The Postcard
A postcard bearing no publisher's name that was printed in England. 'Screw' in this context is a slang term for salary or wages.
The card was posted in Cowdenbeath, Fifeshire using a ½d. stamp on Tuesday the 17th. June 1913. It was sent to:
Miss B. Holmes,
94, Grafton Street,
Mile End Road,
London E.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Bessie,
Just a PC in answer to
yours. This is what I'm
trying to do now.
Am still true.
Hoping you are getting
along alright without me.
Yours,
Charlie."
Gerhard Palitzsch
So what else happened on the day that Charlie posted the card?
Well, the 17th. June 1913 marked the unfortunate birth in Großopitz, German Empire, of the Nazi Gerhard Palitzsch.
Palitzsch was a German Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) of the SS. He was notorious for his brutal treatment of prisoners in Auschwitz concentration camp.
Biography of Gerhard Palitzsch
At the beginning of his career as an NCO, in 1933, Palitzsch served as a sentry in the concentration camps of Lichtenburg, Sachsenburg and Sachsenhausen, where in 1936 he was Block Leader (head of a prisoners’ barrack), and later Report Leader (duty officer).
From 1938 to 1940 he served in Neuengamme concentration camp as the second prisoners' work detail overseer (Kommandoführer).
From Sachsenhausen he was transferred to Auschwitz on the 20th. May 1940. He brought with him 30 German green-coded prisoners (criminals), selected by him to take over posts of authority over the rest of prisoners.
Palitzsch was the first Report Leader, and in this position he practised extensive terror. Infamous were his speeches to the newly arrived prisoners at the camp. Here is an example:
″We Germans have no pity on the enemies
of the Third Reich, like you. With joy we will
hound you all through the chimneys of the
crematoria. Forget your wives, your children,
your families. You will die here like dogs.″
Moreover Palitzsch was the most assiduous killer at the "death wall", also called the "black wall". He claimed to a fellow SS member that he was responsible for shooting some 25,000 people in the back of the head.
The prisoner Boleslaw Zbozien testified how Palitzsch murdered a family of five:
″The man was holding by the hand the child standing
on his left. The other child stood between them, and
the father and the mother were holding him too by their
hands.
The mother kept the youngest, a baby, tight to her chest.
Palitzsch shot the baby in the head first. Then Palitzsch
shot the child standing between his parents. The man
and the woman stood motionless like statues.
Then Palitzsch seized the oldest child, who did not want
to be shot; he threw the child to the ground, and standing
on his back, Palitzsch shot him in the nape. Finally he shot
the woman and then the man."
On the 3rd. September 1941 Palitzsch participated in the first tentative gassing using Zyklon B to murder 600 Russian POWs and 250 sick Polish prisoners. They were crammed into the basement of Block 13, later renamed Block 11.
But the next day not all prisoners were dead; so Palitzsch had to add more Zyklon B.
In 1942 he was Report Leader in the male camp of Auschwitz II Birkenau, where he served also at the trackside ramp when new Jewish transports were arriving. From July to August 1943 he served also in the Gypsy family camp.
Polish resistance fighter (Witold Pilecki), who volunteered to enter Auschwitz in September 1940, reported genocidal actions from November 1940 onwards:
"In Block 11, Palitzsch, a particularly dedicated
torturer, would hunt children. He told girls to
run around a closed yard and would shoot at
them, killing them like rabbits.
He would snatch a child from its mother’s
embrace and would smash its little head
against a wall, or a stone. A true degenerate,
tears and death followed him.
Having committed a most heinous crime, he
would come out smiling, handsome and polite,
calmly smoking a cigarette."
Like other concentration camp personnel, he enriched himself by stealing property robbed from the victims, and because of this he was a subject of SS investigations into theft and corruption. His transfer in 1943 to a sub-camp at Brünn, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, where he was made Commandant, may have been a penal transfer.
Some prisoners in more trusted jobs in Auschwitz fought back against the camp; one of the means of attack was to breed lice infected with typhus in the camp infirmary and then put these lice into clothes given to SS personnel.
Because of his notoriety, Palitzsch was given such an item. He did not contract typhus, but his wife Luise died from it. After that, he was believed to have sexually assaulted a female prisoner.
Shortly after his transfer to Brünn he was arrested, sent back to Auschwitz, and jailed in Block 11. Accused of racial defilement and theft, Palitzsch was sentenced to several years in prison, but was reprieved and instead dismissed from the SS in June 1944 and sent to a penal unit. H
is later fate is unclear; he is said to have fallen in action on the 7th. December 1944, possibly at the battle of Budapest, Hungary. He was aged 31 when he died.
In a letter from the resistance movement, smuggled out of Auschwitz, he was described as “The greatest bastard of Auschwitz”.
Rudolf Höss, who was not hesitant in his criticism of his staff, wrote in his memoirs:
″Palitzsch was the most cunning and slippery
creature that I have ever gotten to know and
experience in the many concentration camps.
He literally walked over bodies to satisfy his
hunger for power.″