Birkenau or Auschwitz II was part of the mammoth Auschwitz-Birkenau prison complex. Opened in March 1942, Birkenau was particularly notorious for its killing facilities, which included 4 gas chambers and crematoria that came into operation in spring 1943. Birkenau was also a massive labour prison, holding up to 100,000 inmates in its 300 hundred barracks. In August 1942, approximately 16,000 female prisoners were transferred there, and from then on, women and girls constituted a significant portion of the population, topping over 30,000 in summer 1944.
The women and girls slept in Birkenau’s infamous horse stable barracks, which were designed to accommodate 52 horses or up 1,000 prisoners, although sometimes as many as 1,500 were squeezed into them. Most slept in 3-tiered wooden bunks that were lined with straw mattresses and reminded them of cages. Typically, at least five people, sharing a thin wool blanket, occupied each berth. When the prisoner population exceeded capacity, the new arrivals slept on the floors, many of which were unpaved and became a sea of mud when it rained. In winter, the quarters were freezing and damp; in summer, they were oppressively hot. Given that only one or two buckets for bodily functions were available, the bunks were covered in urine, excrement, and vomit. These conditions were ideal for lice, fleas, and rats, all of which fed on the prisoners’ bodies. Such conditions incontrovertibly contributed to the astronomical death toll. As Polish survivor Pelagia Lewinska explained in 1946, ‘[O]ne could not consider her stay in the barracks as a rest but rather as a new martyrdom.’ In fact, each morning commenced with the ritualistic hauling of corpses from the bunks to the roll call field to be counted.
A CACOPHONY OF SUFFERING
As Bitton-Jackson detailed, torturous sounds echoed nightly in the barracks. Despite the strict rule of silence, prisoners regularly let out an array of anguished noises, underscoring that at certain moments, the Holocaust was earsplittingly loud. Czech Jew Edith Perl described the rumble that rang discordantly in the bunks:
Nights brought little respite from the misery. The women and girls would fight over a bit of bread. Finding a bunkmate dead was par for the course. The living would immediately seize whatever food or hidden items they found on the corpse. Groans, screams and crying had all become the familiar sounds of the night.
The rattle of moans, shrieks, sobs, and inmate fighting was evidence of the existential fear, grief, and anxiety from which the women suffered.
The sounds of trauma especially emanated from the bunks. For instance, according to Bitton-Jackson, it was the murder of her mother that compelled the girl to scream. Terrified, she pleaded with fellow prisoners to listen to her mother’s execution whose sounds she believed that she was hearing, as she teetered on complete emotional collapse. Her cries, shrieks, and pleas were the sounds of suffering, which she apparently could not quell, despite the risk of execution.
Birkenau’s abject conditions also contributed to the misery that audibly reverberated in the barracks. Lethal starvation, battered bodies, and ubiquitous violence all underpinned the aching soundscape, and the cramped sleeping quarters only compounded the degradation and distress. Sardined together with frayed nerves, the prisoners often battled each other for mere inches of space and a modicum of privacy. French Jew Louise Alcan summarized the acoustic maelstrom that resounded in the barracks:
'Eight hundred nervous women in a small space; it’s scary. The noise from all the languages seemed like a cacophony. […] The only thing I appreciate about the roll call is the quiet […]'
As Alcan maintained, hearing other prisoners’ cries, screams, and groans unsettled most auditors. Indeed, prisoners were generally reluctant earwitnesses, often attempting to block out the painful sounds by placing their hands over their ears. But trying to silence the noises was an exercise in futility. In fact, hearing the sounds of others’ distress often ignited fear in the earwitnesses, and many joined in harrowing spectacles of collective screaming. As Bitton-Jackson recalled, when the women heard the girl wail, many also began to cry out: ‘A shriek tears into the night. In seconds the barrack is agog with screams. A wave of panic sweeps the prone bodies, whipping them into a wild frenzy. Shrieking senselessly, girls begin trampling upon each other in the dark.’ The girl’s screams catalysed a general acoustic tumult. Forced to hear her cries, fellow inmates unleashed their own noises of pain and fright, thus demonstrating that sounds of suffering could be contagious in Holocaust soundscapes.
SONIC DOMINANCE
Bitton-Jackson's description makes it clear that any noise in Birkenau’s bunks was assiduously regulated. As soon as the SS heard the girl’s cries, they descended upon the barrack, commanding the soundscape with shouts and gunfire, and ultimately killing the girl. Like most Holocaust acoustic terrains, barrack soundscapes were controlled by the SS as part of the greater enterprise to wholly subjugate the prisoners. To be sure, sonic dominance was an integral component of political hegemony. At all stages of the Holocaust, the captives were generally ordered to remain silent, and those who violated the rule of silence faced severe consequences, including execution.
