The Theory and Practice of Hell (31 page)

Chapter Eleven MONEY AND MAIL

For their life of luxury the SS naturally needed vast sums of money—in the early years at any rate. Among the most profitable means of procuring such sums was overcharging in the Prisoner Canteen—Viking Salad at two marks sixty pfennig a pound, about ten times the actual value—and withholding rations from the prisoners. In the course of time the first method alone probably produced a revenue of 2,000,000 marks in Buchenwald, to say nothing of numerous “ gifts” for SS officers. For this purpose Commandant Koch kept a special “ black account,” into which Meiners, ac cording to a single cashbook that has been preserved, paid 52,000 marks. According to Koch’s own statement, the unrecorded sums were many times this amount.

Frau Koch on one occasion received a diamond ring valued at 8,000 marks. For Adjutant Hackmann, Meiners bought a new car from the “ profits” of the Prisoner Canteen. Indeed, Meiners even contributed the money for the construction of a villa on Lake Eder near the watering resort of Wildungen, but this was stopped when Prince Waldeck objected. Among other things, Koch purchased a motorboat on the lake from

the money handed over by Meiners. The mark-ups, ranging from 100 to 300 per cent, also served to cover the deficits of the Officers’ Club. SS Master Sergeant Schmidt personally managed to embezzle about 65,000 marks in the almost im penetrable financial maze.

The second financial source—the withholding of rations from the prisoners—brought in 6,000 to 10,000 marks on each occasion, and as we have seen, it happened regularly.

There were in addition a number of frauds, forays, ex tortions, “ penalties,” “ voluntary contributions,” that fur ther swelled the always quickly emptying SS till. The pretexts for obtaining additional revenue were often of the shabbiest kind. The “ Singing Horses” were said to have broken a whif-fletree; footprints of prisoners were supposed to have been found on a freshly cemented walk in front of an officer’s home; flowers had been stolen in the gardening detail. Damages: two to four hundred marks, to be made up within half an hour. In the winter of 1939 a stove burned out in Building 42 at Buchenwald. Rodl ordered each of the forty-odd barracks to pay fifty marks for the repair of the stove. At the same time he let it be known through the Senior Camp In mate that any building collecting no more than fifty marks could expect fatigue drill the next Sunday. Most of the barracks thereupon collected amounts up to one hundred marks.

During the reprisals that followed in the wake of the Vom Rath assassination in 1938, SS Master Sergeant Bayer, Detail Leader in the Prisoner Supply Room, sold the Jews’ mess kits, canteen cups and spoons at three to ten marks apiece, simply pocketing the money. Five hundred marks were demanded for the disinfection of one of the Jewish barracks. On Bayer’s or ders the job was done while the prisoners had to remain in bed. The disinfectant used was Super-Tox, and it was used in a concentration that can be described only as deliberate tor ture.

Generally speaking, the armament plants were another profitable source for financing the parasitic life of the SS. At Buchenwald alone, revenue from farming out prisoners for labor ran between one-and-a-half and two million marks a month in 1944. Many SS officers, furthermore, held

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management jobs in the plants that drew large orders from the Ordnance Department and thus reaped even further profits. SS Colonel Pister, to cite but one example, was not merely Commandant of Buchenwald. He was also General Manager of the German Armament Works, with a salary and profit-sharing interest, as well as of the German Earth and Stone Works and of the Gustloff Works.

In the course of time the total lack of control over SS af fairs led to something like outright banditry. In 1942 three SS officers of the Institute of Hygiene of the
Waffen
SS, headed by SS Major Ding-Schuler, went to Paris to purchase in struments for the Technical Health Office in Berlin. They were provided with 30,000 marks in French francs. In Paris they ordered special equipment that cost far more, at the same time wantonly spending on night life the money that they had. The equipment was delivered to Germany, but the French firms never received payment. For two years one of them tried to penetrate the jungle of SS organization from Paris to Berlin, in order to obtain the 225,000 francs that were due. Despite rebuff after rebuff it refused to desist, going as far as the Reich Main Security Office. The entire long-drawn-out correspondence passed through my hands. Dr. Ding-Schuler openly admitted that he and his cronies had spent the money in the black market in Paris during the three weeks of their visit. Nothing had been left for the purchase of equipment. At the same time, through one of his friends in Paris, Major Gunther Fritze who was assigned to the office of SS Lieutenant-General Oberg, Ding-Schuler advised the owner of the French firm that he would land in a concentration camp if he had the audacity to assert his claim any further. This restored peace. Evidently the French firm decided to write off

the amount to the account of the
“Roi de Prusse. ”

