The Theory and Practice of Hell (49 page)

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Russians as commissioners charged with selecting personnel for especially desirable labor details, and according to their own statements they were able to pick out, from 1,650 prisoners of war, “ three political commissars or their assistants, five unacceptable elements, five civilians, three Asiatics, seven members of Turki races, three officers, and twenty-four potential undercover agents.”

In 1943, the mass liquidation of Russian prisoners of war gradually subsided, apparently because of international com plications. It was ended early in 1944. Shootings of individual Russians or smaller groups often occurred even subsequently.

Quite apart from these measures, other Russian prisoners of war were admitted to the concentration camps by the thousands. In the middle of 1941, the first three thousand arrived in Buchenwald. The whole camp was tense in an ticipation of what the SS would do as a result of the in citement which they had undergone. Virtually the entire headquarters staff, led by Officer-in-Charge Plaul, waited at the gatehouse. When the Russians arrived, they were sub jected to no more than verbal abuse. The figures that limped in looked too wretched for anything more. They had been on the march for many months, had traversed hundreds of miles on only a minimum of food. They were in rags and tatters and they were utterly exhausted. Tottering through the gate, they resembled shadows of men. Emerging from the bathhouse, they looked like skeletons.

The army and the SS tried to create the impression that the Russians had been ill-fed and ill-clad at home. The purpose of the long march across Germany was to demonstrate this to the German population. In the concentration camp the effect was precisely opposite. There was an immediate demonstration of solidarity such as had not been experienced before. Everyone who had the time and opportunity ran to his barracks to get food and cigarettes. Many men surrendered their last crust of bread.

When headquarters learned of this, three well-known Com munist Senior Block Inmates were at once relieved: The three, Karl Wappel, Kurt Leonhardt and Josef Schuhbauer, were treated to twenty-five lashes by Sommer and were sent to the quarry. The entire camp was penalized by having rations with drawn for a day. “ If I ever catch any of you Germans giving

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anything to these sons of bitches from the east. . . ” roared SS Major Schobert, First Officer-in-Charge, over the public-address system. Of course aid continued, but in secret.

In the months from March to June, 1942, more than six thousand Russians were admitted, some of them prisoners of war, others displaced persons. They too generally arrived in a state of complete exhaustion. The prisoners of war in the con centration camps were segregated from the rest of the camp by a barbed-wire enclosure, and the separate section was designated “ Prisoner-of-War Camp.” The sign was the only thing in which the enclosure differed from the regular con centration camps.

In February 1942, the bulk of the Russian prisoners of war at Buchenwald were shipped to Sachsenhausen, some 4,200 perishing en route. After late 1942 there were only about 1,200 Russian prisoners of war left at Buchenwald, and shootings, disease and malnutrition gradually reduced the figure to 800. These 800 managed to maintain themselves well, playing an important part in camp, without the knowledge and against the will of the SS.

If the Nazi regime had had its way, not a single Russian would have survived imprisonment and the concentration camp. “ We were able to see with our own eyes,” says the above-cited lecture, “ that they devoured leaves, tubers, roots, worms and mice in the fields. The guards at the Klausa air force base near Altenburg told us that the prisoners picked up moldy food and inedible offal from the garbage heaps and devoured them.” One wonders whether this could have been from pure enthusiasm or because they had been subjected to severe starvation! The Gestapo informer gives this cold blooded reply:

The diet o f the Russian prisoners is worse than that o f the others. The reason is that Russia never subscribed to the Geneva Convention on the treatment to be accorded prisoners o f war, and there is thus no cause for us to treat

'
the Russians according to international law
.
We do not know how the Russians treat our own prisoners, but it must be assumed, from such reports as are available
,
that few o f them will survive.

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It must be assumed . . . the mere “ assumption” was once again sufficient to justify the murder of hundreds of thou sands of men of alien nationality, thereby exposing the Ger mans in enemy hands to reprisals.

The almost two thousand Danes, mostly police officials, who came to Buchenwald in 1944, formed a close-knit unit living under somewhat more favorable conditions than other special groups and pretty much to itself. There were never any conflicts between the Danes and the other prisoners. They rejected participation in illegal activities against the SS, probably from distrust. Time and again they contributed a certain share of the Red Cross supplies that were available to them in relative abundance.

This was even truer of the 350 Norwegian students who likewise spent some time at Buchenwald. They brought a spirit of sportsmanship with them and were excellent comrades.

