KZ Auschwitz III Monowitz

Fritz ter Meer was involved in the planning of the Monowitz concentration camp, a subcamp of the Auschwitz concentration camp

In the Second World War, the I.G. Colors from 1941 In the immediate vicinity of the Auschwitz concentration camp, build a chemical factory for the production of Buna, a synthetic rubber that is important for war economy. In addition to German specialists, the company uses thousands of prisoners from the Auschwitz concentration camp for the construction of the facility. There are also prisoners of war and forced laborers from all over Europe. In order to accommodate the workers on the then largest construction site of the “Third Reich”, the I.G. Color group from 1942 in cooperation with the Nazi regime the company's own Buna-Monowitz concentration camp. Due to the inhuman living and working conditions, people come to death there or are murdered in the nearby gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau as soon as they are no longer able to work. The life expectancy of the occupants is less than four months and over 25,000 people die alone on the construction site.

The I.G. Farben invested around 900 million Reichsmarks in the Auschwitz site in order to benefit from the unlimited availability of prisoners from the nearby concentration camp.

For the construction and operation of the Buna works, the company built the company\'s own Monowitz concentration camp. Over 30,000 forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners died there as a result of targeted “extermination through work”, exhaustion, mistreatment or subsequent transport to the gas chambers in Birkenau.

On September 23, 1942, the head of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA), SS Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, Auschwitz visited and was informed by the I.G. board member Otto Ambros about the continuation of the construction work. At this meeting, Pohl promised the punctual provision of the requested prisoners until October 15, 1942 - the expected completion of the camp.