12/09/2024
ca. 9 September 1942 | Female prisoner functionaries together with SS guards battered 90 French Jewish women to death at the sub-camp of Auschwitz in Budy, which was the penal company for women.
Today we know that the massacre in Budy took place not in October but before 10 September 1942. On that day the commandant of Auschwitz reported to the WVHA with the heading "secret," regarding an "incident" (Vorfall) in the penal company in the village of Bor-Budy. On 16 September, SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl demanded a detailed report on the matter and that the interrogation protocols be sent, as he intended to make a report to the SS Reichsführer.
Listen to a podcast where the details of this research is described: "On Auschwitz": https://youtu.be/_7Pja9KjL60
The penal company for women prisoners in Budy, about 7 km. from Oświęcim, was established in June 1942 in reprisal for an escape from Auschwitz by a Polish woman prisoner. 400 women of various ethnic backgrounds were imprisoned in Budy. Their living conditions were lamentable, and the Germans forced them to perform backbreaking labor. German women criminals and prostitutes made up the cadre in charge of the penal company.
The massacre of the French Jewish women prisoners took place in early September. Using clubs, hatchets, and rifle butts—and throwing some of their victims from the windows in the loft of the building—female prisoner functionaries and SS guards butchered 90 women.
In the afternoon, SS men from the SS reconnaissance service (Erkennungsdienst) and SS orderlies arrived at the Strafkompanie in Budy. The reconnaissance service photographed the pile of lying corpses of female prisoners and the corpses of female prisoners hanging on the wires of the fence, who were trying to escape the massacre. The SS orderlies, on the other hand, were killing wounded prisoners by dragging individuals into a room given to them and killing them with phenol injections
The camp administration investigated the incident, but failed to discover the cause. Commandant Rudolf Höss defined the massacre as “a revolt instigated by prisoners who used stones and clubs in an attempt to terrorize the capo and make their way out of the camp.”
SS man Pery Broad claimed that a German woman noticed a stone in the hand of Jewish woman returning from the toilet to the dormitory room. Broad felt that this was a “hysterical illusion.” Nevertheless, the German woman called for help and shouted that the Jewish woman had struck her. At that point, the female supervisors and guards began slaughtering the French Jews.
As an aftermath, all the women who remained alive after being injured in the massacre were killed. SS also killed six German women functionaries who had taken part in the slaughter.
