The Theory and Practice of Hell (75 page)

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EUGEN KOGON

What could be more plausible than the whispered Nazi propaganda, falling on fertile soil and constantly gaining in persuasiveness, that the trials were merely for show, while in truth events were tragically repeating themselves?

Success might at least have attended the effort to keep cause and effect apart in German public awareness, had it not been attempted to “ denazify” the whole nation. In 1945 the Allies prevented a spontaneous, revolutionary purge in Germany. Instead, in 1946 and the ensuing years they went ahead, ac cording to four different preconceived plans, based partly on notions of collective, partly of individual guilt, with a formal judicial process that did profound harm not only to the sense of justice but also to political life in general. The entire nation was driven over hurdles of questionnaires; more than half of all men and women above the age of eighteen were charac terized as “ liable” ; the task of “ liberation from National Socialism and militarism” became the concern of a minority of the people, while absolution from denazification pro ceedings was the concern of the majority!

And what about the “ activists” of the vanquished system? The notion prevailed that they must be placed in custody on the basis of “ automatic arrest” categories, by rank and office held in the Nazi hierarchy, rather than on the basis of their ac tual offenses. Hundreds of thousands who had held formal membership in the Nazi party or one of its auxiliaries, or who had held some other office in the ramified machinery of the Third Reich for which every German had worked in some form or other, had to await formal denazification proceedings to prove that they had not been “ activists,” meanwhile losing their income, often their homes, their furniture, and the right — to dispose of their property. Meanwhile tens of thousands of other small and middling Nazis and Nazi adherents were in in ternment camps under “ automatic arrest.” It took years before those who were really guilty were picked from their ranks. If the verdicts of the denazification chambers in the in ternment camps are admitted as proof of guilt or innocence, then at best three or four per cent of those interned up to three years were “ activists.”

There were scarcely two dozen internment camps in the United States, British and French zones of occupation, but

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they developed into veritable festering sores in the land. No one knows how it happened that in 1947 an estimated 120,000 suspects were interned in them, about one-tenth of the total in their categories, while nine-tenths in the identical categories were at liberty. A substantial number of major offenders, especially members of the German Security Service
(Sicherheits Dienst
or SD), have never been located. They roam the country unrecognized. Occasionally one of them is arrested. Quite a few seem to have escaped abroad—to Sweden, Spain, South America.

At times a sharp public controversy raged about these camps. Anti-Nazis demanded rapid sifting of the internees by means of orderly judicial process, opportunity for the prisoners to work if they so desired, and a program of genuinely democratic re-education for those willing to learn. Little or nothing was done in these respects. Broad segments of the population were righteously indignant that the camps existed at all, that living conditions in them were less than per fect, and that their inmates were suffering real or supposed “ injustices.” There was talk about the “ new concentration camps,” without the slightest distinction being made—which truly meant shutting one’s eyes. The internees were described as “ politically persecuted,” as though internment in an in cipient democracy could be compared with extermination and slavery under the Fascist dictatorship. Those who rejected or resented democracy, who closed their minds to the fact and the horror of the Nazi concentration camps, now lent sym pathy, compassion, and support to the interned Nazis, storm troopers, and SS men. Under pressure of the charge of collec tive guilt and the constant official admonitions to atone for the atrocities that stained the name of Germany, this was in a sense, a process of overcompensating for an earlier lack of a sense of justice and humanity.

“ Denazification” has now been concluded. The internment camps have been dissolved, except for a few labor camps for convicted major offenders. This end has been attained by virtue of a profusion of often contradictory policy decisions—extensions, limitations, and ameliorations, amnesties and assembly-line proceedings without trial. But it must be stated that there are no signs whatever of the

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adherents of Nazism and militarism having forsaken their convictions. Inequities are common on every hand, and no one is really in a position to say whether those from whom retribution has been exacted deserve it or not.

The basic error was rooted in the false start. Germans, in the full knowledge of the circumstances, should have initiated and executed the purge against the guilty minority, and it alone—not Allies, no matter how sincere and well-intentioned, to whom the German masses could not but ap pear uniformly black or grey. The irreparable consequence of this error was the abysmal failure of the Germans con cerned—the majority of the German people. Concentration camps of yore—were they still worth mentioning at all? In the confusion most Germans lost all standards of comparison, and those who had never had any failed to gain them.

