News
New Publication on the Conservation of the Auschwitz SS-Hygiene Institut Documents
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has published The Conservation of the SS-Hygiene Institute Documents, written by the outstanding Museum specialists who headed the experienced team that spent three years conserving over 35,000 original German documents in a unique restoration project.
The Nazis left the records behind on the grounds of the camp as they fled the approaching Red Army in 1945.
“The so-called SS-Hygiene Institut fond documents laboratory analyses carried out in the Waffen-SS Hygiene Institute, including some performed in Auschwitz Concentration Camp,” said Jolanta Banaś-Maciaszczyk, head of the Museum conservation department. “It is an exceptionally valuable document collection in view of the information it contains on the profile of the Institute and the studies it performed. Above all, however,” said Banaś-Maciaszczyk, “it is a concrete trace of the fates of the people listed in these records by first and last name. In some cases it is the only remaining trace of Auschwitz prisoners. There are thousands of sheets of paper, forms, and in some cases small scraps of paper on which someone’s name is written.”
The Polish-English bilingual publication sums up the project and describes in detail the state-of-the-art conservation techniques that made it possible to protect the valuable documents against degradation resulting primarily from the passage of time and the acidity of the paper. There is also a discussion of the history of the unit founded by the German authorities adjacent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1942 as a branch of the SS Hygiene Institute in Berlin.
The largest project for the conservation of paper ever carried out by Auschwitz Memorial specialists, the work on the SS-Hygiene Institut document collection lasted from 2008 to 2011. It was financed in whole by the Federal State of North-Rhine Westphalia.
The book is available in the Museum internet bookshop.
The Waffen-SS and Police Hygiene Institute at Auschwitz [Upper Silesia] (Hygiene Institut der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz O/S) was a branch of the SS Main Hygiene Office, subordinated to the SS Main Sanitary Office (SS-Hauptsanitäramt) in Berlin. Its tasks included hygienic and bacteriological labwork for SS and police units and concentration camps, including the entire Auschwitz complex of camps and sub-camps.
Camp prisoners who were specialists in bacteriology, pathological anatomy, biology and chemistry from all over Europe were employed to do most of the lab work. The records indicate that the Institute also produced trial serums and tested chemicals and their effectiveness. Additionally, the bacteriological laboratory tested the preparation of cultures on the basis of human tissue, using tissue from the thigh muscles and abdomens of the victims of execution.
The director of the Institute was the notorious SS-Haupsturmfuehrer Dr. Bruno Weber. After the war, he was charged with murdering prisoners. He is also known to have experimented with the use of psychotropic drugs during interrogation. On the ramp in the Birkenau camp, he took part in the selection of Jews deported to Auschwitz, the majority of whom were murdered by the Nazis in the gas chambers immediately after arrival.
Konserwacja dokumentów SS-Hygiene Institut
Ewelina Bisaga, Nel Jastrzębiowska, Mirosław Maciaszczyk
Published by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Oświęcim 2011
62 pp., 20 x 20 cm, soft cover
ISBN: 978-83-7704-026-3
