The Theory and Practice of Hell (57 page)

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL
245

fashioned of human bones for his own use, with a shade of human skin. The business got to be so popular among the SS that Muller received detailed suggestions about it from Berlin. Hundreds of human skins, prepared in different ways, were sent to Berlin, at the request of the Chief Medical Officer for concentration camps, SS Colonel Lolling. Muller also in structed Stockel and another prisoner working in the Pathology Section to prepare penknife cases and similar articles from human skin. Lolling, on his part, requested a written report on methods of shrinking human heads to the size of an orange, the art once practiced by South Sea can nibals. There was source material on this subject in American literature, which was located and sent to Lolling. The SS physicians then proceeded to prepare a number of heads by this process. There were three of these at Buchenwald, of which two were still in existence when the camp was liberated.

Bodies that had not been dissected, together with those that had served “ scientific purposes/’ were cremated. The service personnel for the actual combustion chambers always con sisted of convicts. When cremations did not take place daily, huge mountains of bodies sometimes accumulated. The crematory was fueled with coke, and the “ unholy flame of Buchenwald” sometimes leaped up three feet beyond the smokestack. The prisoners regarded the spectacle with a mix ture of horror and apathy. It was a common subject for jokes in the roll-call area. Conclusions were drawn from the shape of the escaping smoke clouds as to the type of prisoner being cremated. “ That must be a Jehovah’s Witness, snaking up like that!” “ Well, well, that foreign-legion man seems to be having a hard time shuffling off this mortal coil!” . . . “ You’ll be hitting the grate” or “ You’ll be going up the stack” were common phrases in camp. During roll call the Roll Call officer would often shout over the public-address system to the convicts who worked in the crematory and who never appeared in the line: “ You birds in the crematory, stick your heads out the windows!” Whereupon the crew would pick up bodies and hold them out the windows. Such scenes were typical of the atmosphere in which the final rites for thousands were enacted.

Nor was there any dignity attending the shipment of the ashes to the families, which was sometimes requested. One of

246
EUGEN KOGON

-Y

the convict attendants would simply scoop up a handful of ashes from the great common pile, drop it into a box and send it to the post office. At Auschwitz the crematory ashes were in part used for surfacing the roads in camp, or they were sold near by as fertilizer.

When cremation had been accomplished, the Political Department was notified and the cremation certificate made out by the Camp Medical Officer was forwarded. The local county registry would make out a death certificate, unless the victim happened to be a Russian, a Pole or a non-German Jew. In the final phase only German citizens and Czechs rated such certificates. Some staff member of the Political Depart ment would then have the standard "letter of condolence” typed:

Dear M rs.
______

Your husband,
______,
died in the Camp Hospital on

______.
May I express my sincere sympathy on your bereavement.

______
was admitted to the Hospital o n
______
with severe symptoms o f exhaustion, complaining o f difficulty in breathing and o f pains in the chest. Despite competent medication and devoted medical attention it proved im possible, unfortunately, to keep the patient alive.

The deceased voiced nofinal requests.

The Camp Commandant:
______

During the final months at Buchenwald there was a critical shortage of coal. Bodies began to pile up in large numbers, and the rats got into them, holding out a serious threat of epidemic. Himmler gave special authorization for emergency burial in mass graves. Cremation continued at a greatly reduced volume. It was generally limited to German citizens. As one sentimental crematory sergeant put it, Germans could hardly be expected to lie in the same graves with Jews.

Chapter Nineteen STATISTICS OF M ORTALITY

Statistics of mortality in the concentration camp hospitals would be of extrordinary interest. Unfortunately records were kept only incompletely, if at all—and not on valid scientific principles. (Camp statisticians, too, were selected by political and personal criteria rather than because of their technical qualifications.) Only a portion of the records from the con centration camps has been preserved at all. Perhaps the best insight would be afforded by the statistical material collected in Section III of Department D of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office—if the SS did not succeed in burning it. Even this can be accepted only with reservations, and none but a few old camp inmates would be able to evaluate it ac curately. But the Chief Medical Officer for concentration camps did receive monthly and quarterly reports from all the Camp Medical Officers, even though it must be noted that these statistics were compiled by prisoners.