And then there were the Russian realities in the eastern zone! Buchenwald remained in existence, as did Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg, Torgau and Ravensbrtick. A few camps were actually expanded, others newly built. There are now probably six main camps and altogether at least a dozen subsidiary camps and camp-like prisons, with presumably a core of more than 100,000 inmates and at times apparently up to 250,000 prisoners, deportations to Soviet Russia taking place at arbitrary intervals. Is the system directed only against former Nazis? It appears to embrace anyone suspected as an “ enemy of the state,” an “ agent of a foreign power,” a “ class enemy,” a “ kulak,” or similar categories.

These facts have become more and more widely known among the German people. Until late 1946 the licensed press in the three other zones of occupation was not permitted to write about them. That would have been “ criticism of an Allied power.” Since 1947, when the conflict with the Russians came into the open, such criticism has not only been permitted but actually desired. But the German people had their own ideas even before then. There was a conspiracy of silence—another enforced silence, so far as they were con cerned. They took note of the fact that the Western Allies failed to lift a finger, that their representatives on the Control Council neither demanded an investigation, nor protested, nor intervened actively. At least, if there was any such action,

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THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL
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no one learned of it, just as had been the case under the Nazi regime, when there had likewise been protests and petitions, characterized in 1945 as “ insignificant,” “ showing no special sign of courage,” “ without value.”

To any man of good will, concerned with the common welfare, the similarity grew frightening. Late in 1947 and early in 1948 I asked Communists with whom I served for years in Buchenwald, as well as leading members of the Socialist Unity party, dominant in the eastern zone—likewise onetime political prisoners—what they thought of these developments. Some stated that dangerous political op ponents must always be put behind bars and rendered harmless. They admitted frankly that on this score their methods did not differ from those of the Nazis. If such be their general opinion, I should like to know why the Nazis are suddenly expected to be horrified over the concentration camps from 1933 to 1945! The difference, I was told, is that prisoner must not be treated badly. But are they treated well in the MVD camps? True, in many respects the system does not appear to be as brutal as it was under the Nazis. There is no gassing, no garroting, no hanging, no wholesale shooting. But it is bad enough. Hundreds of Poles and German prisoners of war who have escaped the hell—for every highly organized system has its loopholes—have brought reports from Soviet Russia. Dozens have made statements about similar camps in the eastern zone. It is argued that these are all exaggerations—an argument that has a familiar ring. The great mass of prisoners is stated to consist of incorrigible enemies of the state—again a familiar argument. Of course there are injustices, but what can be done in the face of the decrees of secret police? This too we have heard before—ap plied to the all-powerful Gestapo.

It is those who were persecuted by the Nazi regime for their race, religion, or political convictions who are the chosen fighters against such injustice and barbarism. It is they who must raise their voices against the new and glaring injustices throughout the world and in Germany, particularly against Soviet Russia and the eastern zone! Their protests cannot fail to register an impression and bring results. Intervention from this side would be more effective than from any other source.

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So many others would be suspect, because of their own prior guilt or weakness, and because ordinary protests so often carry overtones of political propaganda.

But here we touch upon another sore point. German and European opposition to Fascism no longer carries its old political and moral force. Anti-Fascism has failed to develop into a new vanguard in the postwar years. For the most part it has fallen under the spell of contending groups. Such “ anti-Fascist action” as is maintained commands little respect among the broad masses of the people, because it fails to op pose the new injustices. Hence it finds little support even in its struggle against the surviving and very real remnants of Fascism in general.

It would be short-sighted, of course, to ignore the fact that political developments throughout the world have made the situation extraordinarily difficult. The conflict between East and West demands personal partisanship on the part of vir tually everyone and makes it difficult to fight against in justice, wherever it raises its head. Far worse than that, it serves almost inevitably to spread totalitarian methods— discrimination, distortion, false alternatives, blindness toward the nuances of reality. It drives the Soviet Russians deeper into radicalism and the Western democrats into alliances with semi-Facists. If this process continues, it will not be long before the vanquished Germans are openly drawn into the defensive systems and other deployments of the contending opponents. In the case of the German police in the Soviet zone this has already begun on a large scale.