The Theory and Practice of Hell (47 page)

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latter took mefrom the barracks at night. From Auschwitz I was sent to Camp S III at Ohrdruf in Thuringia, and on April 5, 1945
,
to Buchenwald.

In view of the descriptions that have been given, it will be readily understood what it meant for the Jews remaining behind in Buchenwald when one morning in 1943 the Com mandant’s personal barber, a political prisoner named Franz Eichhorn, while waiting as usual for the Commandant to emerge from his bath, found an order on the desk which read: “ to: All Camp Commandants. All Jews in Europe to be shipped to Koch at Lublin. Himmler.” Two hundred Jewish “ bricklayers” nevertheless remained in Buchenwald, marked indispensable for certain important defense construction work.

Many Jews, especially if they were not German, lived in the camps unrecognized—i.e., the SS never identified them as Jews. True, they were not in constant danger of death, but theirs was by no means an easy life, for they were forever ex posed to the risk of being discovered or denounced by their fellows. Initially the SS went far beyond the Nuremberg racial laws and stigmatized anyone as a Jew who had even one Jewish grandparent and was unable to conceal the fact in his record. Sometimes the mere shape of the nose was sufficient evidence for the SS men. Anyone whom they did not like became a Jew. At a later day “ quarter-Jews” and “ half-Jews” were in part “ aryanized” and no longer wore the yellow triangle. For most of those affected it was already too late.

Chapter Sixteen

REPRISALS AGAINST OTHER "INFERIOR RACES"

Almost as soon as the Polish campaign in 1939 was over, members of the Polish minority in Germany were sent to the concentration camp. In October they were followed by par tisans and later by Poles in large numbers. Not until August 1944, after the uprising in Warsaw, were Poles again sent to the concentration camps on a large scale.

In general the Poles adapted themselves relatively well to the situation. They did not have an easy time of it, however, even among the prisoners, who regarded them with little af fection. Thus most of them were intent on mutual aid. In the course of the war years they came to fill some important prisoner offices in some of the eastern camps and to some ex tent in other camps as well. They were often very strongly represented in the ranks of the Barracks Orderlies and also not infrequently in privileged details, for as a group they pur sued a systematic policy of pushing their own people. There were fine valiant comrades in their ranks, as a rule with a strongly developed national and religious sense, which was much more wide-spread among them than Communism. The majority were highly adaptable and managed to get by. With all their virtues and faults the Poles in the concentration camps reflected their national character rather faithfully.

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Some seventeen hundred of the Poles sent to Buchenwald in October 1939, including Polish Jews, chiefly from Austria, were placed in the Little Camp in the roll-call area, already described. The partisans were allowed to starve and freeze to death in the “ Rose Garden.” The others had to slave in the quarry. As early as the second half of October an epidemic of dysentery broke out among the Poles. It spread so rapidly that camp headquarters was compelled to exempt the inmates of the Little Camp from labor and to quarantine them.

The SS officers, led by Commandant Koch and SS Captain Htittig, then Second Officer-in-Charge, and the special com missioners for the Little Camp, Master Sergeants Planck and Hinkelmann, were inexhaustible in contriving new torments to fill the enforced leisure. And every now and then Htittig provided “ extra fun.” He had the whipping rack set up in the Little Camp, moved in with a number of Block Leaders, and indiscriminately had twenty-five lashes administered to every tenth inmate. In one instance a prisoner volunteered to take the punishment for his brother. Htittig showed his im partiality by having both brothers beaten.

Master Sergeant Hinkelmann delighted in leaving a pot half filled with soup on the roll-call area. When the hungry in mates crowded around it to get a share, he would set upon the whole group with a heavy club until heads were beaten bloody.

It grew colder as the season advanced, but there was no change in the situation in the Little Camp. Each prisoner kept his single blanket. No one undressed any longer, all sleeping in their clothes and in consequence becoming more and more infested with vermin. Food grew even scarcer. The bread ration was cut. The soup issue was reduced to less than a quart, and it seemed to have been put through a filter. Even this scanty fare the inmates of the Little Camp did not get every day, since Commandant Koch liked to impose a fast upon the entire camp for every alleged infraction and Master Sergeant Planck imposed his own additional ration with drawals. This took on such a scope that in November 1939, for example, there were twelve days on which no rations were issued. In other words, the prisoners were “ fed” on only eighteen days!

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The bestialization which this barbarous treatment induced is seen from the following practice which became general: when an inmate had died in the tent
*
s,
w
the fact was concealed and the dead man was dragged or carried by one or two men to the bread issue point, where the ration was issued to the “ helpers.” The body was then simply dumped anywhere in the roll-call area.

There was no issue of winter clothing in the Little Camp.

The men continued to wear what they had. Even during the period of intense cold—December and January—neither over coats nor sweaters, mufflers, ear protectors and gloves were available. When quarantine was imposed, treatment at the dispensary automatically stopped, and frostbite of the feet as well as other afflictions inexorable led to death. During morning roll call, fifteen, twenty and even twenty-five bodies could be counted each day in the snow. On one occasion, when the Commandant received the daily report on deaths in the Little Camp, he replied, “ That’s much too slow to suit me. Can’t we let the men work?”

Fear of the spread of dysentery prevented that, but there were other methods. Early in December, camp headquarters professed to see danger in the increasing vermin infestation in the Little Camp—it was not uncommon for an inmate to har bor as many as fifty lice. Delousing was ordered and carried out on December 8. The inmates enjoyed the bath, but their clothes were withheld for two days and they were issued only thin summer clothes. The blankets, of course, were also retained, and no replacements were issued. There followed a

. dreadful night in which no one was able to sleep because of the cold. The next morning, on their way to the roll-call area, the other prisoners in the camp anxiously looked for the result. There it was, laid out neatly in the snow: six rows of ten each, and one row of seven—sixty-seven dead.

For unknown reasons camp headquarters, in mid-January 1940, decided to dissolve the Polish Little Camp and transfer its remaining inmates to the camp proper. Of the 1,700 men who had been placed in the Little Camp in October, 600 still survived. Most of them emerged in a state that made their fur ther survival seem improbable. Their average weight was below ninety pounds, and even convalescent status at the

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hospital was unable to save many of them. Several hundred died in short order.

All in all, an estimated forty men of the original 1,700 may have survived, including Felix Rausch, a reliable witness of the events that have been described—events that were, of course, witnessed by the entire camp through the inner barbed-wire enclosure.

In addition to this operation, which was merely one aspect of the general reprisals the Poles suffered immediately after the conclusion of the campaign, they became the victims of two other special measures.

In 1938-39, the Jews, chiefly those in Vienna, had been forced to sign over their houses and property to Nazis and their creatures. The “ sales prices” ranged down to ten marks! In the case of the Poles an even simpler procedure was adopted. They received no payment whatever. They were simply notified that they and their families had to leave their homes. To refuse to give the required signature was tan tamount to suicide. Dozens of letters testified that the German conquerors and their henchmen allowed the Poles not even an hour to clear out, and that nothing could be taken along ex cept a single handbag and thirty marks for each person.

When tens of thousands of Polish labor slaves, branded with insulting emblems, had been carried off to inner Ger many, instances arose in city and country in which Polish men entered into relations with German girls. Under orders from Himmler, the Poles were hanged, while the German girls were sent to Ravensbruck, the concentration camp for women, where they received twenty-five lashes on the naked buttocks three times in succession. Frequently the local population, in cited by notorious Nazis, had already “ spontaneously” pilloried the poor women by cutting off their hair and parading them through the streets.