KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps

by Nikolaus Wachsmann

  When it came to the establishment of new satellite camps, there was a clear division of labor between SS and firms. In addition to the prisoners, and their basic clothing and food, the SS provided the personnel (Guard Troops and Commandant Staff) to oversee sentry duties, prisoner transports, punishment, and medical care. The companies, in turn, were in charge of technical supervision during work, and paid for the construction and maintenance of the compound, which had to conform to strict SS standards.106 Firms also paid daily rates for prisoner labor, revised in October 1942. In Germany, the daily price for each qualified male prisoner now stood at six Reichsmark, and four Reichsmark for an unskilled one. In occupied eastern Europe, including Auschwitz, the daily rate was reduced to four and three Reichsmark respectively, presumably because less output was expected from the even more ravaged prisoners. There was no such distinction between skilled and unskilled labor in the case of female prisoners, who were regarded as less able workers; instead, there was a flat rate similar to the one for unskilled men.107 Contrary to the claims of some historians, the SS benefited from most payments only in a roundabout way. Since the prisoners were regarded as the property of the state, most of the income from their labor—perhaps around two hundred million Reichsmark in 1943, rising to around four to five hundred million the following year—officially went into the coffers of the Reich (though this helped to finance the state-sponsored KL system).108

  If there was little immediate financial gain for the Camp SS, why did it lease inmates to the war industry? For a start, the SS remained subject to outside influence, and as the demand for labor grew, so did the pressure (above all from Speer) to surrender prisoners for war production. But the SS also expected advantages from its collaboration with industry. In addition to tangible benefits, such as the preferential allocation of weapons for SS troops, Himmler, who never quite abandoned his dream of an SS arms complex, hoped that working with industry would enhance the expertise of his own managers. And then there was power and prestige. With labor becoming an increasingly precious resource, the SS could present the KL as vital cogs in the Nazi war economy; the larger the SS army of forced workers, the greater its potential influence.109 This was one reason, no doubt, behind the strenuous efforts by Pohl and his WVHA managers in 1942–43 to extend the overall number of prisoners in the concentration camps, as well as their output.

  SLAVE LABOR

  Is it right to call SS prisoners “slaves”? The term is commonplace in many accounts of the concentration camps, but some scholars have questioned its use. Slaveholders, these critics suggest, had an innate interest in their bondsmen’s survival, since they represented economic value; prisoners, by contrast, were worthless to the SS, who deliberately drove them to their graves. However, this argument is not fully convincing. After all, the SS always assigned some value to its prisoners. Even at the height of their destructiveness, when some prisoner groups were singled out for annihilation, the camps never aimed at the systematic destruction of all their inmates. More generally, there are different definitions of slavery. If used broadly—to describe a system of domination based on force and terror, which aimed at economic gain through the unrestrained subjugation of social outcasts—then the term captures the fate of many KL prisoners in the Second World War, especially during its latter stages.110

  This is what many prisoners themselves thought when trying to make sense of their suffering. In February 1943, the Dachau inmate Edgar Kupfer described the SS use of inmates for the war effort as “modern slave rental.”111 This verdict chimed with the views of the perpetrators. In March 1942, Himmler himself told Pohl that the SS should feed its KL prisoners cheaply and simply, like “slaves in Egypt.”112 The term seemed so apt to Himmler that he repeated it on further occasions. Just a few months later, he spoke to SS generals about “work slaves” in the camps, who were building the new Germany “without consideration for any losses.”113

  Himmler expected extraordinary results from his slaves, insisting that their output should equal or exceed that of ordinary German workers. “Herein lies the largest reservoir of manpower,” he lectured Pohl.114 One early SS initiative to increase productivity aimed at the reduction of inmates working in maintenance (in KL kitchens, laundries, barracks, and elsewhere). To free more prisoners for other jobs, Richard Glücks announced in early 1942, no more than ten percent of those judged fit for work should be deployed in this way (in early 1944, the target figure was reduced to six percent). However, even if commandants had been willing to implement these orders fully—which they were not—it would have done little to satisfy the economic ambitions of their superiors, who pursued many more measures in 1942–43 to create a more industrious KL slave labor force.115

