The Theory and Practice of Hell (20 page)

On rare occasions, just for fun, the officials might dig up a dusty file and apply for the release of its subject. The opposite was the general rule. Files were left unattended until they crumbled into dust. What did one prisoner more or less matter?

The families of many prisoners kept wandering from pillar to post in their efforts to effect the release of a husband or son, a wife or daughter. Most Gestapo officials were quite generous with promises. During the early months of my own detention, my wife on one occasion actually had my house keys smuggled into my cell, so that I might gain admission if I were released at night and no one were home. She had been definitely promised that it would be only a matter of days before I would be free. During a period that ultimately ran to eighty-five months she learned to have no faith in Gestapo promises. One of the most outrageous cases that has come to my attention is that of an Austrian general, whose wife was ill of heart disease. A Gestapo official had instructed her to be at the gate of the police jail at four o ’clock in the afternoon, at which time her husband would be released. By three o’clock a

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patrol wagon with a dozen prisoners, including the general, was on its way to the station where the Dachau train was waiting!

Theoretically applications for release and releases them selves took place in the following fashion:

Every three or six months—and sometimes as a result of special intercessions—the regional Gestapo offices, if they were so disposed, requested reports on the behavior of in dividual inmates in the concentration camps. These reports in themselves constituted a nasty chapter. The prisoner who was subject to such an inquiry was summoned for “ questioning” by one of the Officers-in-Charge, if that worthy happened to be in the proper mood. The summons was issued for the next day by way of the prisoner Orderly Room, and the reactions aroused by the announcement during roll call of “ Prisoners under orders to the gatehouse!” can be imagined.

Questioning, of course, involved hours of standing and waiting and was generally limited to three questions: “ How long have you been in camp?” “ What is your labor detail?” “ Have you had any camp penalties?” Whatever the answers, the results were almost invariably abuse, blows and a transfer to a less desirable detail. As for the actual report forwarded by headquarters to the Gestapo, it was likely to be wholly ar bitrary. Whether the prisoner had been “ questioned” or not, the Gestapo was nearly always told that he was recalcitrant, incorrigible and altogether unsuitable for release. As a result he would often be implored and reproached by members of his family, especially his mother. Divorces too were common, the prisoner having no chance whatever to deal with the real situation in his letters. All this tended to make his situation in finitely worse.

The Gestapo could order the release of a prisoner without any such report on his conduct. The Political Department of a concentration camp would simply receive a teletype message and the case would be settled. Nor did the Gestapo have to be guided by the reports from the camps. There were cases in which highly unfavorable reports were transmitted, yet the prisoners in question were released within a few weeks. Or dinarily the regional Gestapo office having jurisdiction over the prisoner would file an application for release with Berlin headquarters, with or without a report from the concentration

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camp on his conduct. The decision then lay with the Berlin department head, who usually consulted three other agencies to see if they had any objections: the Reich Main Security Of fice, Department DII of the SS Main Economic and Ad ministrative Office, and camp headquarters. It is not sur prising that this system had few loopholes through which a prisoner could escape.

There was a much better chance under certain discharge programs meant to serve propaganda purposes. Herr Streicher,
Gauleiter
(Provincial Governor) of Franconia and publisher of the
Sturmer
, was in the habit every Christmas of effecting the release of a couple of dozen Communists from Dachau. These he then ceremoniously dined and wined in Nuremberg, as “ repentant racial comrades.” The Nazi need for nauseating sentimentality and lying propaganda utilized allegedly converted Communists as a kind of Christmas tree decoration for the brown confraternity. I do not know whether any of these prisoners later relapsed and were again arrested, though I think it is entirely possible and in some cases even probable. The most extensive of these mass discharges took place on the occasion of Hitler’s fiftieth birth day in 1939, when some twenty-three hundred Buchenwald prisoners, mainly so-called “ asocials,” were sent home.

Every prisoner slated for release had to pass through the Political Department when his old civilian clothes had been returned to him. There he was given a discharge certificate listing his personal data. He was told to what Gestapo office to report at home. If he was without means, he was given a slip entitling him to a ticket home at the nearest railroad station. Before his actual release he had to sign a declaration fixing nine conditions for his future conduct. Among them were: complete silence on every aspect of camp life; no com munication with former fellow prisoners; and the duty to denounce any violators. His own violation of any of the nine conditions made him liable to serious penalties. This constant threat, together with the generally imposed obligation to report regularly to the Gestapo or the police, as well as the vivid memory of what they had undergone, combined to break the spirit of most of the men when they resumed civilian life—at least in a political sense. Only a very small number of the political prisoners who were released ever returned to their

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old activities. Such work was even more difficult for them than for others, for they were under constant observation as “ men who had been in a concentration camp” and were regarded with fear and suspicion by the people who sur rounded them.

Only on very rare occasions did the Gestapo seek informers and confidential agents among the political prisoners, and curiously enough not every prisoner who rejected such recruit ment was then “ finished off” by the SS in camp. Prisoners who received such an offer were in a very bad way. It took great strength of character not only to risk possible death but to forfeit any further chance of being released. A few hoped that once they were at liberty they would succeed in deceiving the Gestapo until the war ended and the Nazi regime col lapsed. I know of two cases at Buchenwald in which the men were returned to the camp after six and eight months because of “ lack of evidence that they had changed their con victions.” Apparently the Gestapo had such poor experiences with this expedient that it was used, fortunately, only very rarely.

During the final war years some tens of thousands of Ger man concentration-camp prisoners were released apparently because they were requisitioned by the armed forces. The majority of political prisoners rejected this road to freedom; but it was not in their power to prevent compulsory army drafting. If camp headquarters approved the army request

—which was by no means always the case—the prisoners were not even given leave to visit their families whom many of them had not seen for years. They had to report directly from the concentration camp, where they had worn prison stripes, to the appointed army installation, where they were instantly “ honored” with the uniform. Quite a few prisoners staked all their hopes on this chance to escape the concentration-camp hell. Some thought they might be able to engage in anti-Nazi activities in the armed forces—in contrast to the con centration camps where they were generally no more than passive victims of the terror. These hopes were quickly dispelled; for most of the former concentration-camp inmates were put into army penal battalions.

On occasion, prisoners were granted leave. True, this hap pened in only an infinitesimally small number of cases. The

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reasons might be serious illness, deaths or urgent business af fairs. The latter, from which the grantor of leave might reap a profit, were likely to rank much higher than the death of a mother or father. But the mere enumeration of reasons for release conveys a false impression, for the granting of leave actually depended on the good fortune of having excellent connections either with camp headquarters or with a Gestapo official.

It was with good reason that old concentrationaries heaped scorn on every newcomer who believed he would be there for “ only a short while.” “ The first fifteen years are the hardest,” they used to say. “ Then a man gets used to it.”