The Theory and Practice of Hell (58 page)

250
EUGEN KOGON

These data from the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office are supplemented by statistics from the Buchenwald Prisoner Hospital, which on the whole were reasonably well kept. It is impossible to publish the full material here; and besides, up to December 1939, the data are quite incomplete. But mortality figures were noted since 1937. They show the following picture:

Year Admission*
Deaths

1937 2,912 48*

1938 20,122* 771*

1939 9,553 1,235

1940 2,525 1,772

1942
14,111
2,898

1943 42,177 3,516

1944 97,866 8,644

Totals 38,979 33,462

J An imperfect reporting system began only in December.

2 Figure swollen by mass admissions o f Jews in November 1938.

* Still incomplete. 4 January 1 to April 3.

Thus at least 33,462 prisoners died at Buchenwald from beginning to end, not counting those who were executed or sent away in outright death shipments, or those who were transferred to other camps, often in a moribund state, only to die en route or soon after their arrival. In all likelihood it is a fair estimate to put the total of Buchenwald dead over seven and a half years at 55,000, an average of about 7,300 a year. This means that up to and including the year 1941 virtually the entire camp strength was “ turned over” each year. (Not until 1942 did camp strength permanently rise to about the 10,000 mark.) But for the constant influx of new admissions, the camp, from a statistical point of view, would have become nothing but a morgue in eight months of a given year.

Figures covering wards and out-patients’ clinic—in other words, all the sick who were treated—are availably for Buchenwald from April 1941 on. They rose and fell as con ditions fluctuated in camp, a number of different factors playing their part in determining how many or how few patients were actually in the hospital at a given time. While mortality averaged between one half of one and eight per cent

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL 251

of total camp strength per month, that of out-patients ranged from two and a half to fourteen per cent, of ward patients from one and a half to eight per cent.

From the fall of 1942 onward, when the influx into the

camps began to take on staggering proportions, hospital figures got more and more out of step with the number of new admissions. In absolute terms, figures continued to grow, but relative proportions declined, since hospital capacity was not increased. The supernumerary sick simply had to die a natural or unnatural death.

Taking each concentration camp by itself, it would scarcely be fair to blame only deficient sanitation or the Camp Medical Officers for the high mortality figures. Shipments were constantly arriving with prisoners in such weakened con dition from their ordeal that they died like flies in the ensuing days. “ They’ve sent us all the scrap again,” the SS used to say.

But conditions actually were much the same in all the camps. The real guilt lay with the top leadership of the SS, with the common design underlying all camp administration. The individual Camp Medical Officer could not escape this system, even if he tried to do better.

In my estimation we shall never have an altogether reliable tabulation of all the victims of the Nazi concentration camps. It is not purely a matter of the sick. They either got well or died—most of them, of course, died, or rather, were killed. But even the prisoners who left the camps at all almost always had some permanent health impairment. True, this scarcely counts, compared to the vast hosts of outright dead.

To the Nazi government, of course, the number of the sick was of considerable importance, since it directly affected labor output. Through SS Major Ding-Schuler of Buchen wald, we know of a letter addressed by the Reich Physician of the SS and Police to the Chief Hygienist of the SS, reporting that in the final phase of the Nazi regime around twenty per cent of all camp inmates had to be written off as unfit for duty (about 120,000 of 600,000). This figure cannot possibly refer to hospital patients alone, who were far less in number. Nowhere were there even approximately that number of beds. This estimate of March 1945 may have been no more than a rough guess of the part of the top leadership of the SS. Or it

252
EUGEN KOGON

may have included wards, out-patients, convalescents, and all of the “ scrap” slated for extermination, SS style. It is hard to say.

In making a first, approximate, critical estimate of the total number of victims who died in the German concentration camps, a number of factors must be taken into account. I ex pressly emphasize that in any event only attempts at
estimates
are made in the following:

(1) From 1933 to 1939 the number of concentration camps was relatively limited. Among the hundred-odd camps in existence by the end of this period at most half a dozen had a permanent strength of more than 10,000 inmates. The rest numbered no more than 500 to 1,000 each.

(2) Beginning in late 1939, both the number of camps and the number of prisoners in the already existing camps rose sharply. Henceforth the six or eight big camps numbered

- from 50,000 to 100,000 inmates each, counting all their out side details, while smaller camps seldom fell below 2,000 in mates.

(3) Quarterly and semi-annual reports from certain prisoner hospitals show that mortality in the “ regular” camps was about ten per cent annually, though even by 1938 and 1939 it had risen higher. It kept on rising during the war, ultimately reaching thirty-five to forty per cent of average strength.

(4) There was constant turnover and exchange of prisoners among the camps. These shipments were purely internal mat ters and did not directly affect total strength, except as they hastened the death of prisoners. They can therefore be ignored in the kind of statistical tabulation here attempted. Prisoners either died, or were executed, or were released. All others remained in the camps. As a matter of fact, discharges may also be ignored because they were so few in number.

(5) The tabulation made by the SS Main Economic and Ad ministrative Office showed that during six months in 1942 six teen camps had, in round figures, 110,000 new admissions and 85,000 deductions (77.3 per cent) in the categories described. On an annual basis this would mean 220,000 ad missions and 170,000 subtractions.

(6) Three main periods can be distinguished in the history of the German concentration camps:

(a) From 1933 to the outbreak of the war, approximately 3

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL
253

large concentration camps with about 20,000 inmates each, 65 smaller concentration camps with about 1,500 inmates each. Total: 85,000 inmates

(6) From the fall of 1939 to 1942, approximately 16 large concentration camps with about 20,000 each, 50 smaller concentration camps with about 1,500 inmates each.

Total: 395,000 inmates

(c) From 1943 to the spring of 1945, approximately 20 large concentration camps with about 25,000 inmates each, 65 smaller concentration camps with about 1,500 inmates each. Total: 600,000 inmates

Subsidiary details of the base camps have been taken into account in this calculation. They often included no more than a few hundred men. If they were all counted as separate camps, the total number would of course be much higher, even though prisoner strength would remain the same.

After 1940 there were concentration camps in the east which can only be described as extermination camps. Chief among these was Auschwitz, with at least 3,500,000 victims, probably 4,500,000. About half a dozen smaller camps of this description accounted for perhaps 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 vic tims, chiefly Maidanek, Treblinka, Skarzisko Kamienno, and the ghettos of Warsaw, Lemberg and Riga.

. An estimate on this basis leads to the following ap proximation of the total picture:

Additions
Death*

Ys*r
B a u InCTMMOf

Strength

XI
Number
X*
Number

1933 50,000
25
12,500
10 6,250
+
6,256

1934 56,250
30
16,900 10 7,300
+
9,600

1935 65,800
20
13,200
10
7,900
+
5,300

1936
71,000
20
14,200
10 8,500
+
5,700

1937 76,800
,
20
15,350
10 9,200
+
6,200

1938 83,000
100*
83,000
20 33,200
+
50.000

1939 133,000
1504
332,500
20
93,100 + . 239,500

Totals.......... 536,000
4
87,650
1
65,450
-
1-322,550

Ann. A v . . . . 76,550 69,650
23,650
+
46,100

1940 372,500 440 149,000
25‘
130,400
+
18.600

1941 391,100 60* 234,600
25
156,400
+
78,200

1942 469,300 60 281,600
30
225,300
+
56,300