The Theory and Practice of Hell (73 page)

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doned their reserve and under no circumstance went as far as actual familiarity. The basic enmity and the things that had happened and were still happening were never forgotten.

The great majority o f the men in the camps were filled with an unimaginable thirst for vengeance—the psychological escape mechanism o f helplessness. Tortured men wracked their brains for new, unparalleled, infinitely fiendish torments which they would some day inflict on those who were now venting their cruel whims on them. This thirst for revenge ex tended to the entire Nazi regime and all its adherents, but it always crystallized around the individual SS man.

Very few were ever able to rise above this psychological escape mechanism. Coupled with the inhuman reality o f the concentration camp, it slowly brought about in many old con centrationaries, especially those who were camp func tionaries, a curious friend-enemy assimilation. The opposite types retaining their basically hostile orientation, developed similarities in primitive thought and emotion, in outward drill conduct, in tone, in corruption. Paradoxically enough, a curious “ gratitude conflict” developed in certain cases of the closest approximation, such as between SS Camp Medical Of ficers and concentration-camp prisoners, when collaboration resulted in positive aid or even no more than amelioration to individuals or the camp as a whole. The SS member continued to be hated.The inmate knew that a world separated the two partners, yet did not desire that his opposite number should be personally included in the revenge plan.

This mental conflict, if the individual grew aware of it, was generally utilized for purposes o f cold calculation in which the partner was regarded as a mere tool, or it resulted, if possible, in an even sharper rejection of all other SS men. Such re actions and considerations might often precipitate the prisoner into profound mental turmoil, but these were only passing camp stimuli, not sustained and not strong enough to give rise to types. When the camps were liberated, there were virtually no instances in which prisoners committed excesses against captured SS men. On the contrary, the SS men were simply, though sometimes triumphantly, handed over to the Allied soldiers. As for the “ exceptions” —those SS men to whom a certain degree of obligation was felt—at best in tercession was purely oral.

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There is one psychological puzzle in the attitude of the prisoners toward the SS that is very hard to explain and that requires discussion because of its general character. With a few altogether insignificant exceptions, the prisoners, no mat ter in what form they were led to execution, whether singly, in groups or in masses, never fought back! As has already been stressed, the failure of men who felt a sense of political responsibility to do such a thing is quite understandable. Nor is it hard to understand in the case of that relatively large group of men who had long since lost any real will to survive. In the camps they were called “ Moslems” —men of un conditional fatalism, men whose wills were broken.

Yet there were thousands of others who had by no means relapsed into fatal apathy. Nevertheless, in mass liquidations they went to their death with open eyes, without assaulting the enemy in a final paroxysm, without a sign of fight. Is this not in conflict with human nature, such as we know it? If at least it had been the spirit of religion that enabled them to accept their fate, inwardly resolute, outwardly serene! In the face of inevitable death, the man of religion, surrendering mortal life to step before his divine master and judge, has no desire for the toils of conflict with the earthly enemy he leaves behind. Nor does he seek, by murder, to enforce the escort of his enemy to the hereafter, where, in the light of faith, other stan dards apply than in this vale of tears, struggle and guilt. Already consecrated to death, he would feel dishonored by the blood his hands sought to shed at the last moment.

But there is not an inkling that the masses cut down by the SS were religious in this sense. Yet they did not offer re sistance. Try to comprehend the following incident: the ad ministration of a Jewish camp in the Lublin district was threatened with an investigation by top SS authorities, because of a far-flung graft scandal. There was the danger that prisoners might offer damaging testimony. The SS of ficers thereupon in a single day destroyed the entire camp with its forty thousand inmates. According to the statement of SS Major Morgen, the Jews unresistingly lay down in rows on the heaps of bodies of those who had already been massacred and allowed themselves to be shot. They made the job easy for their butchers, and not a hand was raised.

