The rhythm of death in the concentration camp

Is it possible now, after forty years have passed, to reconstruct the psychological and spiritual state of concentration camp prisoners who stood in the face of the all-powerful menace of death? Is it purposeful and justifiable? Can we expect investigations like this to bear fruit of practical use, beyond cognitive values, and can they be, in particular, instrumental in rendering medical care to those prisoners who are now alive? Such are the basic questions that present themselves when this unusually difficult and delicate subject is taken up.

Year by year, the population of former prisoners is growing smaller. Harassed by diseases and the process of premature ageing, they pass away before their time.

During World War II, about four million Poles were killed, both Jews and non-Jews. Adolf Gawalewicz (1968), the author of Waiting for the Gas Chamber has fittingly asked: can the figure of millions murdered in concentration camps move us without a knowledge of the experiences of individual prisoners? Statistical descriptions of what happened in concentration camps cannot evoke an adequate emotional reaction in people’s consciousness nowadays. For this reason, approximating the problems of death and dying in the concentration camp is made possible only through individual analyses – only then can we reflect and ponder on those problems in a more general way.

Today these few former prisoners speak to us who, thanks to a lucky chance, survived the gehenna of the concentration camp. They have been living a life which – to use their own words – was “bestowed.” The time that has elapsed since the liberation from the camp has not blurred the memories, on the contrary – it has sometimes sharpened them.

Thus, we have drawn upon direct, personal recollections of former prisoners, or referred to answers obtained from specially constructed questionnaires that were sent out in 1976 to 120 former prisoners, mainly of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Death and dying in the concentration camp is a difficult and delicate subject, as we could foresee; traumatic for many people, which indeed has been reflected in a number of accounts. But the majority convey a different spirit, for example,

“In the camp each of us, especially the intelligentsia, dreamed that somebody would survive, describe and record all this in books or films, that scientists would investigate, that the Nazis would not burn the ramp so that the Auschwitz museum could be set up for the whole world to know, that when the war was over the Nazi physicians, who carried out pseudo-medical experiments, would be condemned, that someone would help our families. But before dying, everyone had the same concerns: who will tell and describe, if none of us lives to see freedom? – and we had no hope that anyone would...” (S.B.).

It can well be claimed that almost all of the literature concerning concentration camps touches – to some extent – upon the problem of death and dying. This is probably the most shattering non-fiction literature in the world, whether medical publications or simple recollections from the camp. Almost everything that was written in the camps, or expressed through some other artistic media such as poetry, painting, camp epistolography, or messages smuggled out, bears the ineffaceable stigma of concentration camp death.

The atmosphere of death in the camp

What do prisoners say on this subject? Immediately on crossing the gate of the camp, the ritual of “welcome” introduced the prisoners to the horror of death: “You are in a German concentration camp. You have entered through the main gate bearing the words ‘Arbeit macht frei’. Have no illusion and abandon all hope. There is only one way out – through the chimney of the crematorium. For us, you are not human beings but a dung heap. We shall duly dispose of you, as you shall see for yourselves. For the enemies of the Third Reich like you, we – the Germans – shall have no pity or indulgence. With real satisfaction, we shall let you through the grates of the crematorium ovens.” (Paczuła, 1963).

Jadwiga Apostoł-Staniszewska, a former prisoner of Auschwitz‑Birkenau, renders the atmosphere of death in the camp in her recollections:

“In those places of extermination, cut off from the rest of the world, the only truth was death. It existed everywhere: in the barrack, in the Lagerstrasse [German “camp street”], in the sickroom, in front of the barracks, inside and behind the gate, in the cells underground, at every moment of night and day. Death was hiding in whips, truncheons, and hobnailed boots, in guns and syringes, in the tins whose deadly contents were poured into the gas chamber.

“The earth, covered with mud or furrowed earth, was soaked through with death, death was in the air and in the sky veiled with fumes and smoke. Deadly were the high-tension wires and gun barrels sticking out from the watchtowers around . . .

The Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Photograph by W. Rospondek

“In the torrid summer of 1944, the overloaded gas chambers and crematorium ovens could not cope with their task of killing and burning the people brought there. The piles of human bodies kept burning in the trenches dug by the Vistula. Grey smoke drifted low over the ground, heavy and thick, permeated with the greatest mass tragedy the world had ever known. The ashes of the burnt were strewn over the country fields nearby. All were incinerated: those brought in lorries or sealed railway trucks, and those who entered on foot through the gate of death. Hundreds and thousands of human beings were killed daily on the extensive area isolated from the life outside by cordons of SS‑men, watchtowers, and high-voltage current incessantly flowing in the barbed‑wire fences. This volcano, extinct forever, is still smoking with death testifying to the truth of the mass extermination programme, elaborated in detail and executed in the camps of mankind’s extermination . . .

