The Theory and Practice of Hell (61 page)

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fluence of the political prisoners was never strong enough to forestall general directives issued by the SS—mass liquidations and actions of a similar character. It extended largely to the ordinary minutiae of camp life, which here and there offered opportunities for preventing the worst and even improving certain conditions.

During the final year, self-government among the prisoners in a number of camps had reached a point where the SS was no longer able to gain a true picture of the internal situation. The SS men were tired; they had become used to the fact that the camps ran by themselves; by and large they let the prisoners have their way in many respects. There was many an SS officer who could no longer relinquish his many personal extravagances—extravagances that were impossible without the connivance of prisoners. Such officers were almost en tirely at the mercy of the prisoners.

There were instances in which a delay in delivering a sausage on the part of the prisoner clerk in the SS canteen, or the excuse that no alcohol could be procured at the moment because the Second Officer-in-Charge had forbidden the issue—where such strategems might induce the First Officer-in-Charge to rescind immediately orders by his colleague that were unfavorable to the prisoners. Such methods were used to secure cancellation of disciplinary measures, to induce Camp Medical Officers to intervene either for or against certain in dividuals, to invalidate controls of all kinds. True, the greatest beneficiaries from this policy were the ruling group among the prisoners, which in the more important camps was more or less identical with the active anti-Fascist forces.

Occasional success also attended efforts to make higher SS

officers subservient to the purposes of the prisoners, not merely by corruption but by direct political influence. Such cases were very rare and involved great danger. They were most likely to succeed with a certain type of SS physician. Un questionably one of the most impressive instances of this kind was the role played by SS Major Ding-Schuler at Buchenwald. In 1943 I was to be sent to my death at Auschwitz. At that very time a clerk was being sought for the dreaded chief of Ward 46—Building 50 was about to be opened. I was selected. In agreement with Wegerer, the Capo, I decided from the out set that I would not adopt a passive attitude but would meet

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danger by direct attack, by taking the bull by the horns. Within a week’s time, after Ding-Schuler and I had carefully felt each other out, I began to show a cautious interest in his private concerns, including his family affairs. A month had not yet elapsed when I began to engage in political discussion with him. He had initially asked me about my convictions and, dangerous as it was at the time, I had frankly replied that he could hardly expect a man with my past and in my situation to be friendly toward National Socialism.

This answer impressed Ding-Schuler. Two months later there was no political or military event about which he failed to consult me. Step by step I made it clear to him that Ger many must inevitably lose the war and that National Socialism was bound to fall. I told him that he, who was responsible for Ward 46, could expect only to be hailed into court and that his sole chance for mitigating his situation lay in doing as much as he could for the prisoners even now. On many nights he sat in his room until eleven or twelve o ’clock, talking with me, accepting my counsel, listening to what I told him about that other world—our own world of the spirit, of morality, of humanitarianism and of human grandeur.

(True, I could never get rid of the thought of what my enemies in the barracks might have said to such secret discussions with a major in the
Waffen
SS, and I was always intent on maintaining that “ elastic wall” that had to remain intact even between him and myself.)

Ding-Schuler subsequently did do a great many positive things for the prisoners—or at least allowed them to be done. If there is anything of which I am proud during the time of my concentration-camp detention, it is the fact that I succeeded in this very difficult task which no one else had dared to un dertake. I can say that never once did I use my very con siderable influence to the disadvantage of a fellow prisoner, even though I might have lived in bitter enmity with him. I employed it solely to help those who were in danger or on behalf of the group in Building 50 or the camp as a whole.

Sometimes the difficulties were extraordinary, for Ding-Schuler was a man with a dismal past1 who was full of whims

1 Heinz Poller, hospital clerk in 1939-40, when Dr. Ding-Schuler was Camp Medical Officer, discusses this aspect in his book,
Medical Clerk at Buchen wald.

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and moods. I always informed and consulted my friends: Heinz Baumeister, a Social Democrat and old concentration-camp hand; Werner Hilpert, a member of the former Catholic Center party in Saxony; Franz Hackel, a poet of sharply leftist orientation; Walter Hummelsheim, who came from the Rhineland; and Ferdinand Romhild, a Socialist poet who was First Clerk in the prisoner hospital. Baumeister sometimes remarked that Ding-Schuler was not worth the nervous energy, the patience and the attention I wasted on him. But I am glad I stuck it out. It is not merely that several dozen valuable human beings owe their lives to this closely main tained association between myself and the SS physician. In the final days of the Buchenwald concentration camp, this work “ with and against” Ding-Schuler paid off in a way none of us could have dreamed.

