KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (192 page)

Eicke’s more reserved successor, Richard Glücks (center, with briefcase), during a visit to the Gross-Rosen camp in 1941
(USHMM, courtesy of Martin Mansson)

SS leader Heinrich Himmler confronts a political prisoner in the Dachau workshops during an official inspection of this “model” camp by Nazi grandees on May 8, 1936.
(Bundesarchiv, picture 152-11-11/Friedrich Franz Bauer)

Propaganda photograph of prisoners walking along the main path of the rebuilt and extended Dachau camp, June 28, 1938
(akg-images, courtesy of ullstein bild)

Hanging from the arms was among the worst of the official SS punishments. This scene in the Dachau baths was drawn by a survivor in 1945.
(KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau)

This photograph, taken outside the walls of the Ravensbrück camp circa 1939–40, comes from an album the guard (center) made for her son. The inscription reads: “Mother with Britta [her guard dog] during training.”
(Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück/Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten)

Commandant Karl Otto Koch with his wife, Ilse, and their children outside his Buchenwald office, December 1940
(Gedenkstätte Buchenwald)

SS snapshot of Commandant Koch and some of his men at work, towering over a prisoner in Sachsenhausen, 1937
(Archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, Moscow, with the kind assistance of the Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen)

Theodor Eicke (center, with cigarillo) presides over an SS comradeship evening in Dachau in 1934.
(Hugh Taylor Collection)

SS men at leisure, at the newly built swimming pool just outside the Esterwegen camp, in 1936
(Archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, Moscow, with the kind assistance of the Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen)

Prisoner “workout” in Esterwegen, 1935. The photograph appeared in an SS album presented to Karl Otto Koch and was captioned, tellingly, “At the double, or there’ll be trouble.”
(Archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, Moscow, with the kind assistance of the Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen)

Private SS photograph of young Buchenwald sentries showing off their physical prowess and camaraderie, 1940
(Gedenkstätte Buchenwald/personal album of Gerhard Brendle)

“Political recidivists” featured in a cover story about Dachau in the Nazi weekly
Illustrierter Beobachter
, December 1936. The prisoner on the right is Karl Kapp, the future camp elder.
(KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau)