One often hears the phrase “Man’s inhumanity to man”. However, there is no more horrific example of that- not the Crusades, not the Inquisition, not the Turkish slaughter of Armenians or Saddam Hussein’s disposal of tens of thousands of Kurds in Iraq- than the systematic herding together, then disposing of million s of Jews, Poles, Russians, Gypsies, homosexuals and those physically impaired. The Germans, heirs to Goethe, Schiller, Hegel and Nietzsche, turned into inhuman hordes of men (and women) who delighted in the task of eliminating Europe’s Jews from the face of the Third Reich. Volumes have been written, and still no real answer to “why?”. Here we will concentrate on the “how”.
The conditions in the camps were, of course, unlivable for most. It is interesting to note that, at first, it was not the zyklon gas chambers and crematoriums which were responsible for so many deaths. It was disease. “The great killer in the German camps was of course typhus, spread by lice in the constant traffic with the east. In the rapid expansion of the camps in Poland, in 1941-1942, the Germans were able to anticipate this danger…. However their countermeasures largely failed and typhus epidemics broke out in summer 1942. The figure for the number of recorded male ordinary deaths at Auschwitz, in the period 1 June – 19 August, has survived; it was 11,920′ (Butz 2003 1). The facts are that epidemics of communicable diseases ruined the idea of “using” camp inmates for forced labor, as well as medical experimentation, and thereby hastened the need for some sort of quick extermination procedures. Deprivation of nourishing food, separation of families, work details that weakened already starving inmates hastened the submissiveness of those forced into the “showers”.
As systematic as the Nazis were, they even designed and built a special camp near Berlin called Ravensbruck, which served as a training ground for female guards, and held mostly women and children prisoners.
“When a new prisoner arrived at Ravensbrück they were required to wear a color-coded triangle…that identified them by category with a letter sewn within the triangle that indicated the prisoner’s nationality. Polish women wore red triangle, red denoting a political prisoner, with a letter “P. By 1942, Polish women became the largest national component at the camp. Jewish women wore yellow triangles, but sometimes, unlike the other prisoner they wore a second triangle for the other categories or for “race defilement”. Between 1942 and 1943 almost all Jewish women from the Ravensbrück camp where sent to Auschwitz in several transports following Nazis policy to make Germany “Judenrein” (cleansed of Jews)” (Wikipedia 2005 2).
Again, it must be noted that from time to time this murdering rampage was officially forced to slow down. “At the end of 1942 when the need for slave labor became acute, Himmler ordered that the death rates in the camps ‘must be reduced'” (Shirer 1060 967). The sign at the entrance to one of what would become a death camp read “Arbeit Macht Frei!” (Work Makes One Free!) All it freed was Germans to fight against Russia and the Allies on the Western front. Despite such upbeat films as “Schindler’s List”, very few Jews (or other political and wear prisoners were spared.
Hannah Ahrendt, in discussing the Holocaust and its perpetrators in 1970 used the term “banality of evil”. A camp survivor gives some credence to that: “We had to line up in the sun and go up to a table one by one. Behind the table there were two gendarme officers sitting comfortably in the shade under an awning. The women had to take off all their rings, and other jewelry they had on, and put them on the table. The gendarmes then put everything into boxes. The whole thing looked like a regular business proceeding” (Ben Menachem 2005). Ben-Menachem, who survived as a child, returned to a Polish camp, Birkenau, to see a museum there. “The museum was located in the barracks of the old camp. Birkenau, right beside it was the place of THE FINAL SOLUTION. In the museum, there was a whole wall of glass and behind it, children’s shoes. In the next display there were suitcases. Display after display. With German precision, everything sorted, inventories, used and stored. The only thing they did not keep was the people” (Ben-Menachem 2005 288).
While there have been numerous accounts of daily life in the various camps, very little has been written by (or about) those who put them there. It took a very special kind of immoral person, and the Nazis found them. “For a time there was quite a rivalry among the S.S. leaders as to which was the most efficient gas to speed Jews to their death. Speed was an important factor….Auschwitz was setting new records by gassing 6,000 victims a day” (Shirer 1960 967). What may be even worse, according to Shirer, is that there was some lively competition among German businessmen to procure orders for building these death and disposal contraptions. To this day, very specific receipts and acknowledgments of payments are still on display. One firm, in bidding for a furnace, actually suggested that “for putting bodies into the furnace, we suggest simply a metal fork moving on cylinders” (Shirer 971).
And yet, in some cases Jews survived. One reason was that an “SS commandant had rejected (more Jews) explaining to their distraught guards that the war was going to end at any moment and he had his hands full trying to murder the Jews he already had” (Manchester 1968 756).
This German “precision” followed specific patterns, from entry into camps until mass graves or ashes that contaminated the air around d the crematoria. One camp commander, Rudolph Hoess, an ex-convict once convicted of murder, testified at the Nuremberg trials: “We had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. These would be marched by one of the doctors, who would make a spot decision as they walked by. Those who were fit to work were sent into the camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants” (Shirer 1960 968). Ludicrous as it seems, some inmates were given picture post cards marked “Waldsee” and forced to send them to relatives having had to write “We are doing well here….we are well treated. We await your arrival” (Shirer 969).
Most of the prisoners in even the death camps had no idea when they arrived what lay in store for them. In fact, as Shir3er describes it (969) it was important not to make these gas chambers and crematoriums look like what they were. There were well-kept lawns and flowers everywhere. We have, of course, all heard the stories that the Jews were told they had to go to de-lousing showers, which really turned out to be gas chambers.
Many campo inmates died of hunger and starvation due to the lack of nutritious food they were given. “Our day started every morning with what was called coffee, which basically consisted of brown water. And we got a piece of black bread without crust. Once a week, our guards gave us a piece of margarine and a spoon of jam, and some strange tasting marmalade. Sometimes we even got a spoonful of mustard. I think we got that on Fridays or on Saturdays”(Ben Menahcme 2005 71).
It is impossible to grasp, but there are some people who believe the Holocaust never existed and that it is a big hoax. It is instead a blot on a Germany which followed a madman’s belief that the people would be better off, and prove their racial superiority, by slaughtering 6 million Jews and others unworthy of remaining alive. For far too many, daily life in the camps became daily death.
Works Cited:
Ben-Menachem, M. (2005) Paper Soldiers Jerusalem: Gefen Publishers
Butz. A.R. (2003) “Deaths in German Concentration Camps”
pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/di/dc/deaths.html
Manchester, W. (1968) The Arms of Krupp Boston: Little, Brown Publishers
Shirer, W. (1960) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich New York: Simon & Schuster
No author listed (2005): “Ravensbruck Concentration Camp” Wikepedia, Answers.com www.answers.com/topic/ravensbr-ck-concentration-camp