I tried to extend my influence over Ding-Schuler in a purely human way as well, with the aim of getting him to accept the consequences of his guilt with moral dignity and a sense of catharsis after the collapse should have come. “ I don’t think I could endure the kind of life you have been leading for years,” he sometimes said, and he always toyed with the idea of suicide. Then again he would frivolously skip over the gloomy aspects. “ You can’t deny, Kogon, no matter how op posed to National Socialism you are, that it’s quite an ac complishment to have put the Thousand-Year Reich under the sod in a mere five years!” He would laugh and leap on his motorcycle to pursue his wonted round of activity. Arrested as a war criminal in September 1945, he did commit suicide, without awaiting my unbiased testimony or the statements of the rescued secret-service officers.

It must not be glossed over that such privileges as were gradually wrested from the SS benefited in the main only the German-speaking prisoners of the various nationality groups. These Germans, as soon as they got their bearings in camp and if they managed to survive the internal struggle for power, almost invariably moved up into the better jobs, for the SS never succeeded in solving the problem it had created for itself with the admission of non-Germans. Buchenwald, for example, comprised no less than thirty nationalities in 1945!

Except for certain cases of traitors and brazen profiteers,

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the power wielded by prisoners in the concentration camps over individual SS officers and noncoms was always em ployed for the relief and protection of individuals and of the whole camp. The present report has shown enough instances of this. But two other methods that were used to a con siderable extent remain to be discussed.

The first consisted of utilizing the selection of men for ship ment. As has been mentioned, the prisoner-manned Labor Records Office directed the utilization of manpower in the camps, under the orders and supervision of the Labor Service and Manpower Utilization Officers. In the course of time the SS staff found itself less and less equal to these requirements. In Buchenwald, SS Captain Schwartz on only one occasion at tempted to make up a shipment of one thousand prisoners himself. For almost a full day he kept the whole camp standing in the roll-call area to muster the ranks, and in the end he managed to round up some six hundred men. The men chosen had been ordered to step out of ranks, but they simply disappeared in the other direction. No one lent Schwartz and his two SS assistants a hand. They simply could not get the huge job done, and it was impossible to keep on asking headquarters and the Commander of Troops for help for such purposes. Henceforward the Manpower Utilization Officer left all questions of work assignment to the prisoners in the Labor Records Office.

That work was guided by the principle that anti-Fascist forces—which meant, in the main, Communists—must be kept in camp while elements likely to sabotage the common effort, as well as the physically weak, had to be smuggled into the shipments to be got rid of. Undesirables included chiefly men who had shown a lack of solidarity in camp—bread thieves, racketeers, hoarders and the like. They were signalled out by the Communist representatives from the various nationality groups, who also nominated the “ positive elements” that must under no circumstances be placed on shipment.

To insure that such selection was properly carried out, a

special section was created inside the Labor Records Office at Buchenwald. It assembled shipment lists on the basis of the recommendations from the various nationality groups. On certain occasions, especially when German firms required

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skilled help, engineers might actually come to camp to pick whom they wanted. In such cases it was almost impossible to scratch any given person from the list, though it was managed in very important instances. When the firm in question com plained, the prisoner was simply reported unfit for shipment or dead.

There were two classes of prisoners who, on orders from

headquarters, could not be sent to an outside detail on any account. These were the so-called DIKAL prisoners (the word being composed of the initials of the German phrase for “ not to be shipped to any other camp” ), and the so-called “ target men” —prisoners with a record of attempted escape, or suspected of planning to escape. Nevertheless, even such prisoners were placed on shipment when it was a matter of saving their lives. In the case of the “ target men” this was not without its difficulties. One day eighty-five of them were called up. They were all to receive twenty-five lashes. But only some twenty of them were still in camp. The rest had been smuggled into outside details in well-calculated anticipation of such an eventuality. A storm burst on the whole camp, but luckily this too passed and sixty men were spared the beating.