Concentration camp conditions in the I930s

Concentration camp conditions in the I930s
Lina Haag and her husband Alfred were members of the Communist Party arrested
shortly after the Nazis came to power in 1933. Alfred Haag, a representative in the
Wiirttemberg state parliament, spent seven years in different concentration camps,
including Dachau and Mauthausen, a camp opened by the Nazis in Austria after the
Anschhtssin 1938. Lina Haag was released in December 1933, but then arrested again in
1935 for refusing to provide the names of her former communist comrades to the
Gestapo. She spent the following four and a half years in various prisons, ending up in
the fortress of Lichtenburg that served as a concentration camp for women from 1937
to 1939. She was released in late 1938 and spent the war years as a physical therapist for
wounded soldiers in Bavaria. Her husband was released in 1940 and conscripted into
the army to serve on the eastern front. In 1944Lina Haag began to write her recollections in the form of a letter to her husband, who at that time was missing in action.
Alfred Haag returned from a Soviet prisoner of war camp in 1948. He served as
chairman of the organization of Dachau camp survivors for many years.
Lina Haag's recollections, published under the title Ei.ne H andaoll Staub (A Handful
of Dust) in 1947 , provide a frrst-hand account of the plight of political dissidents in Nazi
Germany in the 1930s. The concentration camps were an integral part of the Nazi
system of dominance not only as a means of punishment, but also as a deterrent to any
form of political opposition. Political prisoners who had successfully undergone "reeducation"were sometimes released, but only on condition that they never mention their
camp experiences to anyone. In the excerpts below Haag describes the military discipline, the dehumanization, and the arbitrary brutality to which inmates were subjected
as a matter of course. Her bitterly ironic reflections on the psychology of the camp
guards and the indifference of the general population are relevant to the current
public debate on the complicity of ordinary Germans in Nazi atrocities.
3. I
I
Lina
H-9, A Hondful of Dust
We are brought to Lichtenburg. The Lichtenburg is the old fortress of Torgau, a massive
medieval castle with many towers, wide courtyards, dark dungeons, and endless halls, a
daunting gigantic structure with mighty walls. Not a bright castle ("lichte Burg"), it is the ideal
concentration camP ...
We are lined up in one of the courtyards. About thirty women: political prisoners, Jews,
criminals, prostitutes, and Jehovah's Witnesses. Female guards from the SS circle us like gray
wolves. I see this new ideal type of German woman for the first time. Some have blank faces
and some have brutal looks, but they all have the same mean expression around their
mouths. They pace back and forth with long strides and fluttering Sray caPes, their
commanding voices ring shrilly across the court, and the large wolfhounds with them strain
threateningly at their leashes. They are preposterous and terrifring, reminiscent of old sagas,
merciless and probably even more dangerous than the brutal SS henchmen, because they are
women. Are they womenf I doubt it. They could only be unhuman creatures, creatures with
gray dogs and with all the instincts, viciousness, and savagerT of their dogs. Monsters. ...
The inspections are the worst, or rather the days preceding them. Washing, brushing,
scrubbing goes on for hours. Punishment rains down at the slightest infraction. We are
bellowed at if there is a wrinkle in the bed sheet, or if a tablespoon is not lying straight in the
locker. lt's always the same show, no matter who comes. The door is shoved open; we lump
up from our seats; the visitor comes in and shouts a cheerful greeting; enthusiasm glows in
the eyes of the female warders; the visitor looks benevolently over at us; then he turns to
Commandant Kogel with a silly remark, such as "A very nice room" or "They seem to be in
good health." Of course Kogel happily agrees and repeatedly gives assurance that noone is
subjected to hardships, which the visitor has never doubted. Then with an ebullient "Heil
Hitler" he turns to go. The entourage respectfully makes way, eager hands throw open the
door, and the visitor leaves.
Once even Himmler himself appears, in order to see his German reeducation project. He
looks insignificant; we had visualized this Satan personified differently, but he is in good spirits
and friendly, he laughs a lot and trants several early releases. Acts of mercy by a despot in a
good mood. Even the so-called Women's Leader Scholtz-Klinkr3 manages an inspection visit.
