Monstrous Technology / Innocent People:
A Description and Analysis of the Reichsbahn (German Reich Railway)

Prisoners of the Holocaust

To begin with, to transport the Jews the Nazis used boxcars and they transported them to concentration camps. During the Holocaust Jews were stuffed amongst each other into railroad boxcars. At many times a lot of them didn’t all fit together so they traveled “with their hands raised in the air” (Deportation…)

Katz writes this essay with the purpose to educate his students about Nazi ethics so that they can avoid the moral reasoning used by the Nazi’s. In order to articulate the reasoning of the Nazi’s, Katz uses three main ethical ideologies used in the Nazi society; Technological Neutrality, Doubling, and Integration and Ideology in engineering. Technological neutrality embodies the more traditional view on technological ethics in which “the design and creation of a technological artifact must be separate from its use”[1]. This allowed the technological professionals in the Nazi community to justify their actions by declaring that they were only responsible for the technological aspect of their creations and not the applications. On the other hand the concept of doubling does not require justification as it embodies the ideology that professionals within the Nazi Society apply a, “Division of self into two functioning wholes,” each with their “own criteria for good.”[2] This allowed the

I had trained as a tailor and had left home before we were deported, when I went to work four miles away on a ranch. It was taken over by the SS, so suddenly I found myself working for them. In May 1943 they lined us up one day and told us to empty our pockets. If they found even a single zloty in anyone’s pocket, they were shot on the spot. We were transported to Majdanek, which was only 19 miles away – a torture camp in the true sense of the word. For 500 metres there were just ditches full of bodies, legs, heads. We were deported to Auschwitz four weeks later. We arrived in the early morning and they gave us a bed, a real shower, they cleaned us well with disinfectant and shaved us. After that they gave us striped uniforms and tattooed us. I was given the number 128164 on my left arm and from that point on I was a number, no longer a name.

The next few moments of my life after my arrival to Auschwitz happened in rapid succession and yet I know if I live a hundred years I will never forget a single second. Although I don’t know if I will live. We didn’t know the place to which we came, but I know only too well what it is

These train organizers worked in a classified (for the most part) office called GEDOB in Warsaw and Krakow. These men were in charge of organizing all trains headed to Concentration Camps. Although some Men in leadership positions knew and understood the details of their job, there was a varied degree of knowledge of where the trains were headed and why. Karl Heim, the Chief of GEDOB/9 passenger traffic, reflected “We came to the conclusion that Auschwitz must have been a metropolis” (Document F). Heim claims he didn’t know anything more about these trains then the fact they were going to Auschwitz. He and the rest of his team believed that Auschwitz must have been a city. The Nazis hid their plans even from chief of a group organizing trains leaving Krakow headed to a concentration camp. Ignorance of where these trains were headed, made it easier for Heim to complete his job. It is unclear whether he even really knew where these trains were going, he continued to follow commands and do his job. This is a case of how as concentration camps began to rise up over Europe, the men organizing them were ignorant about the details, but didn’t do anything stop these trains making them bystanders. Another man, Walter Stier, head of Department 33 “Jewish Special Trains”, claimed that everyone in his office was aware of the trains final destination, and yet they continued to work. Although he worked in a similar facility, his experience was quite different. He remembered “They were lying around openly and could be seen by anyone having access to our offices. We all knew where the trains were going” (Document D). At the time, Stier was working at a different office in Warsaw where Heim was in Krakow. Similarly to Heim he was a head of the office

At the “Wannsee Conference”, which took place in Berlin, on January 20, 1942 the German regime with its main protagonists Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler planned the ‘final solution of the Jewish question. Even if massacres of about one million Jews occurred before the plans of the Final Solution, with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish population, extermination camps were built and industrialized mass slaughter of Jews began in earnest. The scene where a train of Schindler’s workers was wrongly sent to Auschwitz shows such an extermination camp were the Nazis systematically gassed thousands of Jews. Another example for the organized genocide is the mass cremation after the mass execution during the eviction of the ghetto in Krakow.

A few more days and all of us would have started to scream. But we were pulling into a station. Someone near a window read to us: "Auschwitz.” (27)

It has been days. I stumble, foot over foot to the crack of sunlight that beams into the car. I feel the train rock back and forth, side to side as we tumble over the tracks to a “better life.” A better life. More bread. They care about us. I hear the screech as the cars stop as we are all tossed forward. “Welcome to Auschwitz, Jews.” I hear a man scream be strong. I hear the crack of a whip and gun shots. I know they lied.

“The ghetto was to be liquidated entirely. Departures were to take place street by street, starting the next day” (Wiesel 13). Days later after they felt safe again, they would be taken to the camps, to be worked to death. They were dehumanized from that

The holocaust can be regarded as one of the most awful events in history and the swastika continues to be a constant reminder of the horrendous acts of hate that were bestowed onto human lives. More than 1 million people were brutally murdered at the hands of an evil dictator named Adolf Hitler. Some of the vivid events and actions that took place during this time have been highlighted in the poem “The Trains” written by William Heyen. Heyen discusses the trains of Treblinka which carried the prized possessions of the many people who had been dropped off to death and/or concentration camps. In the poem, the author attempts to appeal to audiences of the 21st century around the world who do not fully understand the horrific incidents that occurred during the holocaust and the tragedy inflicted on its victims.

In the spring of 1944 so many Jews driven out of their homes, and forced into Ghettos. Beaten by the German Army treated like prisoners and sent off to concentration camps. “The Hungarian police made us climb into the cars, eighty persons in each one.”(Wiesel42) This quote made me stop reading because the

As the Soviet Union made their way for the camp, the camp began to evacuate its three main camps and 44 subcamps. “SS units forced nearly 60,000 prisoners to march west from the Auschwitz camp system” (“Auschwitz,” n.d.). Prisoners were transported to Germany concentration camps. The travels to these camps were unbearable, and many prisoners lost their lives during the travel or were killed if they could not keep up during the marches. These marches are often referred to as “The Death Marches.” “On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered [Auschwitz-Birkenau camps] and liberated around 7,000 prisoners, most of whom were ill and dying” (“Auschwitz,” n.d.).

Eighteen million Europeans went through the Nazi concentration camps. Eleven million of them died, almost half of them at Auschwitz alone.1 Concentration camps are a revolting and embarrassing part of the world’s history. There is no doubt that concentration camps are a dark and depressing topic. Despite this, it is a subject that needs to be brought out into the open. The world needs to be educated on the tragedies of the concentration camps to prevent the reoccurrence of the Holocaust. Hitler’s camps imprisoned, tortured, and killed millions of Jews for over five years. Life in the Nazi concentration camps was full of terror and death for its individual prisoners as well as the entire Jewish

Sarah Pruitt of the History Channel has reported; researchers have gained more information regarding the whereabouts of the folkloric Nazi “Ghost Train” in Poland. This train went missing over 70 years ago and is believed to hold large amounts of gold (2016).