The Theory and Practice of Hell (35 page)

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THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL 143

difficulties that faced them, but by a sense of having become altogether useless and superfluous. The fate awaiting the sick prisoner was common knowledge. His death sentence could be pronounced at any moment, chiefly by the very figure to whom the sick the world over look for relief—the physician. “ There are no sick men in my camp,” Koch used to say. “ They are either well or dead!” Most of the SS medical of ficers acted on this precept.

The prisoner hospital was called the
Revier.
It was shunned

like the plague by all but those very few prisoners who were thoroughly familiar with its workings and maintained good personal connections with the staff.

Sick call was a hazardous business in many of the camps. The Buchenwald hospital, for example, from 1938 on, was located in the wooded grove remaining inside the compound. If the patient succeeded in getting time off from his detail, in the first place, he had to pick his way through knee-deep mud, over fallen trees and snags, to get to the infirmary. The single gravel path was reserved for the SS physicians and staff. Any prisoner caught using it was kicked off. Once arrived, the prisoners had to stand in long lines out in the open, exposed to every weather, their shoes nevertheless required to be im maculate. It was simply not possible to treat all the sick, and there were always prisoners among the waiting who were merely trying to shirk work, for wholly understandable reasons. A robust hospital guard therefore proceeded with the first radical weeding-out process.

In the course of the forenoon, the SS Medical Officer might condescend to put in his appearance. He was usually vociferous about how he despised the “ dirty” business of prisoner practice. He would conduct his own winnowing process, dealing out slaps and kicks right and left. Those who had neither voluntarily departed nor been chased away were admitted as indubitably sick.

Before entering the building, prisoners had to remove their shoes. Shoes were often enough stolen or mixed up, another disaster. Some of the patients then appeared before the prisoner medical staff; the remaining exceptional cases were presented to the SS physician for examination. Patients had to strip in the unheated hallways. There they had to wait, naked, until their turn came. It took a hardened constitution to face

this preliminary treatment, which could readily add pneumonia to what might have been a minor ailment.

Out-patient treatment itself was conducted by prisoner per sonnel. Within the existing limitations, everything possible was done, though often enough by the rough-and-ready maxim “ Above the belly button: aspirin; below: castor oil.” There were creditable exceptions, however, in every camp.

Dental treatment varied greatly from camp to camp. Generally speaking, it came into operation only at a late date—some camps never had it at all. The hospital personnel usually lacked all dental knowledge and treated the prisoners according to their lights. Aching teeth were simply pulled—if they were found! Often enough sound teeth were extracted. It was common for diseased teeth to be broken off, so that the impacted roots might have to be pulled years later.

The Dachau concentration camp got a dental clinic of its

own at an early date. In Buchenwald such a clinic was established in June 1939, with the latest equipment but no trained personnel. The first SS “ dentist” there was SS Technical Sergeant Coldewey who had never practiced before and who conducted his first experiments on the prisoners. His imcompetence was matched only by his sadism. Patients had to do fatigue drill before treatment! Scarcely one of his ex tractions succeeded, making extensive operations necessary at a later date. Whenever he discovered a gold tooth, he would extract it at once, remarking that the tooth could not be saved. There was no chance to protest, of course. A regulation was posted at the entrance to the dental clinic, making it an of fense to refuse to obey the instructions of the SS dentist.

On orders from Himmler, dated September 23, 1940, and

December 23, 1942, SS dentists had to remove gold teeth from the bodies of dead prisoners. They were also empowered to extract from the living dental gold “ incapable of repair.” Available monthly reports of the Buchenwald Camp Medical Officer show that from six to seventeen ounces of gold a month were obtained there alone from this source. Among other things, Commandant Koch had a collegiate “ beer-fob” for his watch chain made from this gold. In a symbolic gesture, the birth dates of his children were engraved on it.

Prisoners plundered in this way had a ridiculously small

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL 145

amount credited to their accounts. Dental gold from the dead was carefully assembled, with full data on the name, origin and number of the deceased, and sent to Berlin headquarters with a weight certificate. There it was melted down into new dental gold. The ghouls plied their trade in the most precise and bureaucratic way.

Prisoner dentists and dental aids gradually found their way into the clinics, and in the course of the years matters reached a point where not only were prisoners no longer treated by SS men, but SS men were actually treated by prisoner dentists. Such prisoner specialists were even sent around from camp to camp. They did much valuable illegal work—dentures and bridges for prisoners whose teeth the SS had knocked out or who had lost them in the general low state of health.

Ward treatment in the prisoner hospital always presented serious problems. There were never enough beds, and only the worst cases could be admitted. The main criterion was tem perature. Only the Camp Medical Officers had authority to admit patients to the hospital. But since they were often unavailable or took no interest, this authority in some camps gradually slipped into the hands of the Hospital Capo (chief of the prisoner detail).

At the Auschwitz concentration camp, admission to the wards took place in the following fashion: The patients re ported to the out-patients’ clinic at night and were hurriedly examined by a prisoner physician. If they were in very poor condition, they were admitted at once and placed in a so-called reception ward. The others were sent away. In the reception ward the patients lay side by side without distinc tion—typhus, dysentery, pneumonia, fractured leg—it did not matter. Usually some of them died before they could be presented to the SS physician.

The next morning the reception-ward cases and those patients who had been sent away, although admitted in prin ciple, returned to the out-patients’ clinic, where they had to wait naked on the stone floor—arranged by nationality rather than symptoms!—until His Honor, the Camp Medical Of ficer, deigned to put in an appearance. When he arrived at last, each patient had to present his Sick Card. The SS man would then make his selection: right, left, right, left. One side

146
EUGEN
KOGON

was admitted to the hospital, the other immediately given fatal injections. No sooner was this ceremony over, than the cards of the killed were sent to the orderly room with the notation: “ Scratch!”

Small wonder that the right to admit patients to a ward was a matter of extreme importance to the Hospital Capos.

Work in all the camp hospitals was difficult, and involved, above all, much responsibility. Initially hospital equipment everywhere was more than primitive, and for years it con tinued to be inadequate. There was a particular shortage of drugs. Wherever possible these were pilfered from the SS hospitals or straight from the crates at the SS medical depots. Only gradually could surgery be practiced—in Buchenwald not until 1939.

The SS medical staff was headed by the Chief Medical Of ficer of the
Waffen SS
units assigned to the camp. The Camp Medical Officer was his subordinate. Occasionally the two functions were combined. The
Waffen SS
medical officer was independent of camp headquarters, which occasionally opened the door to influence and intervention of vast significance, and also made possible co-operation between the prisoners detailed to the SS hospital and those working in the prisoner hospital. When necessary, a Second and Third Camp Medical Officer might be assigned, as well as several grades of SS noncommissioned medical personnel. In every camp a few of these noncoms achieved notoriety.

A few words on the quality of the Camp Medical Officers are in order, since their names will be mentioned time and again. Their activities were seldom limited to a single camp. They were frequently shifted or were placed in charge of several subsidiary camps. This is true, for example, of SS Lieutenant-Colonel Kirchert, SS Major Ding (who later took the name Schuler), SS Second Lieutenant Wagner, SS First Lieutenant Eysele, SS Captain Hoven,1 SS Captain Plaza, SS Captain Schiedlausky. They differed greatly in character and professional qualifications. Generally speaking, they were more adept at feathering their own nests than at healing, and usually their skill lay in killing rather than in saving. There were a very few who could not stomach the situation and

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1 Hoven was hanged in 1948.— 7>.