She too is cheerful, friendly, enthusiastic, and happy that we are doing so well. She says she
has a very special, a womanly understanding for us and for our situation, and to hear her talk,
she almost envies us. She most likely will not visit the dark isolation cells nor will she observe
a flogging. That probably would not interest her so much, although both are essential educational methods in this New German institution. The camp commandant assures her, too, that
there are no hardships - we stand there and listen with fixed expressions. No one steps
forward and says: No, that's not true; the truth is that we are beaten on the slightest pretext.
For the beating we are tied naked to a wooden post, and Warder Mandel flogs us with a dog
whip as long as she can keep it up. No one steps forward and says this. Because everyone
wants to live ...
Oh, dear husband, I always thought that after two years of solitary confinement nothing
more in this world could frighten me, but I was wrong. I am terribly afraid of the beatings, of
the dark cells in which women die so quickly, and of the dreaded chambers in which prisoners are interrogated by Gestapo officials. There are interrogations ofthe first, second, and
third degrees. What cannot be found in this hellish place! Fear is torment enough; torment
enough is the certainq/ that these things will happen to us one day. lt is absolutely impossible
to be here for years without disaster striking one day. lt will come. One day it will come.
Either through the denunciation ofa "comrade," or because ofthe guard, or because a shoe
string was not properly tied, or because the work wasn't adequate, or because of fishing a
potato or bread crust out ofthe pigsty, or maybe once one has a crazy day and fortets that
one is nothing, no more than a handful of dust, and one cries out the truth. We haven't
gotten that far yet. We stilt stand there quietly and hear the Women's Leader of the German
Reich praise the nice room and the cleanliness and the discipline of the inmates; we hear the
oily voice of the camp commandant, who laughs flatteringly, and jovially asserts that there are
no hardships, the same camp commandant who at times, when he feels like it, takes the whip
into his own hands in order to relieve the overworked guard. As I said, we haven't gotten
that far yet.
Then Thea is released. Very suddenly. I am happy for her. Anyone who gets out of here is
granted the gift of life.
Now Doris Maase of the illegal Communist Party becomes the senior of the room. At the
beginning it is not easy for her. Our station warden is a bitch: suspicious, vain, and guilty of
13
Gertrud Scholtz-Klink (1902-98) was the head of the main Nazi association for women.
favoritism. She wants to be respected and feared. Everyone is supposed to grovel before her.
Those who do not prostrate themselves are shouted down. She talks or flatters some of us
into submissiveness; the rest of us are beaten down. lt all depends on her moods, her likes
and dislikes. Anyone unlucky enough to be disliked by her can hardly be saved, and then only
through the brilliant diplomacy of our Doris. She helps us a Sreat deal. . . .
Sometimes we ask one another whether there is no one outside who thinks of us and why
no one speaks out against all this? What is happening here must have gradually leaked out.
And not only here but in all the camps. Do all the released prisoners really keep silent once
they are let out? Or do the petty conformists outside refuse to listen to them? Or don't the
people hear them in the triumphalist celebrations of the nationl
Once again the "greatest statesman of all time" was right. The Sudetenland has returned
home.ra Without war. With all the blessings of the world. ls it any wonder, then, that on the
outside they believe the FUhrer rather than prisoners released from concentration campsl lf
the world doesn't even protest the brutal annexation of foreign countries, is it likely to
protest the beating of some poor working class woman who had perhaps Protested that
annexationl Why should the world protest at all, when even in Germany no one sPeaks out
against this reign of terrorl Why should anyone in Germany speak out against the inhumanity
of a regime that has the blessing of the worldl "lt's no use, Doris" I say, "the Fiihrer is always
right, and we are poor wretches, completely forsaken wretches." ...
It does not even take a real denunciation; lust a disparaging or dissatisfied comment from a
guard is enough to have one sent to the hole. Not that we have no laws here. These are the
moods of the camp commandant, the orders that he shouts across the prison yard' He has
the revolver and the power over life and death. When he screams, everyone has to scramble,
even the guards and all the she-wolves too, the dogs and us. When he strides across the
courtyard, when he marches by the lines of fear and misery, hundreds of pairs of hate-filled
eyes stare after him. A veritable cloud of hate envelops him. lt almost seems to me as if he
needs this hate as much as the air he breathes.