“To die in the camp was but the consequence of the first step made by the prisoner on the premises assigned for just that purpose.

“Camp death was bred in scientific institutes and laboratories, it inevitably followed from political ideology and propaganda, it was spawned in the brains of madmen and all those who adhered to this madness. That death, as a wilful act of destruction, differed from all the kinds of death that the world had seen. It awaited everyone who had crossed the threshold of the concentration camp.

“Why was it that I did not die? I think, that driven towards the goal which had been ordained for me, I did not reach it in time, or – in other words – the approaching death did not manage to snatch me, though I brushed against it, as though walking with it arm‑in‑arm, I felt it closer, then moving away, I breathed its stench pervading the air, I got to know it to the backbone. Perhaps an oversight? Or, perhaps, some other powers, independent of the force of the sentence that determined the fate of so many people, had the command of my life?”

“The atmosphere of murder and death pervaded the community of prisoners so deeply that after two or three months they became completely accustomed to it and were always prepared for death” (J.S.).

The atmosphere of death was created first by the brutal and inhuman treatment of prisoners, as well as by the whole structure of prison life. One former prisoner says, “The most common and accepted way to treat the prisoners was beating and kicking. The prisoners were beaten because they walked too fast or too slowly, because their badge or button was not sewn on straight, beaten for lice – though it was well‑known that everybody was infested with them – beaten for dirty clothes or sandals, for one step on the grass in front of the barracks, because they could not report in German, or sing German songs, or because they took off their cap in the wrong way, forgot to stand to attention, beaten and kicked in the barrack, in the camp street, at work, everywhere! Beaten for an offence or for no offence, often just as a ‘diversion’... Many prisoners died exactly in this way.” (J.M.)

The first encounter with death in the camp usually left the deepest impression. Let us follow this in another account: “Within the first few days of my time in the camp I happened to see a pile of corpses in front of the hospital barrack, where the dead bodies were loaded onto a lorry with huge wheels. Like bones they were thrown onto it, these were human skeletons; the sight was terrible. I prayed for the souls of the dead to rest in peace...” (J.M.)

The faces of death

“There were as if two kinds of death in the camp. One, worse, was the slow agony as a consequence of the methods of elimination that were used: gradual prostration, diseases, diarrhoea, infections, and death of inanition. This death could be precipitated by the kapo or the SS‑man, frequently bad weather, sometimes suicide – flinging oneself on the wires... The mood whilst abiding death was that of powerlessness, despair, most often indifference, rarely terror. I did not see any wish for defence, for there was no such desire, nor, very often, was there will to live. Having given up, the possibility of defence no longer existed. One had no choice but to lapse into the state of some kind of resignation. I was prepared rather for the second kind of death: the sudden one – a death sentence, the firing squad, hanging, or the gas chamber. This was a different kind of death and it was differently experienced. It was as if deserved... The prisoners shot in Barrack 11 died in this way... the tortured begged for death, those condemned to death and awaiting execution kept silent as there was no other hope... For several years after the war, I retained this tolerance of death...” (A.G.)

Mobile gas wagons at the former Stutthof concentration camp. Photograph by M. Kicka

The mass nature and ubiquity of death in the camp led to the blunting of the prisoners’ emotional reactions. Then, a process followed of reconciling oneself, becoming accustomed, and finally indifferent to the death of camp mates, and, as often was the case, to one’s own death. This process is considered one of the basic defence mechanisms in the adaptation to the camp trauma, whilst at the same time it must be regarded as one of the greatest paradoxes of human existence.

Let us see what the prisoners felt and thought; how they behaved when it became apparent that death was near.

“They had selected from among us, and already shot, eleven prisoners. It was exactly at the moment when the choice was being made that it seemed to me I could not possibly escape alive. I remember that when the first prisoner was marked for the firing squad and taken out of the cell, I felt a twitch somewhere near my heart, pressure on the bladder, and a great regret that I had not said goodbye to my mother; I missed her. Immediately, I examined my conscience, and after that I felt as if relaxed and indifferent. I was ready for the firing squad. I remember that subconsciously I was, somehow, pushing myself into the hands of the selecting SS‑man.” (J.S.)

Adaptation and defence

If it is possible for someone who has not experienced the concentration camp to understand, by a spurt of imagination, the individual prisoner – the individual human being who in such conditions was capable of making the decision to fight for survival – then even this very act of willpower must be regarded as heroic. For this was a decision to defy not only the camp reality but also the ideology of those who had created it. In precisely such acts of will, the prisoners revealed their greatness as humans, regardless of how long they were able to oppose the machinery of death.

