In fascinating new book The Birdman of Auschwitz, Stratford author Nicholas Milton tells the story of camp guard and ornithologist Günther Niethammer
In his fascinating new book The Birdman of Auschwitz, Nicholas Milton delves into the life of death camp guard and ornithologist Günther Niethammer. The Stratford author tells Gill Sutherland about how he came to write the book, published this month ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day.
THERE’S a common belief that birds don’t sing at Auschwitz, but it’s not true.
What is horribly true is that during the war certain birds living near the concentration camp, where more than a million people, died lined their nests with human hair and scraps of discarded clothes.
The ghoulish fact was recorded by eminent ornithologist Dr Günther Niethammer in a research paper on the birds of Auschwitz – while working as a guard at the death camp.
An appreciation of birds seems an unlikely preoccupation for a member of the Waffen-SS, the Nazi army, but Niethammer’s story, as recounted by author Nicholas Milton in his new book is fascinating. The Birdman of Auschwitz: The Life of Günther Niethammer, the Ornithologist Seduced by the Nazis is out this month, just in time to mark Holocaust Memorial Day on Monday, 27th January, when the Stratford author will be doing a signing at Waterstones.
History, war horror and birds is a perfect subject combination for Nick, who is himself a keen naturalist and historian. His previous books include Neville Chamberlain’s Legacy, The Role of Birds in World War One and another one on World War Two; The Waffen-SS; and The Secret Life of the Adder.
Nick has worked for The BBC Natural History Unit, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, The Wildlife Trusts and Greenpeace and has also written extensively about the Second World War for the national press. Given his background and achievements, it will be no surprise to learn that he is also a great and interesting conversationalist.
Over coffee in Marks and Spencer, he tells Herald Arts how he came to write The Birdman of Auschwitz.
“I discovered Niethammer after I came across a research paper in German about observations on the bird life of Auschwitz,” explains Nick on discovering his subject matter. “I read this paper with incredulity. Could somebody have really done a bird survey of Auschwitz? I read it and I decided that this needed to be researched.”
He continues: “So I’ve pieced together this man’s life. And he was the preeminent ornithologist of his generation – one of Germany’s greatest academics.”
Nick discovered that Niethammer enjoyed an illustrious career both before and after the war and published the first handbook of German ornithology, listing over 500 species of bird.
“He had sort of risen up through the sort of museum hierarchy,” says Nick. “At the outset of war he was head of ornithology at a museum in Bonn. It fascinated me how this academic, a scientist and an ornithologist, ended up as a guard at Auschwitz on Gate G, and the book delves into that.”
Like many in his day, Niethammer appears to have joined the Nazi for self-advancement purposes.
“Basically, he got a big promotion in 1937 to this role in Bonn. And then his immediate supervisor told him to join the party. Lots of people high up in state museums didn’t join, but he did.”
While Niethammer wrote lots of academic papers, Nick has had to glean personal information from various sources to piece together what his motives were.
“He was the eighth of nine children, born to a big Catholic family,” explains Nick. “His religion was very important to him. And when the Second World War broke out, like all Germans, he would have known people who died in the First World War, which they lost. He would have had reservations. What changed his mind were the spectacular victories in 1940. He was seeing the swastika spread throughout most of Europe, all the way up to the tip of Norway.
“People forget that the Nazis exploited all of these countries economically. They exploited them scientifically as well.“
And Niethammer saw in the expansion of greater Germany exciting opportunities for travel, for discovering new species, for going and looking at the bird life across Germany.“
He wanted a part of this exciting new Germany with the scientific opportunities that we’d offered.
”However Niethammer was 32 at the outbreak of the war and deemed a little old for the air force and the army, both of which turned him down, so in May 1940 he joined the Waffen-SS, the armed wing of the Nazi party. Nick picks up the story: “They put him on a train, didn’t tell him where he was going, and he ended up in Auschwitz. And there he soon found out that he had very little in common with the other guards. Most of them were psychopaths, sadists and bullies.”
His science background kicking in, and perhaps as a distraction, Niethammer began to explore the land around the camp, called ‘the zone of interest’, and around 40 square kilometres.
“What he found was that it was an incredibly good area for birds,” continues Nick. “The reason for that was the water table was quite close to the surface, so there were lots of large ponds, stagnant pools.
“You can imagine in that type of environment, being a bird-watcher would have subjected him to quite a lot of ridicule by some of the guards. What I deduced changed was that he started to bring back game birds.
“So Niethammer, in line with lots of ornithologists at that time, did his bird watching with binoculars in one hand and a gun in the other. If he saw an interesting bird, he didn’t know what it was, or if he liked it for his collection, he shot it. So he started bringing back pheasants and partridges and other things.“
Of course, this made him popular with the other guards, who liked to have pheasants and partridges. Word got to the commandant Rudolf Hoess, and his job then was to bring back game for the commandant.
“He also gave him permission to do a bird survey of the Auschwitz interest zone.”
What is incredible, says Nick, is the way that Hoess had singled out Niethammer out of the 4,500 people employed at Auschwitz. “If you read his Hoess’ autobiography, officers were continually coming to him with problems and issues, but he clearly quite liked this eccentric bird-watcher, and they got on.”Armed with the approval of the commandant and given equipment he needed, Niethammer published his Auschwitz bird survey in 1942, which was also when the third and final volume of his handbook of German birds came out.
“What was significant about 1942 was that was generally when historians believed that the Holocaust happened in earnest,” says Nick. “From the start of 1942 was when the mass transports first arrived.
“Niethammer got transferred out of Auschwitz at the end of 1941. Crucially though, for me, had he left in the end of 1941, I would have judged it slightly different. But he went back in September 1942. So he would have been present.”