From a psychological point of view, the incident seems

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hardly conceivable. The prisoners, after all, were not in a state of hypnosis. But it seems to be a fact that a mass never has any will of its own unless it is imposed from without or by in dividuals within its ranks. Mental power—insight as well as resolution—is a quality of the individual and unless it is in tegrated by leaders it declines rather than grows with in creasing numbers. In the mass the individual becomes as nothing. He feels no more sense of personal responsibility. He feels dissolved and sheltered as he follows the trend o f the whole, even into the abyss. It requires altogether ex traordinary personal qualifications to rise consciously above the drift of a mass. Moreover panic, which experience shows appears at the moment o f acute danger, has a paralyzing ef fect on reason and will power. In such emergencies leaders can hardly prevail even among smaller groups. In a concentration camp the complete hopelessness of finding any way out could only reinforce this tendency toward paralysis. The Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto shows that the forces of resistance do awaken and can be organized whenever there is the least leeway and time for planning. But where these fac tors are lacking the situation becomes inexorably hopeless.

It may be objected that such a mass liquidation as that in the eastern camp must have allowed at least part of the prisoners a few hours’ time during which they might have closed ranks. But the counter-argument lies in the partial anonymity of the measure. No one knew whether this was merely another “ selection” or whether the camp as a whole was to be annihilated. As a result each individual was able to entertain the hope that he and some o f the others might escape, as had happened so many times before. And once a group of victims—200, 500, 1,000, arbitrarily picked out—plodded off to the mountain of corpses that was to become their execution ground, then it no longer mattered whether one leaped out o f ranks to be shot down by the SS or whether one lay down in a naked row on rows of naked bodies. What was the value of an act of will that denoted no more than hysterical despair? The very thought o f such a thing was stifled. Collective death mercifully paralyzed its vic tims, froze them to the bone and the marrow.

Men always find it harder to explain death than life. The

ever-present closeness of death in the camps had a smaller ef-

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feet on men who had to get used to it in order to live, than did the relationship to their environment. For death, even when it lurks around the comer every day and we know about it, is a thing that happens but once, while life continues shaping out minds without a let-up in a thousand variations. Even the out side world, from which the concentration-camp prisoner was almost completely cut off, had a greater normalizing effect on him than did the danger of death. This o f course is only meant in an anomalous sense, for actually there was no chance for sustained interaction with the outside world.

The prisoner was full of resentment toward the outside

world. He had a sense of having been abandoned. Did anyone pay any attention to him on the outside? Ah, they went on living without giving him a thought! What did they know about the bitter reality that faced him every moment? To hell with them and their knuckling under to the regime, their profit-sharing compact! They sang and drank, went on Sun day picnics, to the movies, the theater, the concert. They laughed and made merry, while here—while here . . . yes, here.. . . Such thoughts often rankled with the outcasts. They deeply affected his habitual reactions. This explains many a clash, not only among the prisoners in the camps, but after the liberation within the families and in public.

A hundred different incidents and measures fostered the prisoner’s sense of inferiority, intensified the complexity of his reactions toward the “ free” outside world. He wore prison stripes and had his head shorn. In some camps he had to wear a coxcomb, an inch-wide strip of hair down the other wise shaven skull; or a so-called “ Pister part,” an inch-wide strip shorn out of the otherwise uncut hair. This was the ap pearance he had to present to the population while working in outside details.

Many prisoners, of course, were able to counter this in feriority complex only by asserting a sense of superiority. When I was en route with a group of from sixty to one hun dred men, all of us, neglected-looking and chained with steel shackles, led across German streets and squares, kept standing in railroad stations for half an hour at a time while the people watched us with mingled fear and contempt sis though we were criminals—at such times I never gave way to a feeling of shame. On the contrary, I felt a deep pride in having

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been proscribed by such a regime, in having been cast out of such a society, in being despised by these “ law-abiding citizens.”

Ours was the path of honor in the midst of political, moral and human disgrace. True we had not chosen it of our own free will—who would ever make such a choice? But we discovered the inherent virtue in necessity. In some prisoners the dishonor of segregation turned into an exaggerated sense of superiority. In their helpless situation they projected their claim to exclusive worth, if not leadership, into the future. Applied to the present, it not only was incapable of realization—it seemed like the sheerest folly. This trend ap peared quite independently of any appropriate personal qualifications. On the contrary, it might be said that the frequency and intensity of such claims were in inverse propor tion to qualification. From a psychological point of view, all these trends, when placed against the reality of the con centration camp, almost inevitably led to a revolutionary outlook that left no aspect of the outside world untouched in its wishful plans. Experience, the thirst for vengeance, political orientation and habit combined into powerful im pulses for the overthrow of the hated order. Among minds that were more self-critical and less optimistic about the course of history, such impulses took the form of serious planning for reforms.