| The Auschwitz Bauleitung numbered on average about one hunched people, SS and civilians, and employed an unknown number of prisoners. All the SS were NCO’s or officers, mainly NCO’s (Sergeants). The only known cases of three Bauleitung SS who were Privates for a while before being promoted are simply exceptions confirming the rule. The breakdown of SS and civilian staff was as follows: |
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10% Officers: one Captain and fifteen Second Lieutenants, one of whom, Jothann, was to become Lieutenant and Head of the Bauleitung in 1944; |
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15% civilian employees (helping the young Second Lieutenants through their long experience and participating actively in the projects under construction, like Z.A. (Zivilarbeiter/ Civilian worker) Teichmann, who signed “criminal” orders for the Birkenau Krematorien); |
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35% senior NCO's: about thirty Sergeants, with a few Staff Sergeants, Senior Staff Sergeants and Master Sergeants; |
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40% junior NCO's: Acting Corporals and Corporals, among them men with qualifications who were often promoted Second Lieutenant (Specialist). |
In mid 1942, a new Bauleitung hut was built as an annex to the main building [Photo 3].
Bischoff and Dejaco knew exactly what they had planned, and visited the Birkenau worksites on many occasions to inspect progress on the four Krematorien. Photo 4 shows them together, in the summer of 1942, watching prisoners working on the “Ringstraße / Ring Road” passing between the future Krematorien IV and V.
The catalogue of drawings from July 1940 to January 1942 [PMO file BW 1/4] shows that as of this latter date, a little over two thousand drawings had been produced. However, this figure does not mean that the Bauleitung was making great efforts to improve the camp for the benefit of the prisoners, for half of these drawings are concerned with facilities for the SS alone, such things as private houses, gardens, pergolas, the “Waffen SS House”, various messes, furniture and sundry other things to make their life at Auschwitz more pleasant. |
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Photo 3:
[PMO neg. no. 20995/138]
Part of the interior of the new Bauleitung annex. |
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Photo 4:
[PMO neg. no. 313]
SS Captain Bischoff (hands on hips) and SS Second Lieutenant (F) Dejaco, with a folded drawing under his right arm, inspecting work on the “Ring road” between the future Krematorien IV and I in summer 1942. |
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