The Theory and Practice of Hell (15 page)

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men to a barracks, instead of the maximum capacity of 500. They lived in groups of six to ten in multidecked bunks arranged on both sides of a central aisle, without adequate light or air, each with one blanket—if he was lucky! The latrines were located outside. As the war continued, these barracks became the scene of unimaginable tragedies. The worst period began in the fall of 1944. Deaths in the Little Camp rose so sharply that at times there were up to 150 or 200 a day in it alone. Bodies simply lay about in the open, for the living, in order to make room, would sometimes simply toss them out of the barracks. The forces of order were almost powerless in the face of this mass dying. The Senior Block In mates were faced by an impossible task, since hunger and deprivation unhinged many of the prisoners. There were in cidents almost beyond comprehension. Nature’s call was an swered atop naked dead bodies. On one occasion a young Hungarian Jew asked permission of the Senior Block Inmate to extract his dying father’s gold teeth, since otherwise they would be stolen by others. Savage struggles to the death took place over the pitiful daily ration, and the Barracks Orderlies could not break up the fights. The ravenous prisoners, fresh from death shipments, would tear out the light wires as soon as the food containers arrived, and a wild melee would ensue in which a few would get more than their share while most would get nothing. Mess gear was commonly used in place of the latrines, partly from feebleness that made it impossible to leave the barracks, partly from fear of the weather outside or of theft, partly because it was almost impossible to get out of the crowded bunks. Those on top often climbed to the roof, by removing boards and roofing, and fouled the rafters. The human mind is unequal to picture these awful scenes.

Behind the roll-call area came the one-story wooden and two-story masonry barracks. Each wooden barracks had two wings, the two-story masonry barracks four (one generally reserved for the “ big shots,” Senior Inmate, clerks, foremen, etc.). A wing consisted of a day room and sleeping quarters for one to two hundred prisoners. When a camp had been fully established, a washroom and open privy might be in stalled between each two wings. This was where the prisoners secretly smoked when they had the chance, smoking in the barracks being strictly forbidden. In the sleeping quarters,

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cots were arranged in tiers. They held straw pallets which until late 1941 were covered with checkered sheets in some camps. Each prisoner had one or two thin blankets. The day rooms held a number of tables and benches and the so-called lockers, plain wooden boxes divided into sections, where the prisoners kept their gear—mess kit, canteen cup and spoon.

In this same area were such camp installations as the mess, the laundry, the prisoner hospital consisting of an out patients’ clinic, a dental clinic, a so-called convalescent clinic, as well as regular wards. At Buchenwald a brothel was established in 1943, appropriately located between the prisoner hospital and Experimental Ward 46. It had to be completed in such haste that much more important additions to the hospital were postponed. Within the wired enclosure there was also a crematory. The permanent crematory at Buchenwald was completed in 1941 and consisted of a morgue, a postmortem room, two combustion chambers with an enormous smokestack, and living quarters for the per sonnel. It stood in a spacious court surrounded by a high wall. Certain other concentration camps had far larger plants, some of them with six to twelve furnaces—especially, of course, Auschwitz.

Though the SS area, naturally, had first-class paved roads and graveled garden paths, the camp streets, wide enough to permit prisoners to march eight abreast to the roll-call area, were almost always completely unimproved. The prisoners themselves would often have liked to pave their roads, but only in exceptional cases was this permitted, always at a very late date.

The words from Dante’s Inferno might well have been in scribed on the gatehouse: “ Abandon hope, all ye who enter here !” The actual inscription at Dachau read “ Labor Means Liberty!” and at Buchenwald “ Right or Wrong—My Country!” The bitter mockery of these words cannot be con veyed by a dry description of the physical set-up of a finished concentration camp. The actuality of its growth and develop ment must be borne home. Let the story of the initial phase of Buchenwald serve as an example.

Buchenwald is located on the wooded Ettersberg, five miles from Weimar. On July 19, 1937, there arrived at this spot a so-called advance squad of 149 convict inmates from the

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Sachsenburg concentration camp, under heavy SS guard. The next day another 70 greens, or criminals, arrived. On July 27 came the first political prisoners, including seven Jehovah’s Witnesses. Only three days later 600 prisoners from the Lichtenburg concentration camp were added. By August 6, barely three weeks after the first arrival, when scarcely any shelter was available, some 1,400 prisoners were on hand—greens, reds, purples.

