The Theory and Practice of Hell (72 page)

There were really but three forms of making an adjustment: to remain a lone wolf; to join a group; or to appear in the guise of a political partisan.

The lone wolf, as the term is here used, was not necessarily an anti-social person but rather an individual tending to keep to himself in accordance with his own design and without harm to others. Men of this type were often of high integrity. They had excellent judgment and helped whenever it was necessary, but they did not seek closer association. Their en

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durance was predicated on privacy, insofar as such a thing was possible in camp.

There were many concentration-camp inmates who disliked this type of fellow prisoner, taunting and tormenting him whenever they could. Part of this may have sprung from the natural urge of the inferior to drag down to his own level anyone who is different. But it seems to me that another motive was an instinctive fear of the living exhortation which such men represented, something their inferiors liked to decry as arrogance. As a result, the lone wolves were always especially exposed to danger, unless they enjoyed the protec tion of some silent admirer with power and influence. In their isolation from the extraordinary community surrounding them they sometimes developed quirks, peculiar ways of re acting. When such oddities developed into permanent eccentricity, the subject might perish if he had a special enemy to take advantage of the situation (see the story of Johann Stiirzer in the chapter “ Money and Mail” ); or he was tolerated as a harmless freak. He drew verbal abuse but no serious interference. As a type, he had become insignificant, a cheap butt for jokes, a scapegoat for frayed tempers.

Group allegiance meant joining a small circle of friends or co-religionists, men of like mind who brought similar at titudes to their discussions and “ club meetings,” held in such places as the few privileged rooms of the hospital or even in cellar holes. In such groups men again became human beings, after the humiliation suffered in the toil of the day, after punishment and roll call and barracks life. Despite prison stripes and shorn skulls, they were able to look their fellows in the face, beholding the same sorrow and the same pride, and drawing renewed strength. Hope was revived, helping them to be ready to proceed on the appointed path, step by step. Mem bership in such a group was perhaps the finest experience in a concentration camp.

Political partisanship, on the other hand, pursued ulterior purposes even in the camps. It was extremely useful for every man of the left, especially for Communists, who found help and support that made adaptation to the new life much easier. There were no parties other than the Communist and Social Democratic in the camps on the German side. The Poles, Czechs, Dutch and a few other nationality groups developed

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certain party organizations that were not leftist in orientation. But since underground leadership was always in German hands, such organizations either were unable to attain any significant scope or were suppressed after sharp clashes. The leftist parties were the only part of the social structure of the outside world that was taken over unchanged in the con centration camps. Here their adherents found a familiar behavior pattern in which they could seek refuge. It gave them a better start in a physical sense, enabled them to recover their identity more rapidly, but it also involved the risk of unrestrained regression in a primitive direction, of an adap tation that was so thoroughgoing that it meant their undoing rather than protection. There were party concentrationaries who had become completely resigned to camp life, mentally and physically, who no longer knew any other world and sought none. The concentration camp with its opportunities for power and privilege had become their world.

Cutting straight across the groups and parties were new class crystallizations and national allegiances that contributed further characteristics, both positive and negative, to the multiplicity of psychological types among the concentration-camp prisoners.

These classes in the concentration camps were not ex traordinary in their social structure, for they developed on the basis of economic position and special function just as they do in the outside world. The prisoners in positions of power formed the camp aristocracy, the “ big shots.” Some of them were worthless parasites, just as is the case with the nominal aristocracy of all periods and peoples. Below them were the common herd and the pariahs.

The new factor in these classes was not the former class allegiance of a prisoner, though in camps under red sway a former Communist party functionary had to best chance to ascend to the “ big shot” class, while men of marked middle-class character had the least prospect. Class position was rather the product of such qualities as militancy or moderation, hardness or softness, adaptability or simple-mindedness and lack of skill, a tendency toward cliquishness or an attitude of reserve. It presupposed the acceptance of a certain responsibility, even if this was often limited to mere participation in some scheme of corruption that drew on the

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general substance, and it was anchored by means of numerous checks and balances, good and bad, among men on the same level. Clique interests among the Prisoner Foremen, for ex ample, took precedence over solidarity within a detail or a barracks. Because of the positions of its members—positions requiring camp experience—the class had its own “ class-consciousness," expressed in various customs, above all in keeping down the newcomer as long as possible.

It was comparatively easy to gain access to a group or party, but the policy of the class was one of hostility. The “ greenhorn” was contemptuously rejected. There was much boastful reference to hardships undergone in the days when things were “ really tough.” “ What do
you
know about a con centration camp?” was one of the pat phrases. “ Now back in 19—, when w e . . . . ” “ You should have seen Sergeant So-and So!” “ Anyone who hasn’t been in Camp X hasn’t any idea at all!” Thus ran the stereotyped patter of crude conceit, put forward for no other purpose than to deprecate the newcomer and maintain class superiority. The psychological bag of tricks of such men included the attempt to cover up their own moral deficiencies by overemphasis on how hardened they were. But such tricks are not peculiar to the concentration camps. In the complete isolation and the special atmosphere of cruelty of the concentration camps, this feature was merely developed more sharply.

National allegiances likewise ran athwart all other stratifications. Within each nationality group they tended to exert a harmonizing influence, though at the expense of sharpened tension between groups. National allegiance very nearly held the balance to party allegiance, though the latter was perhaps a little stronger. Judged by his everyday conduct, a French Communist was as a rule closer to a German Com munist than he was to his own bourgeois compatriot. (Of course it must not be overlooked that in the red camps the German Communists were the ruling group. It may be doubted whether a French Communist or Socialist felt closer ties to a Czech party member than he did to his average fellow countryman.)

Some psychological commentary on the attitudes of the

Germans toward each other and toward other nationality groups, whose reactions have already been discussed, would

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be not only interesting but helpful at this point. It seems to me impossible, however, to do justice to these complex in terrelationships in a few words. The picture would necessarily be one-sided, indeed, distorted. Germans as well as Jews were not very popular in the camps, though this was obviously not true of many individuals. Both groups were rather variegated and very contentious toward each other, the Germans despite the fact that, by force of circumstance, they were not in frequently “ favored” by the SS (in the matter of penalties too!), the Jews, though they were almost continuously tor tured. The role of these two groups, to do them justice, wquld require a separate book with many case histories, carefully balanced according to their significance. Without doubt it could be shown that the non-German concentration-camp literature that has been published so far literally teems with one-sided statements, over-simplifications and erroneous judgments. In my opinion there were no groups whose role in the concentration camps is so difficult to grasp as the Ger mans and the Jews. Let this statement at least hint at their significance.

National, class, party and group ties exerted a crucial in fluence on the individual and collective attitudes of the prisoners toward one another. But all differences were fused into a militant unity with but slight shades of differentiation when the camp stood against the SS—or rather, it was as though the differences retired behind a protective wall. The attitude of the prisoners toward their oppressors was un complicated from a psychological point of view. It would have been even simpler, had an active struggle been possible. But since the characteristic feature in the situation of the prisoners was their defenselessness, certain psychological qualities worth mentioning developed.

The concentration-camp prisoner knew a whole system of mimicry toward the SS. This ever-present camouflage ran under the slogan of “ everything O.K.” —outwardly, and therefore seemingly inwardly as well. No SS member was able to peer behind this wall. The deception ranged all the way from the stereotyped “ Yes, sir!” to disarming smiles. In very rare cases, after an occasional SS man had already been

. demoralized or corrupted, prisoners might in the course of time unbend to a certain extent, but they never wholly aban-