"Annihilation through labor": the killing of state prisoners in the Third Reich

One of the most distinctive features of Nazi society was the increasingly radical division of its members into “national comrades” and “community aliens.” The former were to be protected by the state and encouraged to procreate, while the latter were seen as political, social, racial, or eugenic threats and were to be ruthlessly eliminated from society. With the start of the Second World War, various nonlethal forms of discrimination against these “community aliens” were gradually replaced by policies geared to physical annihilation, culminating above all in the extermination of the European Jews. In view of a crime of this previously unimaginable magnitude, it is hardly surprising that when historians started in earnest to examine the genocidal policies of the Nazi dictatorship in the 1960s they focused on the development and administration of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” as the Nazis called it. But in the last two decades, the fate of other “community aliens” in the Third Reich, such as the Roma and Sinti (“Gypsies”), slave laborers, and the disabled, has been investigated too. Some historians have also begun to examine those who deviated in various other ways from the norms of society, people who were often classified in the Third Reich, and indeed before, as “asocials.” There was never an agreed definition as to who these people were, and the term was used to stigmatize a vast variety of nonnormative behavior. According to a 1938 directive by the head of the German security police, Reinhard Heydrich, any person could be classified as “asocial” who “demonstrates through conduct opposed to the community . . . that he does not want to adapt to the community.” During the Third Reich, such vague statements served as the basis for the persecution of juvenile delinquents, criminal offenders, vagrants, prostitutes, and homosexuals, among many others. Certain groups were simultaneously classified as racial and social outsiders and thus suffered “dual racism.” This was true in particular for the Sinti and Roma, who had been persecuted for their way of life long before the Nazi “seizure of power” in 1933. Historical research into the fate of the “asocials” has produced some valuable insights into the treatment of members of these marginal groups in the Third Reich, many of whom died in SS concentration or extermination camps. Yet despite this growing interest, the most comprehensive of all the extermination programs directed against “asocials” in the Third Reich has never been investigated. From late 1942 onward, over twenty thousand offenders classified as “asocial” were taken out of the state penal system and transferred to the police for “annihilation through labor.” At least two-thirds of them perished in concentration camps. But in the historical literature this program has either been dealt with in passing or completely ignored. Why have historians neglected the murder of state prisoners? There appears to be a reluctance to focus on offenders against the law in the Third Reich, unless their offences can be seen in some way as forms of political or social protest. In contrast to the racially or politically persecuted, not all common criminals can be described merely as innocent victims, and the often brutal behavior of criminal Kapos in concentration camps probably further alienated historians from dealing with the criminals. Another factor that explains the poor state of research is the inaccessibility of source material. Leading officials in the Ministry of Justice made sure that most files relating to the “annihilation through labor” of state prisoners were pulped before the end of the war.8 Yet individual documents have survived, scattered around various archives in Germany. They can be complemented by information gained from individual prisoner files, as well as from unpublished documents and testimonies collected in numerous postwar legal investigations. None of these criminal investigations ever led to the conviction of the prison officials involved—another reason for the lack of historical interest. Finally, German legal history after the war spread the myth that the legal administration had rejected or even resisted the Nazi regime. State penal institutions, if dealt with at all, were described as safe havens that had “nothing to do with the concentration camps.” Thus, until today, historians have largely ignored the state prison system and its inmates. This article will first describe the origins of the decision in 1942 for the extermination of certain state prisoners. Then the actual process of transfer will be investigated in detail, examining issues such as the background of the transferred inmates and the participation of prison officials. The article will also deal with the fate of the state prisoners after their transport to the Nazi concentration camps and the radicalization of policy against the prisoners remaining in the state penal institutions. Exploring these issues contributes to our knowledge of the treatment of deviants in the Third Reich. But this article will also address some wider issues concerning the nature of the Nazi dictatorship, such as the origins of extermination policies in the Third Reich. In recent years, a number of historians have argued that it was time to move beyond the “sterile debates” between so-called intentionalist historians, who focused on the murderous will and ideology of the Nazi leaders, above all Hitler, and so-called structuralist historians, who pointed to the dynamic and uncoordinated interactions between different agencies of the Nazi dictatorship that led to a “cumulative radicalization” (Hans Mommsen). Various historians have now put forward a synthesis of both positions, while ground-breaking empirical research into the “final solution” has posed new questions and provided new answers. Still, many of the more recent studies of Nazi genocide continue to explore central issues first raised in the debates between intentionalists and structuralists such as Hitler’s role in extermination policy, the interaction between regional officials and the decision makers in Berlin, and the role of racial ideology versus more material motives in Nazi mass murder. This study of the “annihilation through labor” of state prisoners addresses some of these general issues. It will also shed new light on the relation between the judiciary and the police in the Third Reich. The postwar portrait of a passive or even anti-Nazi judiciary has not gone unchallenged. Still, many historians continue to describe the judicial authorities and the police as having been in a constant state of conflict. They describe the Third Reich as a “dual state,” split between the “prerogative state” and the “normative state.” The latter was the traditional state apparatus, ensuring that normal life was ruled by legal norms. However, in matters that were thought to touch on the interest of the state, the “prerogative state” could override these legal norms, above all through the agency of the police, locking up all political, racial, and social suspects in SS concentration camps without trial. Thus, state attorneys and the police are seen as competing institutions of prosecution, while state penal institutions and concentration camps are described as competing institutions of confinement. A detailed investigation of the transfer of state prisoners can help to establish how far this picture of the “dual state” stands up to critical scrutiny