In order to supply the SS with funds in the various ways described, the prisoners themselves, of course, had to have money. Inmates who brought large sums with them into camp in the first place were likely to arouse the rapacity of the con victs as well as of the SS. So to patronize the canteen, prisoners were permitted to have money sent from home. Remittances were limited to thirty marks per prisoner per month. About one in every three inmates was actually in a

position to receive money from his family. The others lived on this one-third—which helps to explain the corruption that was rampant among the prisoners.

Payments were made into credit accounts which the prisoners maintained with the Prisoner Finance Office. Withdrawals were at monthly or semi-monthly intervals, of ten entirely at the whim of the SS and attended by every form of chicanery. Prisoners had to stand in line for hours, es pecially before the major holidays, such as Christmas, when it took two or three days of waiting in the cold to draw money. The prisoners might be commanded to throw themselves down in the muck, lie prone for half an hour at a time, or turn the line front end backward, so that the men in the front rows who had been standing for four or five hours were the last. Until the prisoners managed to gain control of the institution themselves, the procedure was conducted with such haste that countless bills and coins were lost in the shuffle.

In the fall of 1943 the SS introduced special scrip money in the camps. It was valid only in the camps and was distributed in the form of bonuses for special effort. If the purpose was to get more work out of the prisoners, it failed dismally. In the end headquarters simply distributed the coupons among the details every week, in small amounts and at utterly capricious ratios. There might be sixteen marks for sixty-five men—there was no rhyme nor reason. The use of ordinary currency was stopped altogether. The reason for this generosity was, of course, that in every large concentration camp it fed several million marks into the coffers of the SS.

The most improbable tricks were employed by well-to-do inmates in order to obtain more money from home than was authorized. Not infrequently the SS got its rake-off.

Packages from home were not permitted until 1941, apart from a few scattered, farcical exceptions at Christmas time. After 1941, a prisoner could theoretically receive as much as he could eat in one day—the rest was confiscated by the SS. The life led by the parcel robbers may be imagined. They took what they pleased, especially the articles in greatest demand, such as tobacco, chocolate, bacon and tea. Many an SS man employed in package inspection shipped home his booty by the crate-load.

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The solicitude of the families of the prisoners was touching. They sent whatever they could, often enough food they could ill spare from their frugal rations. Substantial quantities of food were received from rural sections and certain planned collections, especially for the Czechs from Bohemia and Moravia. In the end, the impossibility of maintaining rigid package inspection did much to help some of the camps to en dure to the end. The shipments, however, also resulted in harsh conflict, feuds and bitter enmity along nationality lines, since they were never large enough for general distribution.

In the course of time money and news began to trickle into camp regularly through this unauthorized channel. In the summer of 1944 all incoming packages were suddenly seized and in Buchenwald alone more than five hundred illegal letters were found. They were submitted to the Political Department for scrutiny—many of them were in foreign languages, especially Czech. The camp was threatened with a major disaster, averted only by an air attack which burned to the ground the building where the letters were stored.

Only once, in the winter of 1939-40, was permission granted to have warm clothing shipped in, and of this much soon disappeared. Late in 1941 the SS professed to believe that as the result of parcel-post shipments the camps were adequately supplied with warm underwear. It therefore graciously con descended to extend to the ostracized camps Hitler’s appeal
S o t
woolens for the German army in the east. This invitation was transmitted to the barracks by the Senior Block Inmates in approximately the following way: “ We must contribute voluntarily to this collection. Those who do will receive a favorable entry in their files. Those who don’t will go to the whipping post. Suit yourselves!”

There were some twelve thousand prisoners in Buchenwald at the time, and they got together an impressive pile, com mended in the local Nazi press as a “ contribution from SS headquarters, Buchenwald.” Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Dutch Barracks, however, firmly and unanimously declined to contribute. The SS took no action against the Dutch, but the Witnesses were punished by having to stand in the cold roll-call area on New Year’s Day, by fatigue drill and labor deep into the night. This was the verdict of the Roll Call Of-