The Czechs who were not exterminated at Auschwitz came to the concentration camps as so-called “ Protectorate Prisoners” and originally enjoyed certain privileges. They lived in barracks of their own, wore their hair long and for months were not required to work, which earned them much envy and dislike. Yet their readiness to help, especially in distributing surplus food and sharing their smokes, smoothed over many conflicts with the other prisoners. By and by a growing number of them volunteered for labor—before the whole group was summarily deprived of its privileges—and thus had a chance to pick out good details. In the long run few of the Czechs held heavy labor assignments. They stuck together systematically and helped their fellow countrymen wherever they could. When party conflict within their ranks had been overcome, their relations with other nationality groups among the prisoners were in part friendly, in part correct.

Central directives affected not merely Russian prisoners of war but also Dutch, French and Belgians. They resulted in the so-called NN shipments. The SS had a matchless way of at taching romantic-sounding labels to their murder operations. “ Operation Whitecap” and “ Operation Zephyr,” for ex ample, were names for the round-ups of Frenchmen to be sent to the German concentration camps. The state in which these

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men sometimes arrived can scarcely be pictured. In the summer of 1943, hundreds of Frenchmen, scantily dressed or completely naked, were unloaded at the Weimar railroad station together with their dead, from cars into which they had been herded since Compidgne. They were then marched to Buchenwald in a group that included high government of ficials, professors, officers (especially of the French police) and engineers.

By virtue of their temperament and their generally smaller physical resistance, the French suffered more from the hard ships of camp life than other groups. Their marked in dividualism and usually high intellectuality involved them in many avoidable difficulties with which their fellow prisoners then often showed little patience. A number of Frenchmen managed to establish excellent connections in the camps. But by and large they were badly off. It proved impossible to unify their ranks in order to make them more capable of resistance, to increase their value to the prisoners, for politically they were incredibly divided. Only the minority group of the French Communists had close contact with the camp underground at Buchenwald. Like their German comrades, they never mustered the strength to purge their ranks of politically camouflaged criminals and other dubious elements, so that the protection afforded by the group often remained a one-sided affair. The preponderant majority of the Frenchmen in the camps were helplessly exposed to every hardship—except the French physicians, many of whom gained noteworthy positions in the prisoner hospitals.

Soon after the influx of French prisoners in 1943, the label “ NN shipments” began to trickle through from the Political Department in camp. At first this was interpreted as a special campaign directed against Netherland nationals. The true meaning soon transpired—“ Never-Never Shipments.” 1These affected several hundred Dutch, Belgians and French. They were to be given a “ race-biological examination” and then shipped to other concentration camps, notably the notorious Natzweiler camp. By what criteria selection for these ship ments was conducted never became clear.

The prisoners slated for NN shipments were forbidden to

1The German words are actually
Nacht undNebel
, night and fog.—
Tr.

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write their families. According to news that was received, their fate at Natzweiler varied. Poison gas experiments, originally planned, do not seem to have been conducted with them. All the same, it is likely that only a few survived these shipments.

The Dutch prisoners at Buchenwald exhibited a sturdy en

durance. In the beginning, there were sharp conflicts between them and the other prisoners, but in the course of time these were greatly ameliorated and bridged. They were freedom-loving men who hated every form of compulsion, no matter from what source. Their native virtues enabled them time and again to overcome such difficulties as arose. The relationships between them and the other nationality groups in the camps were not only correct but often warm.

The Luxemburg nationals were also the victims of special Nazi measures. Most of the men from Luxemburg were young policemen. Several hundred of them had been arrested by the

• Gestapo and carried off to various places in Germany. In the end they were shipped to the concentration camps in groups of thirty to sixty. After the summer of 1940, most political prisoners from Luxemburg were shipped to the special SS camp Hinzert near Treves, originally a so-called Labor Disciplinary Camp for “ loafers,” where prisoners spent only up to two months. Hinzert never had more than six or eight hundred prisoners, and the SS was therefore able to exercise extremely close control. The Commandant was a certain Sporenberg, given to inciting his SS men against the inmates in every possible way. He was aided by the Senior Camp In mate, Eugen Wipf of Switzerland, who murdered and maimed many inmates. The labor details were without ex ception very hard, and all of them were located outside the camp. On moving in every night the columns would drag a cart behind them, loaded with their injured comrades. Outside the hospital barracks the cart would be overturned by a Block Leader, hurling the injured men to the ground. The Medical Officer was an SS sergeant named Brendel, a bricklayer by profession. He was a notorious alcoholic. The treatment of the patients often enough consisted only of blows with a club or a poker on the naked body.