But Karl Kapp was not a typical Kapo, for there was no such thing. Some prisoners, it is true, conformed to the fearsome image of Kapos. They seemed to copy the SS, Margarete Buber-Neumann wrote about the most brutal and greedy supervisors in Ravensbrück, until they resembled them in all but uniform. But there were also their opposites, she added, kind women who made things better for their fellow inmates.130 And although male Kapos resorted more frequently to violence than their female counterparts, there were decent ones among them, too, including some who refused on principle to lay hands on other prisoners; many more only turned strict when SS guards came near.131
Often Kapos struggled with their conscience as they were drawn deeper into SS schemes, suffering what the young Herzogenbusch prisoner David Koker described in his diary in November 1943 as a “moral hangover.”132 SS attempts to turn them into torturers and killers proved a watershed for many. In Dachau, not all Kapos submitted to the order, enforced by Kapp, to dish out corporal punishment. During a heated meeting among block elders, there were cheers for one Kapo who lambasted Kapp’s stance and exclaimed that he would rather be beaten himself than hit a fellow prisoner. Like-minded Kapos, in Dachau and elsewhere, subverted SS orders by pretending to whip their victims much harder than they really did.133 Others openly challenged the authorities. In July 1943, the camp elder in the Dachau satellite camp Allach, the Communist Karl Wagner, refused outright to hit another inmate; he was whipped twenty-five times and thrown into the bunker for several weeks.134
Karl Kapp’s role in SS executions was particularly controversial among Dachau prisoners and earned him the lasting contempt of several senior Kapos, though when they confronted him, he just shrugged and walked off.135 Unlike Kapp, some Kapos stood up to the SS: they would not kill. When the Dora SS told the two camp elders, Georg Thomas and Ludwig Szymczak, to hang a Russian inmate on the roll call square, they defied the orders. Furious SS men ripped the Kapo armbands off their uniforms and dragged them away; neither man survived the war.136 As for Kapos who did succumb to extreme SS pressure—threatened that they would be executed, too, if they did not act as henchmen—not all shrugged off their deeds in the manner of Kapp. In Buchenwald, a Communist Kapo hanged himself after he had been forced to kill another prisoner, unable to bear the guilt.137
Even a man like Kapp was a more complex figure than he appears at first sight. There were rational reasons for Kapos like him to do as they were told. In the first place, it was a simple case of self-preservation, as the Camp SS did not think twice about demoting and punishing those who appeared too lenient.138 The loss of their Kapo positions meant not only the loss of vital privileges, it could also expose them to the wrath of their fellow inmates. Their victims often fantasized about turning the tables and, if they got the chance, exacted revenge. The SS saw such vigilante justice as a bonus, as it forced Kapos into greater compliance. As Heinrich Himmler explained to Nazi generals in 1944: “As soon as we are not satisfied with [a Kapo], he is no longer a Kapo, he sleeps again with his men. He knows that they will beat him to death in the first night.”139 In this way, some Kapos became trapped in a vicious circle. Once other inmates saw them as willing tools of the SS, they felt that they had little choice but to redouble their abuses, lest they lose the life-saving protection of the SS.140
But Karl Kapp had his eyes on more than his own survival, and used his powers to aid some fellow prisoners. As camp elder, he allowed prisoners to smuggle food into the penal company and helped some inmates gain better positions.141 There were limits to what he could do, of course, and his efforts probably involved an element of self-interest, as they created a circle of grateful allies.142 Nonetheless, Kapp’s favoritism was wide-ranging, extending as it did to prisoners from other backgrounds. At great risk, he saved several prisoners he did not personally know and whose political views he did not share.143
And like many senior Kapos, Kapp firmly believed that any of his abuses prevented worse. Interrogated after the war, he insisted that he had only ever reported prisoners to the SS as a last resort, if their actions threatened the collective; in all other cases, he had made sure to hand out penalties himself. And what some inmates saw as mindless brutality, Kapp added, had actually been calculated efforts to keep the SS at bay. If he had not enforced strict order during regular barrack inspections, murderous SS block leaders would have descended on the prisoners instead. If he had not hit individuals who were late for roll call, the SS would have made all inmates suffer. If he had not kicked lazy prisoners, the SS would have tortured them and punished the rest of the labor detail, too.144