  Privileges and Productivity

  Most prisoners had known only one main reason for working—fear. Since forced labor was primarily about punishment, not productivity, the Camp SS had not seen any real reason to rewarding diligent prisoners: Why offer carrots if one could use sticks, whips, and boots? As economic imperatives became more pressing, however, SS leaders decided to break with convention and allow incentives. They could build on some precedents; since 1940–41, for example, a few prisoners in SS quarries had received bonuses.116 Heinrich Himmler was sympathetic to such initiatives. As he told Pohl in March 1942, rewards for hard-working men would guarantee “an enormous increase in the labor performance.” Above all, he regarded monetary and carnal bribes as surefire bets: prisoners would step up if promised money and sex.117 In fact, Himmler had advocated sexual incentives for prisoners before, in October 1941, when he ordered the establishment of a brothel in Mauthausen; the “special building” (Sonderbau) opened in June 1942, the first inside any KL.118

  The Camp SS initially remained reluctant to reward prisoners. Attitudes only started to change in spring 1943, and the impetus came once more from Himmler. Following an inspection of the troubled Wilhelm Gustloff rifle factory in Buchenwald on February 26, 1943, he ordered Pohl to introduce a “performance system” for the KL as an “incentive” for harder work. Himmler pointed to the Nazis’ greatest rival, the Soviet Union, and its use of food and financial rewards in driving its people to “the most incredible feats.” In his own camps, Himmler envisaged a graded system, with benefits rising from cigarettes and small payments to the greatest reward of all: a visit for male prisoners, once or twice a week, to a camp brothel. In Himmler’s mind, it was still sex—not food, drink, or clothes—that the prisoners craved most of all.119

  Pohl acted straightaway. Within weeks, he agreed to a set of prisoner privileges, valid from May 15, 1943, which would guide the Camp SS in the future (with some later amendments). The aim, Pohl explained, was the urgent increase in prisoner output. Taking his cue from Himmler, he outlined the conditions for earning tobacco and money. He also fleshed out the procedure for entrance to camp brothels, a special prize for “star performers” who had made “truly outstanding efforts.” Other bonuses included additional letters to relatives, extra rations, and the privilege of wearing longer hair. Typically, the SS drafted these regulations with men in mind; female prisoners, by contrast, were still banned from smoking, at least in Ravensbrück, and their only way into camp brothels was as forced sex workers.120

  Camp SS managers no doubt regarded the new privileges as a major concession. In reality, they were far from revolutionary. Token payments for forced labor had long been common in Nazi Germany, even in state prisons.121 What is more, vast numbers of KL prisoners never received any rewards. Too weak and exhausted to qualify, they were often even worse off than before, as the SS diverted some of the meager rations to “diligent” prisoners.122 And some of these inmates were left empty-handed, too, after local Camp SS officers delayed the introduction of the rewards system; elsewhere greedy guards and Kapos simply pocketed the bonuses themselves.123

  Even prisoners who received rewards—an estimated fifteen percent in a camp like Monowitz—were often disappointed.124 The WVHA had swiftly ruled out the poss
ibility of paying money, since it could easily be used for bribes (from 1942–43, inmates were forbidden to carry cash and to draw on money sent by relatives). Instead, the WVHA introduced vouchers, whose monetary value was only redeemable inside the camps. Kapos stood to gain the most; typically, labor supervisors could earn the equivalent of four Reichsmark per week (in vouchers), three or four times more than ordinary workers in the KL. Not only were the authorities often miserly in handing out vouchers, there was little to purchase in KL canteens. True, some prisoners bought cigarettes for barter, and others enjoyed the alcohol-free malt beer. But food was of poor quality and in short supply, as were other essentials.125 Nicholas Rosenberg, a Hungarian Jew in the Auschwitz satellite camp Bobrek, who worked as a mechanic in a Siemens-Schuckert factory, spoke for many when he described the vouchers as fairly pointless. The camp canteen was rarely open, and when it was, it “generally sold nothing but toothbrushes and toothpaste.” Hardly surprising, then, that the vouchers never became the main currency on the concentration camps’ black markets.126