Suicide

The camp was beyond the psychophysical endurance of many of the prisoners, and some of them, out of terror, committed suicide. Suicidal death in concentration camps was frequent, particularly in the initial period of incarceration. It was the way of dying especially of those prisoners who were exposed to the most severe traumas: the Jews, foreigners, members of intelligentsia, and older prisoners. The immediate reason for suicide included psychological breakdown, a depression‑anxiety reaction following the loss of emotional support, somatic disease, or imminent threat of death. In the concentration camps, successful suicidal attempts prevailed over the failed ones; group suicide also occurred. In many instances, suicide played a role of a dramatic protest by prisoners against camp functionaries and the very idea of the camps.

Selection

There were moments in the camp life when one gesture, a single movement of the hand or finger, decided the life or death of the prisoner. The decision was made at the ramp, the place where prisoners left the railway trucks that brought them to the camp. Here the “selection” took place – the division into those who were to die immediately upon arrival, and those who, in exchange for the torments of the camp, were still granted life for some time.

“No man thinking soundly, no scientist, can ever understand what selection is: being picked out to die. No one can possibly enter into the feelings of the prisoner, or comprehend his inner struggle for life. The most terrible moment came when we had to look at the SS‑man, when our life was hanging in the balance, when we waited for the movement of the finger or the word raus, which resolved whether we would die or stay alive. As the selecting SS‑man approached, none of us were certain what decision to take, how to behave: was it better to look straight, even audaciously, into his murderous eyes, or simply scoff at life, or perhaps, cast down your eyes, avoiding his glance, or with your own eyes stir pity, seek the mercy of having your life spared . . . The inner psychological struggle was incomparably harder and worse than any fighting on the front, it was impressed upon our consciousness forever with a deep stigma and unhealable trauma.” (Zy. R.)

In Death Block

The horror and dread of death reached its climax in prisoners who were sent to Death Block as soon as they arrived in the camp. Everybody knew that no one returned alive from it, but in fact there were a few exceptions. A handful of prisoners were actually sent to Death Block more than once, until they finally died there. But there were also a few whom fate allowed to survive not only Death Block but the concentration camp itself, and very, very few of them are still alive today. It is to them that we owe our knowledge of what went on in Death Block, what this extreme “congestion” of the atmosphere of death and dying in a concentration camp meant.

“Here in the yard I saw a couple of corpses with broken skulls and the brains coming out of them . . .. I realized that they must have been killed by the Genickschuss (a shot in the back of the head) and I was so terror‑struck that I nearly lost consciousness out of horror of what was in store for me here. These cadavers were stacked in a pile, they had grimacing teeth and their striped prison‑wear was covered in blood.

Corpses of prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp (Block 11)

“A sinister silence prevailed in the block, with the characteristic stench of floors coated with pitch. When we had been put into cell no. 20 in the basement we sat down on the floor in silence . . .. All you could hear was just the SS‑man walking around, the sound of his steps was as monotonous as the ticking of a clock. After some time the SS‑man came in with a sheet of paper and read out the name of one of my companions . . .. We remained silent. After half an hour the prisoner who had been called out returned, so we all gave a sigh of relief that it couldn’t be so bad if people still came back . . .. We sat there as if we were dead, waiting for our turn. The man next to me was praying fervently, whispering Hail Marys. The horror of the situation kept us from falling asleep even though we were exhausted after the journey, the delousing, collecting the rags thrown to us from the window of Block 26, etc. When we had all settled down on the floor we heard someone hollering from the first floor, and after a short while the SS‑man called out my name.

“My knees were knocking, but I went up to the first floor, and was blinded by the light of a powerful lamp. I went into the interrogation room, was welcomed with a punch in the face, and fell to the floor. I was speechless with fear, and as I got a lash from a leather whip I was ready to sign the report. But the soldier asked me to confess I was guilty. If I did, I would be ‘sorted out’ next morning. My survival instinct told me to deny it . . .. I found myself in the cell, where my mates were already asleep. Now all I wanted was to die right then, as I had neither the strength nor the courage for more interrogation. If only I had known how to pray, maybe it would have brought me relief.

“But when I remembered the miserable sight of those corpses in the precinct of Block 11, I was panic-stricken, I wanted to live and survive at any cost . . .. The next interrogations reinforced my resistance.

