The Theory and Practice of Hell (12 page)

The Jehovah’s Witnesses sect had spread from the United States to Europe in the eighties, and after the First World War it won a considerable number of converts in Germany. The Nazis suppressed it as early as 1933, because its members refused to swear oaths and render military service, and in ad dition regarded all government as the devil’s handiwork. The greatest wave of arrests of Witnesses began in the spring of 1936. The leaders at Magdeburg had already been locked up in the fall of 1934. In June 1937 the Reich Minister of Interior ordered all Jehovah’s Witnesses handed over to the Gestapo, which sent them to the concentration camps. By the fall of that year their number at Buchenwald had risen to about 270. It reached a maximum of 450 a year later. Approximately the same number were in each of the other big camps, the women at Ravensbriick. Their families were scattered—men and women sent to different camps and the children taken away—a particular outrage, even from the Nazi point of view. At times they had to endure great sufferings, but their patient faith in the end of the world made them loyal and willing workers, for the SS as well as for their fellow prisoners. Apart from a few skilled workers, nurses and calfactors (a kind of houseboy), they were at first assigned to the penal company. On September 6, 1938, the SS offered them the chance to abjure their principles in writing, especially their refusal to swear oaths and render military ser vice, and thus to purchase their liberty. Only a very few failed

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to withstand this temptation. The others were henceforth sub jected to savage pressure in order to break their spirit. On Easter Sunday of 1939 the Roll Call Offleer at Buchenwald made another effort to persuade the Witnesses to acknowledge “ State and Fiihrer.” The success was nil. On Whitsunday all the Jehovah’s Witnesses again had to fall in on the roll-call area. A speech was delivered to them, and a fearful period of fatigue drill followed. For an hour and a quarter the wretched men had to roll about, hop, crawl and run, while the boots of the Block Leaders helped them along.

When the war broke out the Witnesses at Sachsenhausen concentration camp were invited to volunteer for military ser vice. Each refusal was followed by the shooting of ten men from their ranks. After forty victims had been killed, the SS desisted. In Buchenwald this appeal to the Witnesses was made on September 6,1939. First Officer-in-Charge Rodl told them: "You know that war has broken out and that the Ger man nation is in danger. New laws are coming into force. If anyone of you refuses to fight against France or England, all of you must die!” Two SS companies with full equipment were drawn up by the gatehouse. Not a single Jehovah’s Wit ness answered the officer’s appeal to fight for Germany. There was a brief silence, and then came the sudden order: “ Hands up! Empty your" pockets!” The SS men began to assault them, robbing them of their last penny—a reprisal that seemed rather grotesque in view of what might have been ex pected. True, the Witnesses were assigned to the quarry and during this entire time were barred from hospital treatment.

On February 15, 1942, the Witnesses were assembled at the gatehouse, and the Roll Call Officer read off a regular in dictment: “ Twenty Jehovah’s Witnesses are accused of rebellion for non-observance of camp regulations, bribery of the Senior Camp Inmate, and turning off radios during ad dresses by representatives of the Reich government.” The consequence was not execution but “ winter sport,” con ducted in powdery snow eight inches deep until the exhausted men steamed.

A similar incident took place in May 1944. Gestapo representatives came to Buchenwald and all Jehovah’s Wit nesses were thoroughly searched for anti-Nazi literature (in a

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concentration camp!) while assembled in the roll-call area. Their work areas were likewise turned inside out. The results, after days of waiting: nothing.

One cannot escape the impression that, psychologically speaking, the SS was never quite equal to the challenge of fered them by Jehovah’s Witnesses. They did not take the Witnesses altogether seriously, but rather had their cruel sport with them—a sort of cat-and-mouse game.

In addition to these main categories of prisoners, the SS

made a number of other distinctions. Of thes
%
e the homosexuals deserve special mention. This group had a very heterogeneous composition. It included individuals of real value, in addition to large numbers of criminals and especially blackmailers. This made the position of the group as a whole

very precarious. Hostility toward them may have been partly rooted in the fact that homosexuality was at one time widespread in Prussian military circles, as well as among the SA and the SS, and was to be mercilessly outlawed and erased. The Gestapo readily had recourse to the charge of homosexuality, if it was unable to find any other pretext for proceeding against Catholic priests or irksome critics. The mere suspicion was sufficient. Homosexual practices were ac tually very widespread in the camps. The prisoners, however, ostracized only those whom the SS marked with the pink triangle.

