The Theory and Practice of Hell (34 page)

The irrepressible human urge for life and self-expression even produced string quartets in camp. These performed many a concert on a high artistic level. This institution took a long time to develop at Buchenwald. In the winter of 1939-40 a Jewish Senior Block Inmate had given permission for the formation of a quartet and for prisoner concerts. He not only lost his job but his life.

There was radio in camp as well. The Block Leaders on duty in the gatehouse could plug the public-address system into the German broadcast network any time it pleased them, thus bringing the official programs to the prisoners. In some camps this was done regularly after hours, in others it never happened. New camps—the number of which steadily grew, especially during the war—were not equipped with radio facilities at all. The programs were generally musical, since the SS men disliked lectures of every kind, and thus the prisoners were usually and happily spared the propaganda flood that poured from the Goebbels machine. Often the programs were quite welcome, but they .could also become a serious annoyance for many prisoners, especially the elder men, for the Block Leaders might not turn off the music until eleven or twelve o ’clock at night, eating into the few precious hours of sleep.

From six to seven o ’clock on Sunday afternoons the sym phony concerts of the central German transmitter could be heard. They represented pleasure and relaxation of a high degree, impaired only by the inevitable noise and bustle in the barracks—the clop-clop of wooden soles, the clatter of mess gear, and the like. Even today, thinking back to these con certs, I can never forget the tens of thousands of victims who were gassed and tortured in so many camps during the very time that the music was on the air.

In May 1941, Buchenwald began to enjoy a unique form of relaxation—motion pictures. The Buchenwald movie theater was the first in a German concentration camp, and it seems to have remained the only one. Permission to establish it was wheedled from the SS by the Prisoner Foreman of the photo section who dwelt on the enormous profits to be made from exhibiting, at thirty pfennigs a head, ancient, worn-out films costing but thirty-five marks apiece. SS morale had already begun to disintegrate. Corruption and avarice had long got

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL 139

the better of any rational policies. During the very first six months of operation the camp movie theater produced a net income of twenty-three thousand marks for the headquarters fund, to be squandered on drink and revelry. Admission was later reduced to twenty pfennigs, but even so the growing number of inmates kept the business remunerative. The procurement of films from the UFA Company in Berlin was not always an easy matter. SS men had to be bribed and every stratagem had to be employed to keep on sending couriers to the capital. Both entertainment and documentary films were offered, weekly or biweekly, with longer interruptions.

Many prisoners drew strength from the few hours of illusion given them by the movies; others, faced with the ever present misery in camp, could never bring themselves to at tend, especially since the theater was used also as a place of punishment. The fact that it was so used sprang from no par ticular sadistic streak on the part of the SS: the hall merely happened to be suitable and convenient—spacious and gloomy, the ideal place for the whipping rack, which was carried out to the roll-call area only when a special show was put on. The movie theater also provided storage space for the gallows and the posts, inserted in special holes, on which prisoners were strung up. It was a ghastly sensation to sit before the flickering screen of an evening and to realize that only a few hours ago in this same place comrades had been brutally beaten and tortured. The SS could not have been im pervious to this effect, even though it was not premeditated.

Some of the camp inmates used their leisure time for reading. Newspapers and books were available in the camps. The chief Nazi newspaper, the
Volkischer Beobachter
, was permitted, as well as the regional Nazi sheets, newspapers from the prisoners’ home communities and a few illustrated magazines. Here and there prison libraries were established. In starting such libraries prisoners were often permitted to have books sent from home, or they had to make appropriate financial contributions, with which headquarters then bought Nazi books. Several tens of thousands of marks were collected for this purpose in Buchenwald though a total of only 1,009 books was actually purchased. From its own resources the SS contributed 264 volumes, including 60 copies each of Hitler’s
Mein Kampf
and Alfred Rosenberg’s
Myth o f the Twentieth

Century.
These books always stood on the shelves unread, in mint condition.

When the war broke out all books in languages spoken by nations at war with Germany were supposed to be destroyed. Representations were made that these books were of a technical character—which was by no means the case—and permission was granted merely to withdraw them from cir culation. Within a few weeks they were again made available to interested prisoners.

