Censorship in Auschwitz concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz; also K.L. Auschwitz) followed the broader pattern of political and cultural suppression in the Third Reich. General censorship in camp occurred in a variety of daily life topics and was more stringent than the outside world. The main focus was monitoring prisoners’ written correspondences, which was under strict censorship by the SS garrison on camp. Starting from 1939, the Mail Censorship Office (German: Postzensurstelle) which was directly subordinated to the commandant's office (German: Abteilung I) took the main responsibility for checking the contents of letters and parcels as well as receiving and sending correspondences. The SS personnel would cut or blacken suspicious content that was considered inappropriate i.e. any information regarded the true living condition of the concentration camp or prisoner's health status. Even worse, some prisoner's letters were never sent out to their family members.
Only a small number of German and Polish prisoners were allowed to write and send correspondences. Selected prisoners were required to write in German, the official language of the Third Reich. In order to be successfully mailed, letters had to be written in 15 lines on standard stationery, signed with the sender's name and the belonged camp's name, and stamped at the upper right for general circulation. All letters need to contain the opening phrase “I am healthy and feel well” (German: “Ich bin gesund und fühle mich gut”), though it usually did not reflect the actual physical status of prisoners. The SS garrison in Auschwitz launched “Letter Operation” (German: Briefaktion) in March 1944. Jewish prisoners from the Theresienstadt ghetto in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and Berlin were forced to write and send postcards to their families and friends. These unregistered prisoners were later liquidated in the gas chambers, while their relatives who received postcards were closely monitored by the Nazis. Despite that, prisoners had developed a set of approaches to evade being censored based on the camp ecology, such as writing in codes. The underground intelligence network in the vicinity of the camp further expanded secret correspondences to enable prisoners and their families to keep in touch, share information, and obtain resources for survival.
The censorship system ended in the camp with the collapse of the Third Reich and the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945. In the postwar period, some of the Holocaust survivors and victims’ families donated the censored correspondences they received to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
Background In the Third Reich Censorship in the Third Reich was the leading means for the Nazis to maintain Nazi propaganda and to promote the cult of Adolf Hitler. Joseph Goebbels and his Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (German: Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda; also RMVP) were central to the systematic suppression of the content of public communication, press, literature, art, music, movies, theatre, and radio."Nazi Propaganda and Censorship." The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Accessed on August 16, 2023.
After the Nazi Book Burnings on May 10, 1933, in Berlin, large-scale extreme censorship began in Germany. Censorship was targeted for sanctioning or prohibiting works viewed as incompatible or subversive with Nazi ideology."Nazi Propaganda and Censorship." The core thoughts consisted of advocating antisemitism, anti-communism, social Darwinism, German nationalism, and the dictatorship of Hitler.Richard J. Evans. The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), 109. The Nazis adopted a variety of propaganda tools to execute censorship, such as banning works of Jewish and communist writers, selling cheap radios to the public for hearing Hitler's speeches, and glorying Hitler by using his image on stamps, postcards, and posters."Nazi Propaganda and Censorship." The campaign was later expanded to other regions in Nazi-occupied Europe with the invasion of the Wehrmacht.
In Nazi-occupied Poland
Following the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 (also the September Campaign), the occupying powers and their collaborationists committed a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity. As part of the Generalplan Ost (GPO) to colonize and destroy Poland, the Nazis launched severe censorship against Polish people.Richard C. Lukas. The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation (New York: Hippocrene Books, 2001), 198. Censorship and Nazi propaganda were submitted to the Department of Public Education and Propaganda (German: Fachabteilung für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda; also FAVuP), which was directed by the General Government in Kraków.Lukas, 199. To achieve a complete Germanized Polish nation in political, cultural, economic, and ethnic aspects, the Nazis prohibited any publications in Polish, closed down all universities and academic institutions, looted and destroyed museums and libraries, organized book burnings, persecuted the Catholic church, and deported Polish scholars, scientists, and priests to concentration camps.Lukas, 199-200. The propaganda campaign was executed for the purpose of assimilation, while anti-Slavic sentiment played a significant role in the annexation of greater Poland. Nazi censorship was perpetuated in concentration camps within Poland as well.
SS administration in Auschwitz
Like all other concentration camps, censorship in Auschwitz was managed and executed by the SS garrison with divided administrations in the camp. The Mail Censorship Office (German: Postzensurstelle) was the primary authority in charge of censorship of correspondences, which was directly subordinated to Division I, the commandant's office (German: Abteilung I - Kommandantur ).Tadeusz Iwasko, "The Daily Life of Prisoners," in Danuta Czech, Auschwitz: Nazi Death Camp (Oświęcim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 1996), 84. The SS personnel employed at Postzensurstelle supervised the reception and sending of correspondence and censored the contents of prisoner's letters and postcards sent to the outside world.Iwaszko, 84. To minimize administration costs, Postzensurstelle would order prisoner-functionaries in each block of Auschwitz to covey commands, monitor prisoners’ writings, and collect correspondences.Iwaszko, 84-85.
