The Theory and Practice of Hell (23 page)

Many of the prisoners helped members of the penal com pany whenever they could, otherwise none would have ever survived the treatment. What made life in the penal com panies even more unbearable was their motley composition. They consisted of prisoners of every color designation— Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, convicts with special records. Newcomers were often assigned to them, as were prisoners whose files carried special instructions, whether from the Gestapo or from camp headquarters. Some were assigned permanently, others for only six to twelve weeks. It was all a matter of whim. Political prisoners were not the dominant group in the penal companies, a fact which merely emphasized their lack of cohesion.

Early in 1944 the penal companies were officially dissolved on orders from Berlin. It is a matter of some doubt whether the order was actually carried out in all the camps.

Some of the work in camp was useful but some of it was ut terly senseless, intended only as a form of torture, a diversion engaged in by the SS “ for fun.” The Jews, especially, often had to build walls, only to tear them down the next day, rebuild them again, and so on. Often much of the labor was unnecessary or poorly planned and had to be done over two or

88
E
U G E N KO G O N

three times. Whole buildings had to be reconstructed, since their foundations sometimes collapsed, for lack of proper planning.

In all the labor details, the concern of the prisoners was primarily directed toward two things: shelter and fire. This meant a great rush on certain desirable details during the win ter season. Huge premiums were paid to corrupt Prisoner Foremen for jobs near a fire, even out in the open.

A basic distinction must be made, in this and in other respects, between details inside the compound and those out side, in the headquarters area but still within the guard line.

Generally speaking, the interior camp details were the softest. Among the most important were: the details for mess, supply depot, laundry, bath-house, personal property room, clothing and equipment room, shoe-repair shop, tailor shop, sock-darning shop, carpenter shop, machine shop, a series of other shops, lunberyard, pigsty, prisoner hospital, prisoner orderly room, labor records office, prisoner post office, library, and the details for maintenance and for gardening. Certain of these details, such as sock-darning and the lum beryard, were mainly pre-empted by handicapped prisoners. Counting the numerous Barracks Orderlies and the skilled workers in the “ German Armament Works” (an SS en terprise, centrally directed from Berlin, with branches in every camp), up to two-fifths of the working prisoners were often busy on interior camp details.

At times, especially before Christmas and special SS holidays, whole sections of the shops, and details were given over to the private interests of the SS officers. As much as half the work time of the prisoners in Armament Works was taken up with “ boondoggling” —illegal work for private purposes. Choice lumber, copper and bronze, gold, silver, wrought iron and many scarce raw materials were in this way constantly diverted to the use of SS officers on a large scale. The prisoners actually had no choice but to be party to these prac tices. Such graft was, in fact, deliberately promoted since it contributed both to the further corruption of the SS and the sabotage of war production.

The output consisted of luxury goods of every description, some of them of high artistic value. There were whole living-room suites, inlaid furniture, precious individual pieces,

T H E T H E O R Y A N D P R A C T IC E O F H E L L
89

metalware, busts and figurines, never paid for except with a few occasional cigarettes. These articles found their way not only into the SS quarters but into the homes of friends and acquaintances throughout the land and even beyond its borders. Especially gifted prisoners were sometimes farmed out to Berlin or to other camps and headquarters for weeks at a time, to help meet the demand for luxury goods among the SS.

In 1941 the potters were transferred to the German Earth

and Stone Works in Berlstadt near Buchenwald while the por celain painters went to the SS china plant at Allach in Bavaria, which was under the jurisdiction of Dachau. In the sculpture shops worked architects, sculptors in stone and wood, carvers, masons, gold-and silversmiths, painters, potters, draftsmen. They provided artistic interiors for the homes of the SS officers. They produced the countless gifts exchanged among the clique. On the occasion of the 1939 “ Yule Festival,” Himmler was presented with a green marble desk set valued at 15,000 to 20,000 marks and made in the Buchen wald sculpture shop. Prisoners created the splendid facade of the camp, behind which misery festered. Materials and tools available to these shops were of the highest quality. The “ Viking Ships” they were compelled to produce became an article much in demand in SS circles.