  The vouchers also served as admission tickets to the KL brothels, at the equivalent cost of two (later one) Reichsmark per visit. The creation of these brothels caused both excitement and outrage among prisoners, and some red faces among the SS. Even Heinrich Himmler, their chief advocate, was rather sheepish, admitting that the whole affair was “not particularly edifying.” Oswald Pohl felt the same and ordered the brothels to be built on the far edge of the compounds; in Sachsenhausen, the new brothel was located right above the morgue.127 Although the SS strictly regimented brothel visits—male prisoners had to ask in writing for permission and undergo prior health checks—some witnesses later claimed that the establishments had enjoyed great popularity. According to Tadeusz Borowski, large crowds gathered in the Auschwitz main camp: “For every Juliet there are at least a thousand Romeos.”128 In reality, only a tiny fraction of the prisoner population ever set foot inside the brothels. The Buchenwald brothel, for example, recorded no more than fifty-three daily visitors on average during October 1943. Some prisoner groups were barred altogether, on racial or political grounds; although each KL had different rules, Jews and Russian POWs were not admitted anywhere. In fact, the very idea of visiting the brothels never crossed the minds of most prisoners, who only thought about survival. As for the small elite of better-fed prisoners, who still had sexual desires and the means (vouchers) to satisfy them, some refused on principle to frequent the brothels. Old friends and comrades argued bitterly over such boycotts, and in Dachau, the first men to enter were mocked and jostled by hostile prisoners waiting outside. In the end, most regular users came from among the senior Kapos, who used their visits as demonstrations of their privileged status and virility.129

  The forced sex workers—fewer than two hundred women in all—were themselves prisoners, selected in different concentration camps. Most wore the black triangle of “asocials,” and many, though by no means all, had worked as prostitutes earlier in their lives. Although SS officers prided themselves on picking volunteers, they actually relied heavily on compulsion, cajoling the women with promises of better conditions (true) and eventual release (false). Selecting a brothel over a lethal labor detail was just another choiceless choice for these women. As one of them put it in autumn 1942: “Half a year in a brothel is still better than half a year in a concentration camp.” What they had not expected was the scorn of some fellow inmates. After the war, a Polish political prisoner recounted how she and ten other inmates had assaulted another Polish woman in Ravensbrück, whom they suspected of volunteering as a prostitute: “We cut her hair a bit and cut her, too, a bit as we were doing it.” Such assaults remained rare, however. And despite the dread, distress, and degradation of the brothels, the survival chances of the forced sex workers did improve, since they now received better provisions. For the victims, then, sexual exploitation proved a strategy for survival.130

  Looking at the reward system as a whole, the high hopes of Himmler and Pohl proved misplaced. Bribes prompted few prisoners to work harder. After all, working harder was not a matter of choice for most, given their poor physical condition. As for the group of prisoners that did benefit the most, it largely consisted of Kapos, who were rewarded not for their output but for their already exalted position in the prisoner hierarchy. Instead of a significant increase in KL productivity, Pohl’s initiative led to a further deepening of the gulf between the small upper class of prisoners and the rest. Growing longer hair, for example, became another visual signifier dividing the privileged few, with their immaculate clothes, from the great mass of shaven-headed, dirty, and starving inmates.131

  Growing the Camps

  Sergey Ovrashko was still a boy when he was deported in 1942 from his native Ukraine to Nazi Germany for forced labor. Born in 1926 in a small village near Kiev, he was supporting his family as a cowherd when German troops invaded the Soviet Union. One year later, he found himself toiling in a high-tech arms factory in Plauen (Saxony), some nine hundred miles away. Worse was to come. After a mistake on the assembly line, he was accused of sabotage, arrested by the Gestapo, and sent in late January 1943 as a political prisoner to Buchenwald.132 Ovrashko was one of more than forty-two thousand prisoners arriving in Buchenwald in 1943, part of an unparalleled surge in inmate numbers that affected the entire concentration camp system.133

  The KL prisoner population never grew faster during the war than in 1943, shooting up from an estimated one hundred and fifteen thousand at the start of the year to an estimated three hundred and fifteen thousand at the end.134 In terms of their overall size, the main camps (and their attached satellites) fell into three groups by the end of 1943. Auschwitz, with 85,298 prisoners, was by far the largest and in a league all its own. It was followed by a group of camps established before the war: Dachau, Ravensbrück, Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald, which now held between twenty-four thousand and thirty-seven thousand prisoners (the new KL Kovno, with some nineteen thousand prisoners, also belongs to this group). Finally, there were the remaining eleven main camps, many less than a year old, which formed the smallest group, with an average of perhaps six thousand prisoners each.135 To put these figures into perspective: back in September 1939, when war broke out, the largest KL, Sachsenhausen, had held no more than 6,500 prisoners.136

