KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (23 page)

Loritz, a coarse and barrel-chested man with small dark eyes and a black Hitler moustache, did not disappoint after he arrived in Dachau in spring 1936. In several letters to Eicke, he posed as the defender of the Camp SS spirit. He banned the camp school and denounced Deubel’s “lazy” regime, with its almost “comradely” treatment of prisoners, vowing to clean up the “muck.”
Loritz started as he meant to go on, and supervised a mass flogging during his first prisoner roll call. Nicknamed Nero by the prisoners, he even laid hands on prisoners himself.
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Those officers who followed his lead prospered. They included the new Dachau camp compound leader Jakob Weiseborn—another notoriously brutal Camp SS man—who succeeded the “soft as butter” D’Angelo (as Eicke put it
when he dismissed him). This was part of a major reshuffle, as Loritz purged men tainted by Deubel’s regime and brought in veterans from other KL. The result was a sharp rise in the Dachau death rate.
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The appointment of Hans Loritz in Dachau signaled the beginning of a more coherent SS personnel policy. Following the consolidation of the KL system in the mid-1930s, several hastily appointed
“old fighters” like Deubel were dismissed as commandants. They were replaced by a new breed of SS men, who had learned their trade inside the camps. The system became more stable as a result; Loritz, for example, served for more than three years in Dachau, followed by more than two years in Sachsenhausen.
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Dachau remained the most promising springboard for ambitious Camp SS men. Seven of its
ten prewar camp compound leaders were later promoted to commandant, among them Jakob Weiseborn, who headed Flossenbürg from 1938. Prior to his appointment, he had been dispatched from Dachau as camp compound leader to Sachsenhausen, highlighting another element of the emerging SS personnel policy: through the transfer of committed officers, Eicke exported the Camp SS spirit from established KL to
new ones.
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Like Weiseborn, most of the new Sachsenhausen staff were KL veterans; the leader of the Guard Troop, for example, was none other than Eicke’s old confidant Michael Lippert. The same process repeated itself in summer 1937, when Buchenwald was established. This time, trusted SS men arrived from Sachsenhausen, including Lippert, Weiseborn, and the commandant Obersturmbannführer Koch,
who would dominate the new camp for over four years.
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Karl Otto Koch was the leading SS commandant of the prewar years, together with Hans Loritz. Another keen soldier, he had experienced the German defeat in the First World War in British captivity. Koch struggled through a succession of white-collar jobs during the Weimar years and became unemployed in 1932. He then devoted himself fully
to the Nazi movement, having joined the SS one year earlier. His official KL career began in October 1934, when, aged thirty-six, he became commandant of Sachsenburg. Over the following months, he held the same position in Lichtenburg, Columbia House, and Esterwegen, before his appointment as Sachsenhausen commandant in September 1936. The flabby and balding Koch, who had once been a bank clerk, now
modeled himself as the ideal political soldier. He even got married in the forest around Sachsenhausen, wedding his second wife Ilse in a ghostly nighttime ceremony surrounded by uniformed Camp SS men holding torches.
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Koch was a cruel commandant and unforgiving superior. Not content with terrorizing the prisoners, he micromanaged the lives of his staff. Some of his SS men, in turn, were weary
of Koch. The prisoners, meanwhile, despised him. It was hard to decide, a Buchenwald survivor wrote in 1945, which was Koch’s most evil trait, “his sadism, his brutality, his perversity, or his corruption.”
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For now, none of these features slowed his career. On the contrary, Koch’s brutality strengthened his standing. Eicke relied on him, as he did on Loritz, and sought their opinion when it
came to the appointment of other senior Camp SS officials.
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By the late 1930s, Theodor Eicke had molded the Camp SS into a rather cohesive corps, more uniform than ever before or after. Close networks had formed, bound together by patronage, comradeship, and nepotism, rather than formal hierarchical structures. However, the Camp SS was far from united. There was plenty of disaffection at the
fringes and infighting at the core. What is more, the KL failed to attract the cream among SS recruits, leaving Eicke with limited choice when it came to senior positions. He was stuck with some men he regarded as utterly unsuitable, like Karl Künstler. A senior officer in the Dachau Guard Troop, Sturmbannführer Künstler fell out of favor after a drunken rampage. Künstler had behaved “like a brewer’s
drayman,” Eicke fumed, adding that the miscreant was a bad influence on his men. As punishment, Künstler was sent into the wilderness, serving from January 15, 1939, in a Death’s Head reserve regiment in eastern Germany, on reduced pay. But Eicke immediately recalled him. Following the unexpected death of Jakob Weiseborn on January 20, 1939, Eicke urgently needed an experienced officer to fill
in as Flossenbürg commandant. Installed just a few days later, Künstler would oversee the camp’s descent into mass death during the following years, which claimed the lives of thousands of inmates.