Nick explains that, with his contacts, he believes Niethammer had the choice to be transferred out permanently.
However, he adds: “You can imagine he found working there extremely traumatic. I believe he was basically a compassionate man with a faith. And even though he was incredibly focused on his career, he turned down promotion in the Waffen-SS. But he would have been on the ramp when the cattle trucks came in and all the families were forced out. It was a very traumatic bit because that’s when they split the families up. He would have been there when the SS doctors were there saying, ‘you go left, you live, and you go right, you die’.”
Bleakly, Nick reveals how Niethammer recorded how black redstart nests were made of human hair and pieces of the clothing from the inmates. That glimpse of horror in a scientific report is what Nick finds unfathomable as a nature-lover.
“He also recorded curlews flying over the crematorium. And the bird survey, on one level, is just a bird survey, yet there are these tantalising glimpses into what was going on. And the book looks at his relationship with us. It looks at whether he was careerist, whether he was complicit, or whether he was naive.”
Nick observes: “I think probably he was all three. But for me, he probably was complicit in the Holocaust. And the reason for that is because he did have some influence with the commandant, and he knew what was going on.”
Authorities agreed, and after the war Niethammer was imprisoned in Poland and then put on trial there. Originally he was sentenced to eight years in prison, but got out after three following pleas from academic friends and others – and backed by the British authorities.
Nick continues: “He went back to his job in the Natural History Museum in Bonn, where his career flourished and his family life continued (he was married with children).
“And he died in 1974, really before any historians really looked at his record or his role. Had he lived longer, I think more people would have looked into his role in the Holocaust.”
Reflecting on what to take from Niethammer’s story, Nick says: “There’s that famous phrase, that all it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing. And I put in the book that also what it takes for good men to look the other way and pursue their own narrow interests.”
Nick has been to Auschwitz and can attest to the fact that the birds do indeed sing there, but he adds a final observation: “It’s haunting. I went 20-odd years ago now, but I can still see the piles of hair and the shoes. “One myth I can dispel in the book is that no birds sing there, it’s not true. You hear birds singing at dawn and at dusk. But even the beauty of birdsong, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful things in the world, pales into insignificance when you look at the tangible presence of evil that there is still at Auschwitz.”
Extract from The Birdman of Auschwitz: Himmler’s visit
The next day Himmler’s tour of the camp continued. He inspected the barracks at the original base and the kitchens, the workshops, the stables, the Kanada sorting warehouse, the equipment works or Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke, the butcher’s shop, bakery, the timber yard and the troops supply depot. At each he made detailed enquiries as to their operation and how many prisoners were involved in running each operation.
Among the buildings that Himmler toured was Niethammer’s bird museum where he was given a personal tour by Höß. Here he looked at the exhibits with interest, noting the preserved skins of over a hundred species which had been shot in and around the camp. Höß explained about the project with pride and that the guard responsible had been given ‘special duties’ to carry it out and was now finishing off a bird tour on Crete. He also informed the Reichsführer-SS that Niethammer had written up the survey and it had been published as a scientific paper in the prestigious journal of the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Himmler nodded his approval, indicating that other camps should undertake similar surveys (the fact that many of the birds were now rare, because like the prisoners they had been shot, was lost on both men and Höß failed to point out that Auschwitz, through its drainage of the land surrounding the new camp and its discharge of raw effluent into the Soła river, was slowly but surely destroying and poisoning their habitat).
Following his tour of the bird museum and other support functions Himmler asked to do an inspection of the women’s camp. Here according to Höß he saw ‘the cramped quarters, the insufficient latrine accommodation, and the deficient water supply, and he got the administrative officer to show him the stocks of clothing. Everywhere he saw the deficiencies. He had every detail of the rationing system and the extra allowances for the heavy workers explained to him.’ Several women had been lined up for the Reichsführer-SS to inspect who had been charged with various crimes, mostly stealing or because of their religious views. To set an example to all the female prisoners, a woman accused of prostitution was brought before him for whipping. She was according to Höß, ‘a prostitute who was continually breaking in and stealing whatever she could lay her hands on [in fact many of the women accused of prostitution were political or religious prisoners who were trying to survive, many driven to bartering for food or other comforts in return for sexual favours]’.
Permission had to be gained from Himmler to whip the woman, who after hearing about what she had been accused of, readily gave his consent. So, in front of the Reichsführer-SS, Höß, the other officers, guards and the assembled prisoners she was hauled in, turned around, had her prison top dragged up before she was handcuffed to the wall.
The woman was then repeatedly struck with a horse whip until she bled.
Once the punishment was over, she was dragged from the room by the guards screaming in pain, her cries echoing around the women’s camp.
Himmler then turned his attention to the line-up of other women in the room, most being Polish. Each was forced by the guards to stand in front of him where he quizzed them on what they had done, the conditions in the camp and what work they had been employed doing. Any who refused to answer were whipped. On hearing their testimonies, a lucky few who were deemed ‘hard workers’ were released, Höß impressing on them how fortunate they were that the Reichsführer-SS was a compassionate man. This, like the whipping of the prostitute, was meant to send a clear signal to the other women in the camp.
Himmler was particularly taken by the female Jehovah’s Witnesses in the line-up who displayed purple triangles on their prison clothes.
Unlike Jews or the Sinti and Roma gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses had the opportunity to escape persecution and being sent to a camp if they renounced their religious beliefs. Despite facing beatings, maltreatment and torture, many refused to give up their religion, Himmler perversely admiring them because of their fanatical faith despite having none himself.