Fritz Buchholz's report about Auschwitz
Extent and Medium
folder
1
8 digital images, JPEG
Creator(s)
- Fritz Buchholz
Biographical History
From Sept. 1944 to Jan. 1945, Fritz Buchholz was a prisoner in Auschwitz for having talked against Nazi Germany and having disseminated foreign news that he had heard on the radio. On 19 June 1945, Buchholz was a German prisoner-of-war in a United States Army prisoner-of-war camp in Cherbourg, France.
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
In June 1945, George Cruden, a U.S. Army officer in charge of prisoners-of-war at the U.S. Army prisoner-of-war camp in Cherbourg, France, was told that Fritz Buchholz wanted to make a statement about Auschwitz. Cruden took the report and sent it to his superiors at SHAEF. In Apr. 1994, Cruden gave his personal copy of the report to the USHRIA.
Scope and Content
Fritz Buchholz's report (dated 19 Jun. 1945) describes the following in Auschwitz-Birkenau: sadistic camp guards; torture of inmates; the deaths of Jewish prisoners in gas chambers; confiscation and stockpiling of the arrivals' property; and the destruction of the camp's crematorium by the Nazi guards before the camp was overrun by the Soviet military.
People
- Buchholz, Fritz.
Corporate Bodies
- Birkenau (Concentration camp)
- Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei. Schutzstaffel
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Torture.
- Jewish property.
- Crematoriums.
- Confiscations.
- Gas chambers.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives--Men authors.
Genre
- Document
- Personal narratives.