The fragmentary material at hand may, nevertheless, serve as the basis for a first effort to arrive at an approximate calculation of the total number of deaths in the concentration camps.

A circular letter signed by SS Brigadier-General Kruger

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EUGEN KOGON

from Section III of Department D of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, dated December 28, 1942, was written at Himmler’s orders and dealt with war manpower considerations:

%

Mortality in the individual camps must be sharply reduced. The number o f prisoners must be brought up to the level ordered by the Reich Leader SS. Chief Camp Medical Officers must exert every effort to this end. . . . The best Camp Medical Officer is not he who believes he must draw attention by inappropriate harshness, but he who maintains work capacity at as high a level as possible, by supervision and exchange among the various details.

The letter was directed to the Camp Medical Officers and Commandants of Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Neuengamme, Ravensbriick, Flossenbiirg, Lublin, Stutthof, Gross-Rosen, Natzweiler, Hinzert, Moringen, Herzogenbusch, Mauthausen and two others I am unable to iden tify from the abbreviations “ Bu” and “ Nied.” Enclosed with it was an illuminating table, covering the months from June to November, 1942.

I have corrected four errors in addition involving several thousand prisoners one way or the other. It should be noted that the outright death camps, such as Auschwitz and Maidanek, are not included in the tabulation.

S
t r e n g t h
T
a b l e

June to November 1942

Additions
Subtractions

Month

Admis Trans Total
Dis
Trans Died Exe Total

sions
fers In
char
fers out cuted l ges

J
une................ 10,322 2,575 12,897 773 2,903 4,080 243 7,899

July................. 25,716
6,254
31,970 907 4,340 8,536 477 14,260

August........... 25,407 2,742
28,149
581 2,950 12,733 99 16,363

Septem ber... 16,763 6,438 23,201 652 6,805 22,598 144 30,199

October......... 13,873 5,345 19,218
1,089
6,334 11,858 5,954 25,235

N ovem ber... 17,780 4,565 22,345 809 5,514 10,805 2,350 19,478

Totals........ 109,861
27,919
137,780 4,711 28,846 70,610 9,267 113,434

1
In the original this column is coyly designated simply as E.

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL
249

Statistical evaluation of this table is not as simple as the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office may have thought. The accompanying letter states that the table “ shows some 70,000 deaths (the executions are omitted!) of 136,000 ad missions (should be more than 137,000!).” As stated this is in correct, since old prisoners died as well as newcomers and transfers. To obtain the absolute and relative values, it would be necessary to add the monthly strength figures for the camps concerned. The table does show that in sixteen large and medium-sized German concentration camps, during six months of 1942:

(1) There were 109,861 prisoners newly admitted.

(2) Only 4,711 were discharged during the same period.

(3) Of all the inmates, 9,267 were officially executed.

(4) About 28,000 were transferred between camps.

(5) A total of 70,610 prisoners were marked off the books as having died.

It is certain that a considerable number of the deaths were among the prisoners transferred. There were few ordeals that affected prisoner health as severely as these transfer ship ments between camps. Assuming that half of the transferred prisoners died during the period in question, i.e., around 14,000, this would leave more than 56,000 old and newly ad mitted prisoners who perished. Almost 80,000 deaths as com pared to scarcely 5,000 releases, and this in only part of the existing camps—here we catch a glimpse of the balance sheet of Nazi mass murder.

Within this narrow scope of time and camps, the net gain in SS slaves therefore was:

Additions
Subtractions

4,711 Discharges

9,267 Executions

Total. . . . 109,861 T otal................. 84,588

Net Gain.........25,273

Something had to be done about this small increase, ex-pecially in view of the shrinking front which was steadily reducing the area from which new slaves might be levied. This explains the motives for the circular letter cited, with its in junction against “ inappropriate harshness” and its warning to improve food and working conditions for the prisoners.