The photographic departments, in the camps, originally organized to take identification pictures of the prisoners, served in the main to develop and print amateur shots taken by the SS officers and to prepare magnificent photo albums for their families and friends. Assignment to this department carried certain risks for a prisoner, for headquarters were always in a panic lest any photographic evidence of atrocities be smuggled to the outside world. On one occasion in 1939 this actually happened at Buchenwald. The foreman, Alfred Opitz of Leipzig, a political prisoner, was thrown into the camp prison, where Sommer strangled him after inflicting ghastly tortures.

Of the painters in their custody the SS officers demanded pictures of every kind. Payment consisted of a handful of cigarettes—or nothing at all—though the “ collectors” often resold the paintings to their friends at fancy prices. At least two dozen valuable canvases, mostly portraits, from the brush of the Dutch painter Harry Pieck, were in the hands of

90
E U G E N KO G O N

Buchenwald SS officers. The painter at least had the ad vantage of not losing his life in some quarry or excavation detail. Instead, he was able to practice his art, even though but as a slave of these upstarts. The connections he thus made again saved his life when he was to be assigned to a “ Never-Never Shipment” on orders from Berlin.

The print shops and binderies in the camps prepared all manner of luxury books, greeting cards, artistic tablets and inscriptions, and the illustrated magazine,
The Pelican
, for the social evenings organized by the SS. The high standards of workmanship maintained in these shops were well known. Whenever an SS officer would forward a beautifully bound report to Berlin, there was the invariable comment from other SS members who had no access to such services: “ Typical concentration-camp work!”

Many of the new lords and masters, of obscure origin them selves, aspired to long family trees and magnificent escutch eons. They organized special “ Genealogy Details.” At Buchenwald this detail consisted mainly of former Czech of ficials who, together with special SS registries, were given the job of manufacturing tables of ancestors and family chronicles. All the heraldic devices of Himmler’s elite guard units were designed by prisoners and then entered in the of ficial heraldic rolls by the Family Office at Berlin. SS Major Max Schobert, appointed Second Officer-in-Charge in 1940, had a six-foot family tree painted, which he then dedicated to his native city, where it was exhibited in the museum. The genealogy details often faced almost insurmountable dif ficulties, since the antecedents of many members of this Teutonic elite were lost in the broad expanses of the Slavic east, because of numerous illegitimate progenitors.

The small fry emulated the big shots. For years, on orders from SS Technical Sergeant Henschel, we made well-tailored civilian suits and non-regulation uniforms of stolen material at the prisoner tailor shop, for the Detail Leaders in the machine shop, the mess, the gardening detail, all without payment of any kind. One of Henschel’s “ customers” paid him in vegetables. (For a full summer I was among the prisoners who had to shell the peas and cut the beans, so that Henschel could can them. It was just as well, for I certainly knew little about tailoring!) Another customer provided the

T H E T H E O R Y A N D P R A C T IC E O F H E L L
91

cans, while still another did the actual canning. While 1 was there, at least one thousand cans were produced on official time for this one SS man alone.

Henschel posted prisoners to give warning of surprise visits by unwanted SS officers, i.e., those who were not in on the deal. When the warning was sounded, a whole column of prisoners loaded down with the suits and cloth bales quickly retired to the cellar with its many nooks and crannies where the contraband was hidden. The cellar, incidentally, also held a clandestine rabbit farm operated by the Detail Leader with his accomplices from the excavation and carpenter detail. It was truly the cave of Ali Baba—run by slave labor.

SS officers and noncoms usually regarded all useful articles in the shops or details under their control as a form of private property, even though illicit. But if demand could not be met from SS-owned installations, private industry and shops were called on. Few firms had the courage to refuse a request from a leading SS officer. The Hereditary Prince of Waldeck-Pyrmont, an SS lieutenant-general who headed the Fulda-Werra region and was stationed at Cassel, simply sent his own prisoner purchasing agent into town to buy whatever he needed. When goods could not be obtained through ordinary channels despite every effort, the Prince was never at a loss. In 1941 he needed pipes and wiring. He simply ordered details from the Buchenwald subsidiary camp at Cassel to dismantle the necessary materials from the houses of citizens who had been bombed out.

A well-known German refrigerator manufacturer (Linde) received an urgent high-priority order for an installation by way of the Institute of Hygiene of the
Waffen
SS, Division of Typhus and Virus Research (Building 50 at Buchenwald). This was to enable the Prince to store the deer he shot.The military priority certificate listed as the purpose of the installation: “ Production of serum for combat troops” !