Lived experience and the Holocaust: spaces, senses and emotions in Auschwitz

This article examines lived experience during the Holocaust, focusing on Auschwitz, the most lethal Nazi concentration camp. It draws on spatial history, as well as the history of senses and emotions, to explore subjective being in Auschwitz. The article suggests that a more explicit engagement with individual spaces—prisoner bunks, barracks, latrines, crematoria, construction sites, SS offices—and their emotional and sensory dimension, can reveal elements of lived experience that have remained peripheral on the edges of historical visibility. Such an approach can deepen understanding of Auschwitz, by making the camp more recognisable and by contributing to wider historiographical debates about the nature of Nazi terro

Concentration Camps: the limits of representing History

Occasional paper

Writing about the SS-State: Eugen Kogon, Buchenwald and the Nazi camps

Book synopsis: By the spring of 1945, the Second World War was drawing to a close in Europe. Allied troops were sweeping through Nazi Germany and discovering the atrocities of SS concentration camps. The first to be reached intact was Buchenwald, in central Germany. American soldiers struggled to make sense of the shocking scenes they witnessed inside. They asked a small group of former inmates to draft a report on the camp. It was led by Eugen Kogon, a German political prisoner who had been an inmate since 1939. "The Theory and Practice of Hell" is his classic account of life inside. Unlike many other books by survivors who published immediately after the war, "The Theory and Practice of Hell" is more than a personal account. It is a horrific examination of life and death inside a Nazi concentration camp, a brutal world of a state within state, and a society without law. But Kogon maintains a dispassionate and critical perspective. He tries to understand how the camp works, to uncover its structure and social organization. He knew that the book would shock some readers and provide others with gruesome fascination. But he firmly believed that he had to show the camp in honest, unflinching detail. The result is a unique historical document a complete picture of the society, morality, and politics that fueled the systematic torture of six million human beings. For many years, "The Theory and Practice of Hell" remained the seminal work on the concentration camps, particularly in Germany