The fate of the homosexuals in the concentration camps can only be described as ghastly. They were often segregated in special barracks and work details. Such segregation offered ample opportunity to unscrupulous elements in positions of power to engage in extortion and maltreatment. Until the fall of 1938 the homosexuals at Buchenwald were divided up among the barracks occupied by political prisoners, where they led a rather inconspicuous life. In October 1938, they were transferred to the penal company in a body and had to slave in the quarry. This consigned them to the lowest caste in camp during the most difficult years. In shipments to ex termination camps, such as Nordhausen, Natzweiler and Gross-Rosen, they furnished the highest proportionate share, for the camp had an understandable tendency to slough off all elements considered least valuable or worthless. If anything could save them at all, it was to enter into sordid relationships

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL 35

within the camp, but this was as likely to endanger their lives as to save them. Theirs was an insoluble predicament and vir tually all of them perished.

All prisoner categories in the concentration camps had to wear prescribed markings sewn to their clothing—a serial number and colored triangles, affixed to the left breast and the right trouser leg. At Auschwitz the serial number was tat tooed on the left forearm of the prisoners. Red was the color denoting political prisoners. Second offenders, so-called recidivists, wore a stripe of the same color above the upper edge of the triangle. Criminals wore a green triangle, with a surprinted S for the SV category. Jehovah’s Witnesses wore purple; “ shiftless elements,” black; homosexuals, pink. During certain periods, the Gypsies and the shiftless picked up in certain special campaigns wore a brown triangle.

Jews, in addition to the markings listed above, wore a yellow triangle under the classification triangle. The yellow triangle pointed up, the other down, forming the six-pointed Star of David. Jews and non-Jews who had violated the Nuremberg racial laws—so-called “ race defilers” —wore a black border around or athwart the green or yellow triangle. Foreigners had a letter surprinted on their triangles—F for France, N for Netherlands,
etc.
Special political prisoners picked up at the outbreak of the war, for supposed unreliability, wore their serial number across the triangle, the others about an inch below the bottom point. Starting with the war, certain prisoners were admitted who had a K printed on their triangles. These were “ war criminals”
{Kriegsver-brecher)
and they were always permanently assigned to the penal companies. Their offenses were often trifling. Oc casionally a prisoner long in camp was likewise assigned to this K company. Only a very few of them survived. “ Labor Disciplinary Prisoners” wore a white A on their black triangles, from the German word for labor,
Arbeit
. Most of them were in camp for only a few weeks. Members of the penal companies showed a black dot, the size of a silver dollar, between the point of the triangle and the serial number.

Prisoners suspected of plans for escaping had a red-and- white target sewn or painted on chest and back. The SS even devised a special marking for the feeble-minded—an armband

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EUGEN KOGON

with the German word
Blod.
Sometimes these unfortunates also had to wear a sign around their necks: “ I am a Moron!” This procedure was particularly provocative when the prisoner in question also wore the red triangle reserved for avowed opponents of the Nazi regime. The feeble-minded en joyed the freedom of the camp and were the butt of the crudest jokes. Eventually they all perished or were killed by injection.

The camps were a veritable circus, as far as colors, markings, and special designations are concerned. Oc casionally prisoners were decked out in nearly all colors of the rainbow. There was one Jew, for example, who was a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a “ race defiler,” a member of the penal company and also wore the escape targets!

It must be emphasized that the markings as such offered no assurance that the prisoners actually belonged to the designated classification. Time and again the greens, or criminals, included men with whom it was possible to work—who showed stanch loyalty, indeed—whereas many a red, or political prisoner, should of rights have worn the green triangle. Reclassifications did occasionally take place, with varying degrees of justification.

The distribution of the categories within a camp varied and shifted greatly. After the outbreak of the war, with its influx of tens of thousands of non-German anti-Nazis, red became the predominant color, but before that time there were camps known as red, and others known as green. Dachau, Buchen wald and Sachsenhausen were long dominated by political prisoners, the first two down to the end. Mauthausen, Flossenbiirg, Gross-Rosen and Neuengamme were among the major camps to be predominantly green.