On Easter Sunday he personally whips three women. Our comrade Steffi is one of them.
She had helped her boyfriend, a Jew, escape from Germany. She is beautiful, intelligent, and a
good comrade. Soon after the whipping she dies. She could not take it. That is how the
commandant of the Lichtenburg concentration camp celebrates Easter. By beating three
naked women, tied to a wood post, until he is no longer able. Would anyone believe that
outside of this placel Even if someone believed it, and maybe even told others, a Gestapo
thumbnail on the tendons over the knuckle would be enough to make him forget everythint
as completely as if he had never heard anything. What am I saying, a GestaPo thumbnail - no,
the merest threat is enough, and the people are silent. They are not only silent, they cheer'
march, inform, and close ranks behind the FUhrer, just as the Ftihrer wants. Threats constitute his political strategy, his foreign policy, and his domestic policy. Threats and fear, cruelty
and cowardice, are the foundations of his state. They threaten us and they use us to threaten
the people, as necessary. The petty police official threatens, and the Ftihrer threatens. That's
how they do it. Threats are the unifying bond that loins together the "people's community."
Bond? No, chain. They have to be brutal and cruel, how else could they threaten? Behind
every threat lies the concentration camp, an abyss of depravity, illegality, and criminality. The
14
This is a reference to the Czech crisis of 1938, in which Hitler claimed the Gerrnan-populated bordcaarea, the Sudetenland (see Doc. 4.12).
citizens sense it. That's enough. For them to know more would be detrimental. Fear is to be
inspired, not outrage. And fear it is that is inspired.
We could perhaps understand that the people outside are intimidated. But it is incomprehensible to us that there are so many sadists. Are they really sadists, criminals by nature,
murderersl I don't think so, and neither does Doris. They are just respectable petty bourgeois conformists. Only they happen to be employed not in the tax office, but in the police
office. They happen not to be municipal clerks, or meat packers, or office assistants, or
construction workers, or accountants, but are instead Gestapo employees and SS men. They
do not distinguish between good and evil; they simply do what they are ordered to do. They
are not ordered to distinguish between good and evil, or between right and wrong, but to rid
the state of enemies and destroy them. They do this with the same stubborn pedantry, the
same German industriousness, and the same German thoroughness with which they would
otherwise check tax returns or write minutes or butcher pigs. They whip a defenseless
woman tied to a post with matter-of-fact earnestness and conscientiousness, fully convinced
that in so doing they are serving the state or their Fiihrer, which is the same to them. ln the
case of the whipping there may be some pleasure, but the essential factor is the German
sense of duty, raised by a demon to the demonic. Thus the inscription on their belt buckle
reads: "My honor is my loyalty."
I have looked into terrible hearts and minds, into hearts that besides monstrous cruelty
contained a disposition always inclined to sentimentality, and into minds that seemed harmless and simple and good-natured, but still were the minds of diligent executioners. We find it
dreadful and disturbing that Hitler's creatures are not recruited from an asocial element, but
from the lower middle-class element of the people. They are not born sadists, nor professional criminals, nor impassioned murderers, but iust small-minded middle-class conformists.
Like everyone else. The same talent for organization that works on the outside to improve
the people's physical fitness with goose-stepping and vitamin drops drives the mortality rates
here in the concentration camps ever higher. Hardly a day passes in which a dead woman is
not found in the dark cells. She is "found," although the day before the prisoners working in
that section often have to take the clothes out of the cells of those who are to die that night.
Naked, with shattered bones and bodies besmirched with blood, the dead women are lying
on the floor. Some tried to hide under the plank beds or fled under the table in order to
escape the fatal blows. Bent, beaten, petrified beings, who once had names, husbands, children, and homes, they lie there with impenetrable, fixed stares. That is the hell of the dark cells
with their insane horrors. lt is the end of the world. Honor to all those nameless women.
Honor to them a thousand times.
Source: Lina Haag, Eine Handvoll Stoub: Widerctond einer Frou 1933-1945 ( 1947; rept.
Frankfurt:FischerTaschenbuchVerlag,19.95),pp.107,
lll-113, ll7-ll9.Reprintedby
permission of Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH.
Translated by Sally Winkle