Economic exploitation drove the Auschwitz selection process

Evidence

Hoess then relates how war industries were built at Auschwitz because of the availability of slave labor. The need for workers led to the “selection process” at the railroad siding, to separate those Jews who would be immediately gassed from those who would be worked until they succumbed to starvation or disease. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3172

Categorization

• XREF: Connects labor/economic-function explanations of genocide to the Frankfurt School thesis on the manipulative functionalization of victims in the Holocaust.
• QUESTION: Altemeyer hints the contradiction between ‘exterminate’ and ‘exploit as workers’ mattered in Hoess’s account — worth chasing how the author framed the tension.