Karl Kapp arrived at a jarring conclusion: to prevent SS abuses he had to play the part of the SS himself.145 This view was shared by many ordinary prisoners. They agreed that Kapo attacks were the lesser evil, drawing away the attentions of the SS, and they applauded Kapos who punished suspected thieves and traitors.146 “With his screaming, Kapp kept away the thugs,” a pastor who survived Dachau later said. Even some of Kapp’s victims defended him. Paul Hussarek, whom Kapp had hit on the neck for talking during the march to roll call, was certain that he had been saved from a far worse fate at the hands of the SS. “I am still grateful to Kapp for this punch,” he said years later.147 Many other survivors spoke up for Kapp, too, and even some of his detractors, who saw him as a bully, conceded that he had averted SS excesses.148
The actions of Karl Kapp were dissected in a Munich courtroom in 1960, where he stood accused of prisoner abuse and murder. In the end, the court found Kapp innocent of all charges. Far from being a willing tool of the SS, the judges declared, he had been loyal to fellow prisoners, protecting them heroically.149 This was an unduly clear-cut verdict, given the complexities of his case. The judges imposed moral certitude on actions fraught with ambiguity and gave an emphatic reply to a question—“Was Kapp a good man or not?”—that defies an easy answer. After all, had Kapp not reported fellow inmates to the SS? Had he not helped to whip and hang innocent prisoners?
Even those who would have condemned Karl Kapp, however, should remember that he had not made a free choice. He was a victim of Nazi terror, too, trapped for almost nine years inside the KL.150 The same was true of other prisoners in positions of power. Some of the cruelest Kapos had gone through hell at the hands of the SS. When a prisoner confronted a female Kapo in Auschwitz for beating an inmate who was old enough to be her mother, the woman replied: “My mother was gassed, too. It is all the same to me.”151 The daily exposure to the camps left indelible marks, and so did the corruption by power, as Kapos rose through the ranks; any veteran who retained moral integrity seemed like a saint to other prisoners.152 This is not to excuse every act, however violent; after all, Kapos had some degree of agency. Nonetheless, even the worst Kapo was still a prisoner, hoping to survive a day at a time. In this respect, at least, all inmates were alike: none of them knew whether they would still be alive the next day.153
Hierarchies
The Kapo class was no less stratified than the prisoner population as a whole. There was a vast difference between a mighty figure like Karl Kapp and a lowly inmate in the block service who had to wait on his seniors, shining their boots, cooking their food, and making their beds. Even among Kapos, then, there were masters and servants, leading to a brutal struggle, as David Rousset wrote, to “rise step by step in the hierarchy.”154 Those who made it to the top were known as the notables. It was they who held the senior positions in the orderly room, the labor action office, and the political office, as well as the infirmaries, kitchens, and clothes depots; some prominent block elders and labor supervisors were also among them.155 These notables were powerful and small in number; few prisoners held Kapo positions, and even fewer gained prominence. In February 1945, for example, at a time when the Mauthausen main camp held some twelve thousand men (excluding the compound for the sick), there were just 184 Kapos senior enough to wear a wristwatch, one of the perks enjoyed by notables; tellingly, 134 of them were German.156
As
we have seen, the Camp SS pursued a strategy of elevating Germans over foreigners, mirroring social relations across Nazi-occupied Europe. Although the proportion of Germans fell to well below twenty percent of the KL prisoner population in 1944, the top Kapo positions were largely put into the hands of Germans.157 SS practice was influenced by Nazi racial thinking.158 Himmler often talked of a sense of loyalty toward “members of our own blood,” and even though German prisoners were seen as scum, Camp SS leaders believed that their own countrymen should rise above the flotsam of other nations.159
Such preferential treatment was guided not just by dogma, however, but by pragmatism, as well. The fact that German prisoners shared the captors’ native tongue was crucial; theirs was the official language of the KL—of documents, signs, and orders—and the SS demanded to be understood. Experience was equally important. The SS was looking for prisoners who knew the KL, and almost all the most seasoned inmates were German.160 As the demand for Kapos rose during the war, the Camp SS sometimes put such practical considerations above ideological principles and promoted Germans from the most despised prisoner groups to positions of influence. Men detained as homosexuals, for example, had often faced lethal SS violence during the first half of the war, peaking around the summer of 1942.161 But while there were further murders later on, a growing number of prisoners with the pink triangle now served as clerks, block elders, and labor supervisors; in Bergen-Belsen, a German homosexual was even appointed as camp elder in late 1944, overseeing the compound for regular protective custody prisoners.162
