Gość: fidel
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27.01.05, 21:58
www.pbs.org/auschwitz/about/transcripts_4.html
Józef Paczynski, Polish Political Prisoner, Auschwitz: "And so, in 1943 I and many others were living in Block 24A. The block elder came in and said: 'We're moving out because there's going to be a brothel here.' We all started laughing."
But it wasn't a joke. It was bizarre - but true. Block 24 just beside the main gate of Auschwitz was to become a brothel. And the decision to make it happen had come from the very top of the SS. Heinrich Himmler had been considering for some time how to provide incentives to prisoners within the concentration camp system. He'd written to Otto Pohl of the SS Economic Division:
"I consider it necessary to provide in the most liberal way hard working prisoners with women in brothels."
These instructions were passed onto commandants like Höss in a directive from Pohl in 1943. The idea wasn't for every prisoner to use the brothel - certainly not the Jews, but for vouchers for the brothel to be issued only to those prisoners whom the Nazis considered of special value. Prisoners like Ryszard Dacko, a member of the Auschwitz fire brigade.
Ryszard Dacko?Polish Political Prisoner, Auschwitz: "If I wanted to get a voucher, I had to sort things out with an SS-man. And they only gave vouchers to healthy prisoners, they wouldn't give them to prisoners who were on their last legs. Prisoners who worked as cooks for the SS, as hairdressers for the SS?the special prisoners got those vouchers. I got 2 vouchers."
Little is known about the women who were forced to work in the brothel - this whole subject is one many prefer not to talk about. But it's believed they were selected from non-Jewish prisoners already in the camp. They were given these rooms on the first floor of Block 24 where prisoners who had the necessary vouchers visited them.
Ryszard Dacko: "I wanted to cuddle up to her as much as I could, because it was three and a half years since I'd been arrested, three and a half years without a woman."
In the brutalized atmosphere of Auschwitz, prisoners like Ryszard Dacko found it hard to have sympathy for the women who worked in the brothel.
Ryszard Dacko: "The girls were treated very well, they had good food, they went for walks. They just had to carry out the work that was required of them."