“Every day in our cell we could hear muted shots coming from the basement washroom of Block 11 (there was no Death Wall yet). We saw the dead bodies of our fellow‑prisoners being dragged by the feet out of the cellar and into the yard, and that kept us permanently tense and impatiently waiting: either for this or for that . . .. Twelve men from our cell had been shot by the end of our stay there and we had all started to get used to the thought of death. It no longer seemed so scary. When we were let out of Block 11 after twenty‑five days, the dreadfulness of concentration camp life seemed an idyll to us.” (L.S.)

Corpses of prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp (Block 11)

“All thirteen of us were sentenced to death and locked up in the death cell in Block 11. We were all in such a shock that at first no‑one could say a word. After we came round from the initial shock some of us were sobbing, weeping, gnashing their teeth, cursing, praying, thinking or forgetting about their nearest and dearest, parents, siblings, children… Each one of us was busy with his own thoughts and matters. I, too, prayed; I was full of despair when I thought of my wife and children, who in September 1939 had been evicted from our apartment . . .. These thoughts gave me a lot of anguish, especially when I thought of the injustice of it all . . .. That night in the death cell was terrible, for we were all convinced we would be executed in the morning. It must have been due to the exhaustion and the anguish that I sort of couldn’t care less about having to die.

“Then we heard the gong to wake us up, and shortly afterwards there were steps in the corridor, getting louder and louder. Someone said, ‘It’s still dark, and they’re coming for us already.’ The key creaked in the lock, the door opened, and in came… the block functionary, and said, ‘You’re lucky, you’re going to the penal company.’ It was April 20, 1942, or thereabouts. In the penal company I had to serve my sentence, six nights on my feet in the bunker.” (F.G.)

“On May 27, during two weeks in May 1942 (13–28) when I was in the bunker of Block 11, I heard shots being fired. Four inmates at a time were being led out of the bunkers into the yard and shot. 168 prisoners had been shot by the lunch break. In the afternoon another twenty were brought out of the bunkers and we were put up against Death Wall. All the signs were that the massacre would be continued. We waited for a  long time, but no‑one turned up. The waiting seemed to go on for ages. It’s hard to reproduce or put into words what we went through as time dragged on. It was a mix of resentment and despair, but there was also something urging on our willpower to keep a stiff upper lip and control our emotions. Our very strong survival instinct would not be quelled and let us keep hoping that it would not come to the worst . . .. The waiting went on for a long time, but finally the block functionary and recorder arrived. Our numbers were read out and we were escorted back to the bunker. Next day we were sent to the penal company.” (J.K.)

“I was locked up in the bunker of Block 11. I was not expecting to come out of it alive, because not many people did. I don’t know how it happened that I was sent out of that bunker to Birkenau, to the penal colony. It must have been a miracle that I survived. What kept me from dying was that I had a feeling I would survive that hell.” (S.B.)

“I first saw Death Wall, where prisoners were shot, when I was in Block 11 in Auschwitz, where the whole of our transport from Tarnów was sent. There was fresh blood on the ground, flowing down in little troughs in the soil into the nearest drain. We watched that blood with horror, it taught us everything we could expect and what was in store for us. Later the memory of that scene often came back to me, and I imagined what the people who had been through it must have felt. For us they were a terrible memento.” (J.B.)

Father Kolbe

The figure of Father Kolbe – the man who out of his own free accord chose to die of starvation in order to save the life of another prisoner – shall always be linked with the death block and selection. It may be that such an accumulation of evil and hatred towards humanity as that of the Auschwitz gehenna was required for the human nature to reveal the opposite, altruistic pole of its potentialities.

The death of a Muselmann

The essence of the Muselmann state, this last stage of starvation disease in the camp, was most forcibly described by Stanisław Jagielski (1968): “A Muselmann has crossed the threshold of death, whilst still alive.” This term has probably been created by association with a dervish, and in this way established itself in medical terminology connected with concentration camps.

“Muselmänner died without finding even a shadow of compassion in our hearts already turned to ashes, in our empty and helpless hands. They died without a word of complaint, but their eyes, turned to us, bespoke the most cruel truth: that we had lost our humanity of which we were so proud and which we brought with us to this hell from that other, different world.” (Sterkowicz, 1969)

Antoni Kępiński writes in one of his essays,

“‘Those who were an impediment,’ the material destined for extermination so that it would no longer defile the new world, accepted their fate in various ways. There were those whose days drew to a close before they had time to rouse themselves from bewilderment. Others awaited death with the fatalistic conviction of the irrevocability of fate. Some others, still, wanted to survive at any price. And since in the concentration camp the only ones who could ‘live comfortably’ were those who inflicted death upon others, those who were masters, some prisoners tried to adopt the forms of behaviour of their own torturers. Yet, finally, there were those who, despite hunger and thirst, cold, pain and every outrage on human dignity, succeeded – so to speak – in turning away from their suffering, and did not devote all their thoughts to pondering how to get hold of more food, how not to be cold or hot, how to stop the tortured body from hurting... This effort was needed to retain inner freedom: a free space in which one could think unconstrained, dream, plan, make decisions, extricate oneself from the nightmare of the present. If in the camp life, in that anus mundi there was so much sacrifice, courage, and love for another human being – phenomena that in these conditions seemed a sheer impossibility – that occurred only due to this inner freedom.” (Kępiński, 1978)