Middle and lower-ranking positions often went to prisoners from other nations, and foreign Kapos grew in number and standing as the war continued. In the occupied east, there were never enough German inmates to fill all available positions, so many of these posts went to Poles instead.163 Elsewhere, too, the SS relied on foreigners, especially during the second half of the war. Prisoners from almost all European countries were promoted, though their prospects varied from camp to camp, depending on the size of national prisoner groups and the time of their arrival. In Ravensbrück, large transports from Poland had come as early as 1940, and Polish women gradually became entrenched in lower and middling Kapo positions, even pushing aside some German “asocials.” French women, by contrast, did not arrive in large numbers until 1943–44, and consequently found themselves excluded from posts as block elders or camp police.164
As the Kapo class expanded, so did the number of Jews among them, though they were normally restricted to overseeing other Jewish prisoners only.165 Initially, this development centered on Auschwitz and Majdanek, following the mass deportations to both camps; according to survivors, around half of the Auschwitz-Birkenau block elders in early 1944 were Jews.166 The number of Kapos with the yellow star increased elsewhere, too, as Jews were forced into new KL in eastern Europe, like in the Baltic region, and into satellite camps inside Germany. In satellites largely reserved for Jewish prisoners, individual Jews were deployed as labor supervisors, doctors, clerks, and block elders, and exceptionally even as camp elders. Some of them were already well versed in negotiating the gray zone between fellow inmates and German rulers, having previously held influential positions in ghettos, where Jewish Councils had been given significant responsibilities for the administration of everyday life.167
There was no job security for Kapos, of course, not at the top and even less so lower down, where there were frequent promotions, transfers, and dismissals. Among the greatest powers senior Kapos had was that of anointing others. Officially, appointments were made by the Camp SS. In practice, SS staff were often swayed by experienced Kapos, especially when it came to middling and lower positions. In this way, the notables shaped the composition of the wider Kapo class, creating networks of prisoners bound by patronage and loyalty.168 This was yet another case of “groupness.” Political prisoners, for example, often did their best to reserve Kapo positions for fellow sympathizers. Likewise, foreign Kapos pushed their own countrymen forward; in Ravensbrück, many Polish Kapos owed their posts to Helena Korewina, the influential translator of the SS camp supervisor.169 The competition over Kapo positions once more pitted different prisoner groups against one another. The battles were fought at all levels, but they were most visible at the top of the prisoner order, and often appeared to pit two groups of German inmates against each other: political prisoners, with the red triangle, and so-called criminals, wearing the green triangle.
Red and Green
When Benedikt Kautsky looked back in 1945 at his seven years as a Jewish Socialist in Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz, he found harsh words for many of his fellow inmates. But he reserved his greatest condemnation for the “green” Kapos, with their “hideous brutality and insatiable greed.” Kautsky pictured them as more animal than human. As serious and incorrigible offenders, he claimed, they had made perfect partners in crime for the SS, who turned them into their most devoted executioners. Wherever the “greens” gained the leading Kapo positions, he reported, the results had been catastrophic, engulfing camps in treason, torture, blackmail, sexual abuse, and murder. The “greens” were the “pestilence of the camps.” Only political prisoners, who pursued the good of all decent inmates, could stand up to them. The ensuing struggle for supremacy between the upright “reds” and the wicked “greens,” Kautsky concluded, had been a matter of life and death for the other inmates.170
Kautsky spoke for many survivors, especially former political prisoners like himself.171 In their testimonies, they often described the “greens” as deadly threats, who had been unhinged criminals long before entering the KL. According to one German Communist, also writing in 1945, the Nazis had rounded up “thousands of crooks, killers, and so on” after their capture of power, and then filled almost all senior Kapo positions with these degenerates for whom murder was just a hobby.172 The same devastating picture of “green” Kapos has been painted over and over again, and has become a fixture in popular works on the KL. But it is no more than a caricature. To be sure, like most caricatures, it draws on some truths. German ex-convicts did gain some leading Kapo positions, especially in camps for men, and a number of them committed hideous crimes inside; Kapo nicknames like “Bloody Alois” and “Ivan the Terrible” speak for themselves.173 But the sins of some have led to the slander of all.