Here is what they found: the SS had accepted as a gift from an aristocratic estate some 370 acres of hardwood and pine forest. It was an area utterly unsuited to human habitation, with a harsh climate subject to sudden changes. The location itself was symbolic. Weimar has long been regarded as the cultural heart of Germany, the one-time seat of the German classicists whose works lent the highest expression to the Ger man mind. And here was Buchenwald, a piece of wilderness where the new German spirit was to unfold. This contrast and juxtaposition of sentimentally cherished culture and unrestrained brutality was all too characteristic.

The work of clearing the forest was begun that summer on the fog-shrouded peak of the Ettersberg. It was a trackless region of tumbled trees and jumbled roots. An oak tree known throughout the countryside as the “ Goethe Oak,” af ter the great German poet who had given Weimar its reputation, was respectfully spared by the SS and designated as the center of the camp!

Wooden barracks were built in rows of five and surrounded with ordinary barbed wire. The last row, outside the wire, was occupied by the SS guard complement headed by three SS of ficers: SS Colonel Koch as camp commandant; SS Major Rodl as First Officer-in-Charge—he wore Hitler’s Order of the Blood, denoting participation in the 1923 Beerhall
Putsch
; and SS Captain Weissenborn as Second Officer-in-Charge. Koch had begun his notorious career as an SS sergeant in the so-called moor camps, as had Weissenborn, a one-time prison guard with a predilection for convicts—with whom he had a good deal in common. He is best characterized by the slogan the SS itself used to chalk up on walls: “ God in his wrath created Captain Weissenborn.” Rodl had come with the group from Sachsenburg.

The large number of labor details in existence even then

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reveals the high pressure with which work proceeded. There were two quarry details, a logging detail, a lumberyard detail, two excavation details, a grading detail for the neutral zone, a barracks construction detail, a road-building detail, a drainage detail, a water works detail, a powerline detail, a materials dump detail, an unloading detail, five transport details, a construction office detail, a number of shop details, a number of skilled construction workers’ details—masons, carpenters, tile-setters, plumbers, electricians, roofers, painters—SS and prisoners’ mess details, SS and prisoners’ KP details, a domestic service detail (calfactors). The work day usually lasted fourteen hours, Sundays included, from six o’clock in the morning to eight or nine at night. Work on the water mains regularly continued to ten and eleven o ’clock under floodlights, and sometimes to two and three o’clock in the morning. The lunch period was one hour, most of it going for two roll calls. There were four roll calls a day, the first in the morning before moving out, two on moving in and out again at noon, the fourth after work at night. There was prac tically no time for eating or for personal hygiene—these things were not considered important by the SS. From July 15, 1937, to February 28, 1938, the daily ration allowance per prisoner amounted to the equivalent of about twenty cents! Virtually every Sunday, rations were withheld altogether as a disciplinary measure—a practice kept up by the SS deep into the war. Sanitary conditions beggared description. The chief cause of suffering was the water shortage. For a full year the SS was content to use an improvised system, barely sufficient for its own needs. The prisoners had to do with crude water pipes running between barracks. Holes had been drilled into these pipes. The water trickled out drop by drop and had to be collected. The sewerage system was no better. At first there were nothing but open latrine pits twenty-five feet long, twelve feet deep and twelve feet wide. Poles accommodating twelve to fifteen men were set up along the sides. One of the favorite games of the SS, engaged in for many years, was to harass and bully the prisoners even during the performance of this elemental human need. Those unable to get away quickly enough when the SS put in an unexpected appearance received a beating and were flung into the cesspool. In Buchenwald ten prisoners suffocated in excrement in this fashion in October

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1937 alone. Whenever an SS man appeared near a latrine, the prisoners instantly took flight—in what condition may be imagined. In the barracks the prisoners had to use old tin jam buckets. At night these were, of course, full to overflowing within a few hours. Not until 1939 was work on a real sewerage system begun.

During the initial phase, each work detail moved out with its own SS guard detachment. The SS men posted themselves around the work area and engaged in acts of terrorism at their pleasure. There was a great shortage of tools, and deliberately senseless rules made the work even more difficult. Thus the tough hardwood tree roots had to be dug out by hand, while the loose pine stumps were blasted out. Beatings and cruelties of all kinds were administered as a matter of course. The shooting down of prisoners on the slightest pretext of an at tempt to escape was rewarded by bonuses in the form of extra pay, furloughs and rapid promotion.