Auschwitz I: the men in the Stammlager

All the men from the 3 September 1944 transport who survived selection after arriving in Birkenau went on foot to Auschwitz I after the registration procedure.^[1] There they ended up in quarantine block 8. The prisoners slept in bunk beds on three floors, often with two or more people to a bed. The quarantine block was overcrowded.

During quarantine, all prisoners had to work. Most worked on Strassenbau - road construction - or in the Kiesgrube - the gravel pit - where they had to load gravel onto carts and take them away to pave roads. Many people suffered injuries during this work. Otto Frank stated after the war that he was assigned to a team that had to drag gravel.

'Being in a Kieskommando myself for a while, I know a lot about the hard labour that had to be done there and the beatings that were often associated with it.'^[2]

The quarantine period of the men from the 3 September transport ended in early October 1944 with two selections, during which another group of male prisoners deemed no longer capable of hard labour was murdered in the gas chamber. The death of Hermann van Pels resulted from these selections.

The men who did survive the selections remained in Auschwitz I after the quarantine period, where they were assigned to various labour teams. Where Fritz Pfeffer was assigned, we do not know. Nothing about Pfeffer's imprisonment in Auschwitz has been found in the testimonies of survivors. What we know is that he was registered in the same group as Hermann and Peter van Pels.^[3] Like the others, he stayed in quarantine until about 1 October 1944. Around 11 November 1944, he was probably selected for transport to Neuengamme camp, where he arrived between 10 and 18 November.^[4]

During the quarantine period, Otto Frank first worked in the Kommando Kiesgrube. He then joined the Strassenbau.^[5] Whether this happened immediately after the quarantine period is not clear. When work in the Strassenbau was stopped because of frost, Otto Frank said he got better work, in the Kartoffelschälkommando.^[5]

Peter van Pels entered Block 2 after the quarantine period. Otto Frank said in an interview after the war:

'Peter was lucky enough to get a job at the camp's post office which was for SS and non-Jewish prisoners receiving mail and parcels.'^[6]

The men working at the Paketstelle were tasked with opening the parcels for the deceased prisoners and selecting the contents. Without too much effort, they were able to purloin much of these. Otto Frank and Peter van Pels would have seen each other daily until Peter was transported to camp Mauthausen in mid-January.^[6]

Otto Frank was the only one of the people from the Secret Annex to survive the camps.