In her memoir, Bitton-Jackson detailed the guards' efforts to control the sound of the barracks, but more typically a Block Elder (Blockälteste), an inmate who carried out SS orders in exchange for privileges, was charged with ensuring that silence reigned in the barracks. As Bitton-Jackson described it, 'Blockälteste are the absolute commanders of the block and the barrack'. Numerous survivors testified that the Block Elders routinely resorted to violence to ensure silence. The Polish Jew Sara Zyskind, for example, described how, on her first night in Birkenau, the deputies of the Block Elders, the Kapos, indiscriminately used truncheons to silence the prisoners.
By now the noise in the hall was great, and the Kapo guarding us was becoming angry. [….]
Suddenly, a curious silence descended on the hall, and I raised my head to see the fat Kapo climbing down the ladder, club in hand, her face livid with anger. She gave a long shrill whistle, and within an instant, two other Kapos armed with clubs burst into the hall. […] All three Kapos ran wildly about, wielding their truncheons and striking blows on the heads of anyone near them. [….]
‘Didn’t I warn you to keep quiet!” our Kapo yelled. ‘Maybe I’ll be able to get some sleep now!’
Defying the silence mandate, the inmates generated a jumble of noises. However, the Kapos ruthlessly regained control of the soundscape by discharging their own sounds: a whistle signaling the brutal onslaught, the noise of truncheons pummeling flesh, and booming shouts. This incident, like countless others, demonstrated that controlling the acoustic environment was a pivotal tactic to vanquish the prisoners altogether. Indeed, sonic supremacy, which worked in conjunction with physical violence, was decisive to overall dominance at Birkenau.
SOUND MEMORY
Pondering the girl’s murder over fifty years later, Bitton-Jackson noted that the other women had quickly forgotten her. ‘[N]o one asked who the young girl was […] No one mentioned her name. Where was she from? She was a dark, nameless silhouette in the night, and like a shadow she disappeared in the night.’ The dead girl’s abrupt silence seemed to have obliterated her existence entirely. She was, as Bitton-Jackson commented, only a ‘nameless silhouette’ that disappeared when her sobs and screams were irrevocably silenced. And yet, her anguished cries persisted stubbornly. As Bitton-Jackson reflected: ‘Only her shriek remained. We all carried her shriek in our souls.’ The girl’s sounds of suffering had bored themselves so deeply into Bitton-Jackson memory that they continued to echo over half of a century later, further underscoring the power of sound during the Holocaust.
SOURCES
Casey, Edward S., Remembering: A Phenomenological Study, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Dwork, Deborah and R. J. van Pelt, Auschwitz, 1270 to the Present, New York: Norton, 1996.
Goldenberg, Myrna, ‘Memories of Auschwitz Survivors,’ in Women in the Holocaust, ed. Dalia Ofer and Leonore J. Weitzman, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998, 327–40.
Gutman, Yisrael and Michael Berenbaum, ed., Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Rees, Laurence, Auschwitz: A New History, New York: Public Affairs, 2005.
Schafer, R. Murray, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1977/1994, 137, 272.
Sewell, Sara Ann, ‘Sonic Experiences in the Night: The Case of the Falling Bunk at Auschwitz-Birkenau,’ in New Microhistorical Approaches to an Integrated History of the Holocaust, ed. Frédéric Bonnesoeur, Hannah Wilson, and Christin Zühlke, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2023, 161-77.
Smoleń, Kazimierz, ed., From the History of KL-Auschwitz, trans. Krystyna Michalik, New York: Howard Fertig, 1982.
Steinbacher, Sybille, Auschwitz: A History, trans. Shaun Whiteside, New York: Ecco, 2005.
WITNESS TESTIMONIES
Bitton-Jackson, Livia (née Elli L. Friedmann) (1931-2023), I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust, New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1997/1999, 90-92.
Korn, Abram (1923-1972) and Joseph Korn, Abe’s Story: A Holocaust Memoir, Atlanta: Sugarcreek Press, 1992/1999, 11.
Langbein, Hermann, (1912-1995), "Im Bunker,” in Auschwitz: Zeugnisse und Berichte, ed. H. G. Adler, et al., Frankfurt/M: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1962, 194-209, here 197.
Lewinska, Pelagia, (1907-2004), Twenty Months at Auschwitz, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1946/1968, 37.
Perl, Edith, (née Sura Rifka Kalus) (1926-2017) and Lindsay Preston, Not Even a Number: Surviving Lager C - Auschwitz II – Birkenau, Melbourne, FL: Motivational Press, 2017, 131, 188.
Louise Alcan (1910-1987), "Sans armes et sans bagages," in Tragédie de la déportation, 1940–1945: Témoignages de survivants de camps des concentration allemands, ed. Olga Wormser and Henri Michel, Paris: Hachette, 1954, 131.
Sara Zyskind, (née Sara Plager) (1927-1995), Stolen Years: 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945 , New York: New American Library, 1981, 156.
