detailed matters. Many research questions remain without complete answers.

Setkiewicz, on the other hand, tries to provide a complete view of the history of the plant and the camp, beginning at the moment when the IG Fraben board of directors decided to begin construction, through negotiations over the recruitment of workers, the expulsion of the local Polish and Jewish population, and accounts of progress at the building site, to the evacuation of the factory in January 1945. In his opinion, the actions of IG Farben set in motion a whole range of unintended but highly significant consequences: the transformation of what was initially a small concentration camp into the center of the destruction of the European Jews, the expansion of the factory into one of the largest production facilities in Europe, and the procurement of thousands of conscript laborers from almost every occupied and satellite country.

The book is made up of two parts, titled "The Plant" and "The Workers": In the first part, "The Plant," Setkiewicz presents an overview of the history of the IG Farbenindustrie cartel and traces the origin of the decision to build a factory in Oświęcim. He describes work on the IG Werk Auschwitz construction project, including the building nearby of 9 camps for IG Farben laborers. He also describes the SS garrison of camp IV – Dorfrand (Arbeitslager Buna, KL Monowitz) – and the behavior of the SS towards the prisoners and the civilian workers at the factory. This section concludes with an analysis of the American bombing missions against the IG Farben facilities in 1944.

The section titled "The Workers" discusses the ethnic makeup, numbers, and productivity of the workers engaged in erecting the plant. Setkiewicz analyzes detailed data on the Auschwitz prisoners assigned to Monowitz, describing their living conditions, daily schedules, relations with prisoner capos, the infirmary, the punishments they were subjected to, the resistance movement, and attempts at escaping. A separate chapter covers the free and conscript laborers, including prisoners of war, employed on the construction of the chemical plant.

As a result of the IG Farben project, a unique population with a diverse ethnic makeup arose in a confined space. The way factory management treated the workers was differentiated along the lines of Nazi "race" policy. At the summit of the social ladder created in Monowice by IG Farben stood Germans who arrived from "the Old Reich," followed by ethnic Germans from outside Germany, workers from western Europe, British and French POWs, Poles, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Russians, and, at the very bottom of the pile, Auschwitz Concentration Camp prisoners.

In addition to tables, graphs, and original wartime photographs and documents that illustrate the text, there are also various annexes. These include a list of private contractor firms at the IG Farben plant, and official wartime reports and photographs from the plant grounds and the barracks camps for conscript laborers. The book concludes with a detailed bibliography and name index.

On the Auschwitz sub-camps
The location of Auschwitz concentration camp, practically in the heart of German-occupied Europe, and its good transport connections meant that the Germans expanded it on a vast scale and deported people from almost every corner of Europe there. At the peak of its operations the Auschwitz camp was made up of three main components:

- The first and oldest was Auschwitz I, known as the Stammlager (where the prisoners numbered 12-20 thousand), established in mid-1940 on the basis of a prewar Polish barracks complex, which underwent progressive expansion to meet the needs of the concentration camp;

- The second part was the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp (in 1944, it held over 90 thousand prisoners), the largest part of the Auschwitz complex. Construction began in 1941 on the site of the village of Brzezinka, 3 km. from Oświęcim, where the local civilians were expelled and their homes demolished. The largest mass extermination facilities were built in Birkenau, and this is where the Germans murdered the majority of the Jews deported to the camp;

- The third part of the camp, Auschwitz III-Monowitz (also known as Buna, held over 11 thousand prisoners in the summer of 1944). Initially, it was an Auschwitz sub-camp founded in 1942 in Monowice, 6 km. from Oświęcim, adjacent to the Buna-Werke synthetic rubber and fuel plants built during the war by the German IG Farbenindustrie cartel. In November 1944, the Buna sub-camp was made autonomous and designated Monowitz Concentration Camp. It exercised authority over the majority of the Auschwitz sub-camps.

A total of 47 Auschwitz sub-camps and external labor details were set up between 1942 and 1944 to exploit prisoners as slave labor. Most of the sub-camps were attached to German industrial plants or farms.