  Most new prisoners were caught during an unprecedented wave of arrests sweeping across Germany and much of Nazi-occupied Europe from late 1942 onward. Economic motives played a major part here (as we shall see below), but they overlapped with other Nazi measures. Above all, there was the Holocaust. Deportations of Jews to Auschwitz increased sharply in 1943, compared to the previous year, bringing more prisoners than ever to the camp.137

  Another important factor was the determination of the RSHA to stamp out any whiff of opposition at home and resistance abroad, a resolve that grew more radical as German confidence in victory began to crumble. From 1942, Nazi leaders became ever more obsessed with the stability of the home front, as the distorted memory of the German defeat and revolution of 1918, so crucial for early Nazi terror, once more dominated their minds. Adolf Hitler, in particular, imagined the catastrophe of an internal collapse in the most garish colors. He was personally responsible, he told his entourage on May 22, 1942, for thwarting “the creation of a home front of scoundrels like in 1918.”138 Ruthless action was required against criminals, political enemies, and other deviants who might attack the regime. During a time of crisis, Hitler repeated again and again, one had to “exterminate,” “eliminate,” “execute,” “beat to death,” “shoot,” or “liquidate” large numbers of “scum,” “rats,” and “asocial vermin.”139 Hitler saw the concentration camps as the most powerful weapon in this war on the home front. On May 23, 1942, toward the end of a blazing speech to the Nazi top brass, he singled out the KL as the main bulwark against an uprising. If Nazi Germany should ever face an internal crisis, Hitler exclaimed, Heinrich Himmler would have to “shoot the criminals in all
concentration camps, rather than let them loose on the German people.”140

  Himmler did not expect to use these emergency powers. Rather than wait until the Third Reich was in danger, his police forces would root out any threats in advance. Facing a sharp rise in common crime, linked to growing deprivation, dislocation, and damage caused by the war, the criminal police stepped up its policy of crime prevention and sent more Germans straight to the KL, sometimes with explicit instructions that their return was undesirable. Looking at prisoners from the territory of the German Reich, Himmler declared in a speech in autumn 1943, those detained as “asocial” and “criminal” far exceeded political prisoners. Among them were ex-convicts and minor property offenders, whose deviant behavior was characterized as a dangerous attack on the home front. On the same grounds, the police arrested several thousand German women, charged with illicit contacts with foreigners; before being dragged to camps, some women accused of sexual relationships were publicly shamed and humiliated.141

  The German police also targeted Gypsies inside the Third Reich with unprecedented zeal. In autumn 1942, after years of escalating Nazi persecution, including segregation, sterilization, detention, and expulsion, the leaders of the criminal police in the RSHA advocated a systematic solution to the “Gypsy Question.” Depicting Gypsies as a criminal and biological threat to the home front, they lobbied Himmler for mass deportations. Himmler agreed. With Hitler’s blessing, he ordered on December 16, 1942, that the great majority of Gypsies should be sent to a concentration camp. Police guidelines, passed in the following month, left some leeway for local officials; determined to make their districts “Gypsy free,” they generally opted for the hardest approach. Starting in late February 1943, some fourteen thousand men, women, and children—among them many families—were deported from Germany and annexed Austria to Auschwitz-Birkenau; as the biggest Nazi camp, it seemed best placed to absorb a large number of prisoners at short notice (another 8,500 Gypsies arrived from elsewhere, mostly from the occupied Czech territory). Their arrival marked the birth of the so-called Gypsy camp in sector BIIe of Birkenau.142 One of the first prisoners was the forty-three-year-old trader August Laubinger from Quedlinburg, who arrived on March 4, 1943, together with his wife, Hulda, and four children. This was not his first time in a KL; in summer 1938, as we have seen, the police had sent him as “work-shy” to Sachsenhausen. Back then, he had been lucky to be released, and returned home to his family just before the outbreak of the war. This time, there was no way out. August Laubinger, prisoner number Z-229, died in Birkenau sometime before the end of the year.143