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PRISONER WORLDS

In the wake of SS coordination, a more standardized concentration camp system had emerged in the mid-1930s. The outlines of different camps began to resemble one another, as did
the background and careers of the staff. The SS also imposed greater uniformity on prisoners. Inmates even began to look alike: by 1936, most male prisoners had their hair shorn on arrival and at regular (often weekly) intervals thereafter.
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Later on, from around 1938, they wore identical uniforms, too. Instead of the assorted clothes of earlier years—a colorful jumble of civilian outfits, old
police garments, and more—prisoners were dressed in the same striped clothing, the so-called zebra uniform, blue and white in summer, blue and gray in winter, with numbers sewn on jackets and trousers. In the small early camps, guards had often addressed inmates by name; in the large KL of the late 1930s, prisoners were reduced to numbers.
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Newcomers often felt lost among the sea of seemingly
identical inmates. But when they looked more closely, they soon noticed different prisoner groups and hierarchies. Some prisoners were better dressed, housed, and groomed than others, for example, and it was they who often wore signs that identified them as so-called Kapos.
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There were also badges for different prisoner backgrounds. Pioneered in some early camps, such insignia were standardized
around 1937–38, when the Camp SS placed colored triangles on trousers and jackets to differentiate inmates according to the grounds for their detention.
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The color of the triangle had a profound impact on prisoner lives in the camps, and so did their gender, with men and women facing very different treatment.

Daily Lives

No day was ever the same in the KL. Schedules varied, depending on the
camp, the season, and the year. Also, the SS men, masters over time in the camp, did not want life to become too predictable, keeping inmates in a state of suspense. Every day, prisoners woke up dreading the terror of the known and of the unknown, aware that their repetitive daily grind might be interrupted at any moment by a spell of unscripted SS abuse.
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Still, the streamlining of the camps
created similar routines. In all camps, days were split into distinct segments, marked by sirens or bells sounding across the grounds—yet another element borrowed from the regimented life in the army and the prison.
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An average day in a concentration camp for men began very early, when it was still dark outside; during the summer, the inmates had to rise around 4:00 a.m. or even earlier. Prisoners
splashed some water on their faces and bodies, wolfed down breakfast (bread or porridge, with tea or ersatz coffee), hastily washed tin cups and plates, stored them in lockers, and attended to the “bed building.” Then prisoners left their quarters and marched to morning roll call, in a “silent, speedy, and military manner,” as the Buchenwald camp compound leader demanded in 1937. Weak and
sick inmates were supported by others, as the roll call was obligatory for all (except those in the infirmary). Once all prisoners were assembled, the SS report leader verified the total number; if there were mistakes, prisoners had to stand for a long time, sometimes hours. During roll call, SS officers also made announcements over loudspeakers and ordered brief military drills, while block leaders
punished alleged infractions such as poor posture and dirty shoes. Finally prisoners split into their labor details and marched away at double time, often for work outside the compound.
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Forced labor took up most of the prisoners’ daytime hours, only briefly interrupted by lunch.
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Lunch was generally bland, often some kind of vegetable stew with bread. Stomach complaints were frequent and
so was hunger, with some prisoners suffering sharp weight loss. But overall, the food was just about bearable. From the vantage point of prisoners who went through the wartime KL, it was positively rich in retrospect, not least because inmates were allowed to augment their daily rations. Although relatives were now banned from sending food (or any other goods), they could transfer small sums of money
to prisoners for additional supplies in SS-run canteens. In Dachau, an inmate who received four Reichsmark a week in 1938 could purchase half a pound of butter, half a pound of biscuits, a tin of herring or sardines, some artificial honey, a few personal goods like soap, shoelaces, or toothpaste, a few dozen cubes of sugar, and two packs of cigarettes (inmates were allowed to smoke after meals
and also used cigarettes as an unofficial currency).