Contrary to the convictions of so many political prisoners, only a few “greens” had been sent to the KL as violent criminals. Even an observer as astute as Primo Levi was wrong to believe that the Nazis had specially selected hardened criminals in prisons to deploy them as Kapos.174 In fact, most of those detained in the prewar KL had committed minor property crimes, as we have seen, not brutal excesses. And this did not change during the war. Convicted rapists and murderers did not normally end up in concentration camps, but in state prisons, either locked in dark cells, or led to the gallows or guillotine.175 The mass of “green” KL inmates were still small-time offenders, if they were guilty of any crimes at all. The reputation of these men and women as savage convicts owed less to their criminal record than the dark fantasies of their fellow inmates, in whose imagination petty criminals mutated into serial murderers.176 Wild rumors became fact, as the violence of some Kapos was explained by their imagined homicidal past.
The truth was often different, even in the case of some of the most infamous “greens.” Take the case of Bruno Frohnecke, a vicious Kapo. Detained since 1941 as a professional criminal, Frohnecke became the scourge of a large Auschwitz construction detail. He abused fellow prisoners at every turn, hitting them with his fist, clubs, and sticks, and kicking them in the abdomen and genitals. “All I can say is that I have never met anyone like him,” a survivor told the German police in 1946. “He was not a thug; he was a murderer, in the true sense of the word.” But before he had fallen into SS hands, Frohnecke had shown no particular propensity for brutality. He had been an inept conman, not a killer, and had been caught again and again for small scams. Frohnecke, in short, was no natural-born ki
ller: he only became a violent criminal inside the KL.177 What is more, while Frohnecke’s background was typical for “green” Kapos, the same cannot be said for his actions in the camps, as some other “greens” acted in a comradely fashion and took great risks to save fellow inmates, including Jews, from certain death.178
The case of the first thirty Kapos in Auschwitz is instructive here. In the literature, these men have sometimes been held up as typical “green” criminals.179 A closer look reveals a more complex story. Though they were all “green” veterans from Sachsenhausen, and enjoyed many privileges in Auschwitz, not all of them abused their powers. Some did become brutal murderers, like the former safecracker Bernhard Bonitz (prisoner number 6). During his first year or so as a block elder, he is said to have strangled some fifty Auschwitz prisoners, by throwing his victims to the ground, pressing a stick across their neck, and standing on both ends. He later continued his crimes as the first chief Kapo of the construction commando on the IG Farben site, lording it over some 1,200 prisoners.180 Several of his “green” Auschwitz colleagues, however, conducted themselves very differently. They shunned Bonitz and other notorious Kapos “because of their behavior toward the prisoners,” in the words of Jonny Lechenich (prisoner number 19). Once they even confronted Bonitz directly; he was a prisoner, too, they told him, and should treat his men more humanely. Lechenich himself became active in the camps’ underground organization and later fled with two Polish prisoners, joining the Home Army.181 He was not the only one to make common cause with his charges. Otto Küsel (prisoner number 2), the Kapo in the Auschwitz labor action office, was widely known as decent, and eventually escaped in late 1942 with three Poles, rather than betray their plans to the SS. After nine months on the run, Küsel was rearrested; brought back to Auschwitz, he was tortured for several months in the bunker.182
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