KL. A História dos Campos de Concentração Nazis

Book synopsis: A primeira história geral dos campos de concentração nazis. KL, Konzentrationslager, designa o sistema dos campos de concentração nazis. É também o título da primeira história geral desta realidade trágica que importa conhecer. Nesta notável obra de referência histórica, Nikolaus Wachsmann oferece o primeiro relato, sem precedentes, dos campos de concentração nazis, desde a sua concepção, em 1933, até ao seu encerramento, na primavera de 1945. O Terceiro Reich é o período mais estudado da História, e no entanto faltava até agora escrever uma história geral do amplo sistema de campos de concentração, bem como das experiências quotidianas dos seus habitantes – perpetradores, vítimas, e todos aqueles que viviam naquela área que Primo Levi designou como «zona cinzenta». Com KL – Uma História dos Campos de Concentração Nazis Wachsmann preenche esta lacuna evidente no nosso entendimento do passado. Ele não sintetiza apenas o trabalho académico de uma geração, uma parte importante do qual desconhecida até agora fora da Alemanha, como também faz revelações surpreendentes, baseadas em muitos anos de pesquisa arquivística, sobre o funcionamento e a extensão do sistema de campos. Ao examinar, em detalhe, a vida e a morte dentro dos campos, e ao adoptar uma abordagem mais panorâmica para mostrar que o sistema era moldado pela evolução das várias forças políticas, legais, sociais, económicas e militares, Wachsmann produz uma imagem unificada do regime nazi e dos seus campos de concentração nunca antes vista. Uma obra de grande ambição e importância, KL está destinada a tornar-se um clássico da história do século XX

Introduction

Book synopsis: This book is a unique account by a survivor of both the Soviet and Nazi concentration camps: its author, Margarete Buber-Neumann, was a loyal member of the German Communist party. From 1935 she and her second husband, Heinz Neumann, were political refugees in Moscow. In April 1937 Neumann was arrested by the secret police, and executed by the end of the year. She herself was arrested in 1938. In Under Two Dictators Buber-Neumann describes the two years of suffering she endured in the Soviet prisons and in the huge Central-Asian concentration and slave labour camp of Karaganda; her extradition to the Gestapo in 1940 at the time of the Stalin-Hitler Friendship Pact; and her five years of suffering in the Nazi concentration and death camp for women, Ravensbrück. Her story displays extraordinary powers of observation and of memory as she describes her own fate, as well as those of hundreds of fellow prisoners. She explores the behaviour of the guards, supervisors, police and secret police and compares and contrasts Stalin and Hitler's methods of dictatorship and terror. First published in Swedish, German and English and subsequently translated and published in a further nine languages, Under Two Dictators is harrowing in its depiction of life under the rule of two of the most brutal regimes the western world has ever seen but also an inspiring story of survival, of ideology and of strength and a clarion call for the protection of democracy

La dinámica de la destrucción: la evolución de los campos de concentración

Este artículo examina el desarrollo del sistema concentracionario de las SS durante la dictadura nazi. Basándose en las investigaciones más recientes, el artículo destaca el carácter dinámico de los campos nazis, varias veces reinventados durante el Tercer Reich. Dividiendo la historia del sistema de campos de las SS en seis períodos distintos, el artículo analiza su cambiante función política, social y económica, así como profundos cambios de la población reclusa y su tratamiento

The dynamics of destruction: the development of the concentration camps, 1933–45

The notorious concentration camp system was a central pillar of the Third Reich, supporting the Nazi war against political, racial and social outsiders whilst also intimidating the population at large. Established during the first months of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933, several million men, women and children of many nationalities had been incarcerated in the camps by the end of the Second World War. At least two million lost their lives. This comprehensive volume offers the first overview of the recent scholarship that has changed the way the camps are studied over the last two decades. Written by an international team of experts, the book covers such topics as the earliest camps; social life, work and personnel in the camps; the public face of the camps; issues of gender and commemoration; and the relationship between concentration camps and the Final Solution. The book provides a comprehensive introduction to the current historiography of the camps, highlighting the key conclusions that have been made, commenting on continuing areas of debate, and suggesting possible directions for future research