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The early evening roll call, following the return of all external labor details, was particularly feared by prisoners. Exhausted, they had to stand to attention, irrespective of the weather, until the SS determined the final tally. SS men liked to prolong the prisoners’ agony, forcing them to sing songs or making them watch the execution
of official punishments. Finally prisoners went off for dinner in their quarters, eating some more soup, or bread and cheese. Afterward, they sometimes endured more forced labor inside the compound or performed chores like cleaning their uniforms. However, prisoners also snatched some spare time. Private conversations were officially forbidden for much of the day, but now prisoners came together
and talked; others read Nazi newspapers (which they paid for). Then taps sounded—between 8:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.—and prisoners had to move inside their quarters. Some spent a few more minutes reading, but soon the siren sounded for lights off. Prisoners were now forbidden to leave their quarters, at the threat of death, and fell into a fitful and uneasy sleep, never long enough before they had to
face another day in the KL.
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Most prisoners looked forward to Sundays, which followed a different rhythm. While prisoners occasionally worked, for once labor did not take center stage. SS men still dictated life in the compounds, of course. Sometimes they insisted on longer roll calls and forced prisoners to polish their quarters. Or they would blast speeches by Nazi leaders and approved music
from loudspeakers (as they did on some weekday evenings), or oversee orchestra performances. Following the establishment of the first official prisoner orchestra in Esterwegen in 1935, several KL set up similar ensembles, whose main function was to perform for SS and prisoners.
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At first, there were also religious Sunday services, as in regular prisons. Even in Dachau, the SS initially allowed
a local priest to celebrate mass on the roll call square. During the wider Nazi confrontation with the churches in the mid-1930s, however, such services petered out and were eventually banned altogether by Himmler.
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Despite their dominance, the SS stranglehold over the KL was never absolute. Although some guards hated the idea of prisoners “idling,” reduced staffing levels on Sundays meant
that SS control had to be relaxed, leaving more space for prisoner initiative. Occasionally, they were permitted to play sports outside their quarters. More often, they sat inside and played board games or read. Initially, some inmates had been allowed to keep their own books, though this changed later on. When Hans Litten was moved from Lichtenburg to Buchenwald in 1937, he had to send home his entire
collection. “You can well imagine what that means to me,” he wrote to his mother in despair. Litten now had to rely on rudimentary camp libraries that had sprung up since 1933, sometimes funded with monies extorted from prisoners. Though the SS purchased plenty of propaganda tracts, there were enough books—almost six thousand titles in Buchenwald by autumn 1939—to include the occasional gem.
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Inmates also used their spare time to write to loved ones. Prisoners could send a brief letter or postcard every week or two, though they had to stay clear of any topic that could be construed as criticism; the ideal letter, one prisoner recounted, would have read something like this: “Thanks for the money, thanks for the mail, I am fine, all is well, your Hans.” Bland as most messages inevitably
were, they gained added significance, as visits were now only allowed in exceptional circumstances. Delayed or withheld letters could therefore cause alarm among relatives, who were already under great strain. Sometime in 1938, the wife of a Dachau prisoner contacted the commandant’s office, asking bluntly: “Have you shot my husband, because no mail is arriving anymore?”
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In principle, all
prisoner activities took place within a narrow space demarcated by the SS. In practice, prisoners often used this space to undermine SS control. They smuggled hidden references into letters, as we have already seen. Similarly, prisoners from early on subverted artistic performances sanctioned by the SS. Take the “Circus Concentracani” in Börgermoor. One Sunday afternoon in August 1933, a group of
prisoners directed by the actor Wolfgang Langhoff put on a show of acrobatics, dance, and music, including the premiere of the defiant “Song of the Moorland Soldiers.” They made jokes at the expense of SS men, too, who watched in amusement and some disbelief. Such daring displays were very rare, however, especially after the SS tightened its grip on the camps. In the later 1930s, the SS allowed only
a few cabaret performances, wary of blurring the boundaries between oppressors and oppressed. Of course, prisoners did not always seek SS permission to act, and also asserted their identities during illicit cultural, religious, and political meetings.
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