“Even in Auschwitz…Humanity Could Prevail”: British POWs and Jewish Concentration-Camp Inmates at IG Auschwitz, 1943–1945

Through the memory of British POWs held in forced labor at IG Farben's Auschwitz plant, this article provides unique, even “privileged”, insight into an important aspect of the Holocaust. It relies upon Nuremberg statements, recently accessible German documents, International Red Cross materials, and questionnaire responses. Confronted with palpable evidence of Nazi criminality, the British extended a helping hand to the Jewish inmates at the Auschwitz-Monowitz concentration camp, sounded the alarm about their ongoing mass murder to the International Red Cross and to the British Government, and challenged the Nazi racial hierarchy imposed at IG Auschwitz. Although themselves not immune to an anemic form of antisemitism, their behavior stood in marked contrast to that of German bystanders.