The Theory and Practice of Hell (32 page)

128
EUGEN KOGON

fleers: “ You arch criminals, you heavenly sons of bitches, you’ll slave tonight until dark at four degrees below! Take off your underwear at once!” This was done. In addition, when the Witnesses moved back into camp that night, they had to turn in their leather shoes for the cumbersome wooden clogs. They were also removed from all the preferred details, but this had to be rescinded a few days later, when it was found that they were indispensable.

From 1942 on, Red Cross packages began to arrive in the camps in increasing numbers. They were addressed only to non-Germans whose names and identification numbers were known to the Red Cross organizations of their homelands or to the International Red Cross at Geneva. Occasionally Ger mans, Poles and Austrians received such shipments. Packages frequently arrived for addressees who had died, and sometimes these were distributed among certain details—the SS, of course, keeping the lion’s share. Since receipt of the packages was supposed to be acknowledged on special printed cards, the prisoners in question always added their barracks and serial numbers, with the result that some of them seem to have been included in the Geneva lists.

When the International Red Cross asked for an accounting, it developed that in Buchenwald alone at least seven carloads—probably twenty-one to twenty-three thousand packages—were unaccounted for. In April 1945, when the front drew near, it was amusing to watch the SS officers fran tically clear their offices of telltale empty Red Cross cartons.

Understandably, these packages with their wonderful con tents at first caused sharp conflicts to develop among the prisoners. A wave of gratitude swept through the camp when the French comrades agreed to surrender a substantial portion of their share to the other barracks. But for weeks actual distribution remained something of a scandal. For example, the Frenchmen in the Little Camp were particularly badly off. Yet they received but one package for every ten men, while the prisoners entrusted with the distribution, with the aid of cer tain Frenchmen, reserved whole stacks for themselves and their “ big shot” friends.

In contrast to parcel post, letter mail between the prisoners and their next of kin was always permitted in principle, though severely restricted. Messages could be written twice a

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month, in most camps a letter and a postcard in turn, each with a prescribed number of lines. The messages could discuss only family affairs. Not a word was permitted about the camp or the conditions in it. The space allotted to the prisoner’s message on both cards and letters was further curtailed by a long printed excerpt from the so-called Camp Regula tions—no prisoners had ever seen a full copy of them. It stated that the prisoner could buy everything in camp and therefore could receive money. The amount was not specified. As already pointed out, no more than thirty marks a month was paid out to a prisoner. Families were led to believe that they could send as much money as they liked. The surplus stuck to the fingers of the SS.

The mails were closed to Jehovah’s Witnesses until after 1939, when they were permitted to write one letter of twenty-five words a month to their families. Jews were often not per mitted to write letters for months at a time. Members of the penal company could write only once every three months. From time to time, on some pretext or other, mail privileges for the entire camp were suspended.

Prisoners frequently got only cut-up clippings of their in coming letter, or even an empty envelope, the result of SS cen sorship. This was a particular trial. Yet such letters as did get through sometimes brought disaster.

One of the prisoners, Johann Stiirzer, was deeply concerned about his aged mother and his sister who now had to farm his seven acres of vineyard without him. He was a thirty-two- year-old wine grower, a member of a Christian-German gym nastic club from Lower Austria, who stood accused of having interfered with a radio broadcast on April 8, 1938, when Hitler exhorted the Austrian people to approve the
Anschluss
by one hundred per cent participation in the plebiscite two days later. Sent to Dachau and Buchenwald, he spent two years in the penal company where he contracted a severe case of lumbago. Two of us often had to support him on either side and drag him to the roll-call area.

One day he got a reproachful letter from his family who had been advised that he would have long since been released, except for his poor conduct. They appealed to him to be a “ good boy,” not to grieve his poor mother, to “ obey his superiors” and so on. All the arguments were recited in the

tone of a loyal, well-meaning, simple-minded old mother who had fallen for the lies of the Gestapo.

The situation profoundly affected Stiirzer and he slunk

about in a state of extreme depression. The Senior Block In mate, who disliked him, reported that he had gone insane. Stiirzer was taken to the hospital, where he was given a fatal injection as “ feeble-minded.” Four men had to hold down the poor fellow so that the poison could be squirted into his veins. Telegrams, special-delivery letters, and the like, could bring serious consequences for the addressee. On Christmas Day, 1939, a Viennese friend of mine was called to the gatehouse, he did not know why. For two full days he had to stand motionless, with not a scrap of food throughout the day until at last he was handed a telegram announcing the death of his

father.

On another occasion Roll Call Officer Hackmann told a prisoner that his brother had died. The prisoner asked which brother—he had several. The Roll Call Officer said: “ Take your pick!” Kubitz, a Buchenwald Block Leader, sometimes came into Barracks 36 with a stack of mail for the inmates. He would read off the names and then slip the whole stack into the stove, saying, “ Now you know you’ve had mail, you swine!”

Mail censorship was entirely at the whim of the SS men detailed to it. Some of them were only semi-literate. Only in the rarest cases were outgoing letters and cards that fell afoul of censorship returned to the prisoners, so that they never knew whether their painstakingly composed and compressed messages had reached their families. This meant weeks of anxiety; worse still, prisoners were haunted by doubt as to the fate of their families. They lost faith in the fidelity of wives who were often encouraged with the most brazen lies by the Gestapo to seek divorce. They lacked all news of children whose living memory had already begun to pale. This war of nerves represented one of the most demoralizing hazards of camp life. Small wonder that even at the risk of death prisoners sought time and again to smuggle letters out of camp. Prisoner Foremen who worked in outside labor details and enjoyed a certain freedom of movement were the favorite go-betweens; or it might be necessary to find a prisoner who had bribed an SS man.

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There is but one known Buchenwald case in which an SS man stood ready to accept all the risks of such intercession, from pure humanitarianism and for no material con sideration. He was SS Sergeant August Feld of Lummerschied near Saarbriicken, a courier assigned to a special Buchenwald detachment rather than to the station complement. He was a man of integrity in every respect, who helped in many ways and performed deeds of valor for a large number of prisoners. During the last few days of the camp he risked his life for us.

v

Chapter Twelve "RECREATION"

Concentration-camp life was a matter of unending slave labor, of a constant struggle for naked survival. The penal companies had virtually no leisure time whatever. And often the entire camp had to report for additional work after mess and deep into the night. Floodlights glared over the terrain to provide the necessary illumination for work and control. After 1939 night work at Buchenwald was a “ privilege” of the Jews, until in 1942, the prisoner administration succeeded in having other prisoner categories included. Henceforth the Jews had to work only two or three nights a week. Though the efficiency of this night work was nil, of course, it succeeded in destroying not only leisure time but even sleep.