Some of the books in the libraries were of great value and interest. In the winter of 1942-43 a succession of bread thefts in Barracks 42 at Buchenwald made it necessary to establish a nightwatch. For months on end I volunteered for this duty, taking the shift from three to six o’clock in the morning. It meant sitting alone in the day room, while the snores of the comrades came from the other end. For once I was free of the ineluctable companionship that usually shackled and stifled every individual activity. What an experience it was to sit quietly by a shaded lamp, delving into the pages of Plato’s
Dialogues
, Galsworthy’s
Swan Songy
or the works of Heine, Klabund, Mehring! Heine? Klabund? Mehring? Yes, they could be read illegally in camp. They were among books retrieved from the nation-wide wastepaper collections. The Nazis impounded many libraries of “ enemies of the state,” and turned them over to these collections, part of which found its way into the camps as toilet paper. The prisoners carefully retrieved what was of value. The bales might contain the “ Pandects” of Justinian, famous law books, the Bible in new editions and old. Sometimes it was even possible to conduct salvage right in the privies, though the collector had to provide an immediate substitute, to quell any incipient revolt from his fellows. This was not easy, for paper was extremely scarce.

Only under the exceptional circumstances described was it ever possible to be alone in camp. Ordinarily it was im possible. Never to be alone—this is a hardship not easily ap preciated. Yet this most important form of recreation was barred. Possibly it was just as well for many thousands. It kept them from brooding, from lapsing into melancholy. But for the few the utter lack of privacy made matters only worse.

Chapter Thirteen SANITATION AND HEALTH

General sanitation in the concentration camps, as will be readily believed, was in the worst possible state, largely owing to the chronic water shortage in most of the camps. In the final war years, shipments of filthy and vermin-infested prisoners arrived from all sides. Thorough-going disin festation therefore became an iron necessity. It was prisoner initiative rather than the SS that laboriously procured the necessary disinfectants and gradually saw to it that a major disaster was avoided. Buchenwald had its own Barracks Sanitation Wardens who twice a week conducted a rigid in spection for vermin. This helped a great deal in sparing the camp the scourge of epidemics which ravaged other camps, especially in the east, where there was no such systematic con trol.

From 1939 on, all Buchenwald inmates were immunized against typhoid fever and dysentery. There were similar programs at Dachau and Sachsenhausen. From 1943 on, cer tain French age groups were immunized against scarlet fever, to which they were particularly susceptible. From 1944 on, the entire staff of prisoner functionaries was immunized with the typhus vaccine produced right in camp.

Some of the Camp Medical Officers aided in these measures. The SS naturally feared that any outbreak of con tagious disease might spread to its own ranks. Typhoid fever, typhus and other diseases reaped a toll of hundreds in the camps. The existing conditions made it impossible to prevent epidemic outbreaks altogether. The prisoners did as much as they could, in simple self-protection. But most of the camps were so infested with staphylococci that certain skin and eye afflictions, cellulitis, stubborn abscesses, etc., could scarcely be checked, let alone rooted out. The general state of malnutrition greatly contributed to the susceptibility of the prisoners to disease. Cases of edema and collapse caused by starvation were common.

Sanitary measures, like everything else, were exploited by the SS as pretexts for unspeakable brutalities and sadistic tor ture. The following case was reported by Heinrich Orb, with all the names involved. It is an extreme case, but no ex perienced camp inmates will be surprised by it.

In the summer of 1935, Koch, even then an SS Lieutenant-Colonel, was Commandant of the Columbia House con centration camp in Berlin. A group of Franciscan monks had been admitted, supposedly as foreign-exchange violators. To serve his notions of a practical joke, Koch permitted the monks to retain their brown cassocks and invented the tale that they were infested with crab lice. The monks were assem bled and a SS physician issued them a salve. They were com pelled to lift up their cassocks and let down their trousers, while a shrieking horde of SS bullies recited obscene jokes, read aloud from pornographic books and held up lewd pic tures. The rest of the scene afforded ample opportunity for a hail of blows and kicks and other vile abuse.

Without mention o f such excesses any description of sanitary conditions in the concentration camps is likely to leave a false impression. The hell of the concentration camps perverted even simple sanitary measures, and the fearful ac tuality must by fully known in appraising the true significance of dry statistics and regulations. To become sick in a con centration camp meant to be doomed. And thousands of prisoners, torn from their familiar lives, hurled suddenly into this wretched environment with all its terror, did fall sick. Patients were profoundly affected not only by the external