The Politics of Human Remains at the ‘Peripheries of the Holocaust’

Atopic objects: The afterlives of gold teeth stolen from Holocaust dead

“…This evidence can be drawn from police and court records of cases of people who were caught red-handed and others who had bought up and traded in dental gold. Further evidence has been uncovered by researchers working on the afterlives of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, or Bełżec (Dziuban, 2015(Dziuban, , 2016(Dziuban, , 2020Rusiniak, 2008;Zawodna, 2011) -from indignant press coverage addressing the scale and scope of the practice, its widespread character and virtual 'normalization' in the communities around the camps, 9 and from a (still underesearched and undertheorized) corpus of testimonies, collected by the memorials established at the former extermination centres (for example, BMM), or acquired through investigative journalism (Olszewski and Litka, 2011;Reszka, 2019). These include testimonies of Poles who (they claim) merely witnessed, or indeed participated in the lootings, and who testify to the mass character and durability of the practice, which at once resulted in and enacted the dehumanization of the remains of the Jewish other and the objectification of the atopic things, the gold teeth, into mere items of financial gain.…”

“…In 1942–1943, around 200,000 Jews were exterminated in gas chambers at the site, their bodies cremated and disposed of in the pits. Immediately after the camp ceased to operate, the landscape was extensively scavenged: the residents of surrounding villages repeatedly visited the site, opened the graves in search of valuables and gold, dug in the ground and sifted through the ashes (Dziuban, 2015). The corpses had been meticulously searched when the camp was still operational, and gold teeth were systematically pulled out from the corpses and collected by the Nazis, or put into circulation outside the confines of the camp as currency by the camp guards (Rusiniak, 2008).…”

“…But the norm and taboo-breaching nature of this practice renders it a powerful emblem not only of greed of the looters, but also of the dehumanization to which the Jewish other, both living and dead, was subjected during the war and in its aftermath by non-Jewish Poles. In this context, the looting of the dead was not merely a gain-oriented act; it also constituted an exercise of alterity and dehumanization, enacting the boundaries of othering and exclusion (Dziuban, 2015).…”

“…The stories told in these reports are disturbing: the former extermination camps were systematically searched by people equipped with spades and sieves; the areas were divided among groups, sometimes families, rivalling for profit; it was not uncommon that, in order to avoid capture by the police, the looters would transfer human remains en masse to the nearby woods, houses, barns, and examine them there; men, women, children would participate in the searches hand in hand; in some cases, armed gangs would protect the sites from the intervention of law enforcement agencies (Olszewski and Litka, 2011; Rusiniak, 2008; Zawodna, 2011; interview conducted by the author, January 2014). The gold teeth were sold and bought, melted and recast to be traded off in nearby urban centres (Dziuban, 2015; Sztandar Ludu , 1946). The looting continued deep into the postwar period, resulting in few arrests, and significantly boosting local economies, a fact evidenced by recent research (Charnysh and Finkel, 2017).…”

“… 9. An extreme example of this normalization is described in a 1946 article in Sztandar Ludu : a land owner from a village near Treblinka made a fortune on valuables and dental gold that he and his wife bought from local children digging at the camp, selling it in Warsaw. I delve in more detail into the social context and cultural sensitivities which enabled this normalization in Dziuban (2015, 2016, 2020). …”