Despite being an independent administrative unit, Postzensurstelle also collaborated with Division II, the political department (German: Abteilung II - Politische Abteilung) in examining and verifying prisoner's information.Aleksander Lasik, "Structure and Character of the Camp SS Administration" in Danuta Czech, et al. Auschwitz: Nazi Death Camp (Oświęcim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 1996), 45. The Section for Registration, Organization, and Documentation (German: Registratur, Organisation und Karteiführung) and the Identification Service (German: Erkennungsidenst) of Division II kept registered prisoner's personal records, fingerprints, photographs, numbers, and most significantly, their family addresses.Lasik, 47. The correspondence campaign was in fact a way for the camp authorities to find out if any of the prisoners were registered under a false name or address. This helped to prevent escapes due to the threat of arresting the entire family.Lasik, 47-48.Piotr M.A. Cywiński, Auschwitz: A Monograph on the Human. (Oświęcim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2022), 317. Postzensurstelle’s remit of censorship later expanded to the subcamps of Auschwitz-II Birkenau and Auschwitz-III Monowitz in 1942.Cywiński, 319.
Censorship of correspondences
Writing and sending correspondences was part of the camp culture of Auschwitz. However, it was in fact a privilege that was reserved for a small number of prisoners. Only a small number of German- and Polish-ethnic prisoners were allowed to write and send correspondences.Iwaszko, 84. Unregistered prisoners and prisoners with the designation “Nacht und Nebel” (NN), including Soviet prisoners-of-war, Jewish and half-Jewish prisoners, and prisoners whose families lived in non-Nazi jurisdictional areas were excluded to correspond.Iwaszko, 84. A regulation from March 30, 1942, limited the amount of correspondence that could be carried out by people from the East (German: Ostvölker).APMO, D-RF-9/WVHA/8, Collection Sammlung von Erlässen, card 31. They were allowed to send and receive only one letter every two months, while they had to use the returnable card to correspond (German: Karten mit Rückantwort).Iwaszko, 84.APMO, D-RF-9/WVHA/8, Collection Sammlung von Erlässen, card 31. Selected prisoners were required to write in German, the official language of the Third Reich, while Polish, Silesian, and Yiddish were strictly banned.Iwaszko, 84.
The retained letters demonstrate the official regulation of correspondence censorship in Auschwitz. Prisoners were only allowed to write on uniformly distributed camp stationery. On the left upper of the stationery was the regulation of correspondence:
Every prisoner in protective custody can receive two letters or cards from his relatives, or send to them. Letters to prisoners must be legibly written in ink and no more than 15 lines per page. Only one sheet of standard letterhead is permitted. Large envelopes must be unlined. Only 5 stamps of 12 pence may be enclosed in a letter. Anything else is prohibited and subject to confiscation; Postcards must be written in 10 lines. Photographs may not be used as postcards; Sending money is permitted; It is important to note that when it comes to money or mail, the exact address consists of name, date of birth, and prisoner number need to be included. If the address is wrong, the correspondence will be returned to the sender or destroyed; Newspapers are permitted, but may only be sent through the post office of the K.L. Auschwitz ordered; Parcels may not be sent, since the prisoners can buy everything in the camp; Requests for release from protective custody to the camp management are pointless; Permission to speak and visits prisoners in the concentration camp are generally not permitted.APMO, D-Au-I/4167. Collection of letters and camp correspondence cards, vol. 2 (hardcopies), letter 1.
Therefore, only two letters or postcards were allowed to send every month per prisoner. Parcels were not allowed. In order to be mailed successfully, letters had to be written in 15 lines on standard stationery and in ink, signed with the sender's name and the belonged camp's name, and put in standard envelopes with a Geprüft stamp. Prisoners were not permitted to attach or enclose anything in letters, especially photographs. Money transactions were surprisingly allowed, and yet, the SS personnel in the camp embezzled most of it. The SS personnel and prisoner-functionaries took great advantage of the resources that prisoners’ families sent.Cywiński, 318. All letters need to contain the opening phrase “I am healthy and feel well” (German: “Ich bin gesund und fühle mich gut”), no matter what the prisoner's physical condition was.Iwaszko, 48.Marian Henryk Serejski, I Am Healthy and I Feel Fine: The Auschwitz Letters of Marian Henryk Serejski (Oświęcim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2010), 3. These letters could not reveal the camp's reality, such as starvation, torture, dehydration, and sickness.Cywiński, 317-18. Marian Henryk Serejski (1897–1975), a former Polish prisoner of Auschwitz, also a Holocaust survivor, included his 25 letters from 1941 to 1942 in his book I Feel Healthy and I Feel Fine (2010) (Polish: Jestem zdrów i czuję się dobrze).Serejski, 1-2. The example below reflect that prisoners’ correspondence did not exist as an effective means of communication with the outside world:Dear wife and children,