Attitudes towards life and death after liberation

“I have a grudge against the cruel fate,” says one of the former prisoners, “for taking away from me all the joy which makes life more beautiful.” (M.Z.)

“My attitude now towards death is indeed very indifferent. When my father and mother died, and when I saw the family crying and bewailing, I had to make an effort to keep my countenance because their lamentations seemed to me laughable. Sometimes I feel that my life is on the decline, on the road from which there is no return, and I often wonder, why did I live through all that? Was it only to have to see it constantly, feel the senselessness of my life, and feel pain and contempt for myself for having survived whilst others had to die?” (W.F.)

“After I had left the camp, I did not wish to die but more and more often to rest, sleep, stop feeling, to analyse nothing, think of nothing, neither fight nor win, rest inwardly – so to speak – so that my thoughts were free from strain... But a rest like this could only be granted by death.” (A.F.)

“I think that a person always dies alone, especially in the sense that, in dying, he is alone with his experiences. But in the camp, a prisoner’s death was above all a death in loneliness: the prisoner was dying without his family, without friends, only in exceptional cases with someone close to him, surrounded with indifference which arose not out of anger but from the feeling of overpowering helplessness in the face of the phenomenon of the camp death, of becoming accustomed to the daily sight of the dead and the dying.” (J.M.)

Paradoxically, death in the camp was also associated with freedom, and freedom in the eyes of the prisoners had two faces: the unreal freedom outside the camp’s barbed wire, and the freedom of death. “Freedom,” wrote Seweryna Szmaglewska (1975) in her book Smoke over Birkenau, “was a country or planet, indescribably beautiful, where each prisoner sojourned for a time. Each of us cherished this lost world in his or her heart. Each, in the bright laboratory of the mind, distilled the facts that had once been lived, making them all the more beautiful, enveloped in radiance, and so very different from what surrounded us that the mere thought of having to abandon that world made the blood run cold. For it was hard to believe that the longing for freedom might ever be appeased.”

Memorial at the former Konzentrationslager Plaszow. Photograph by Z.J. Ryn

“Once, in the camp, in an endless discussion we reached the conclusion that after the experiences of the last war and the camps, a powerful change would take place and man would turn to God. Humanity would search for universal values, which would outgrow man, some kind of foundation independent of changeable human will, on which to base co-existence so that, never again, would wars or camps return.” (J.M.)

How distant we are today from this vision of the future.

The unusual and unique character of the emotional climate that accompanies contact between psychiatrists and survivors of concentration camps is created by two factors: the intensity and cruelty of traumas experienced in the camps, and by the mark which the camp impressed on the consciousness of survivors. Although forty years have elapsed, the terror of death remains, especially in dreams and nightmares. The imminent threat of death and the fear of death were first expressed in the initial reaction to incarceration, and then in experiencing the threat to one’s own life. These two traumas exerted a deep influence on the process of the deformation of prisoners’ personalities. The terror of imminent death was the main driving power that set in motion various defence mechanisms, sometimes pathological.

Most frequently, the mechanism of negation was observed, as well as emotional isolation, and the so-called emotional autism as seen in indifference and callousness; behaviour also occurred of the regression type, or resignation. The majority of prisoners exposed to the unprecedented pressure from outside, and bewildered by the atrocities of the camp, quickly became inert and blindly obedient to orders. For this reason, most of them lost their lives dying in debasement.

And yet, despite all this, in the “death factory” of the concentration camp, people destined to die took up the inner struggle to endow their sufferings with the significance of a sacrifice. It was crucial, as Victor Frankl wrote, in the face of mortal danger and menace to life, to fight for meaningfulness of death with all the power of the spirit, and to brave death with dignity.

The importance of the spiritual power of man and his cultural tradition was strongly emphasised by Pope John Paul II in his speech at the General Assembly of UNESCO in 1981. The Polish nation had survived the most terrible experiences of history. Although its neighbours condemned it to death many times, the nation stayed alive, preserved its identity, remained itself; among partitions and occupations it retained its sovereignty as a nation not through any physical means but supported by its culture.

Adapted and translated from Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim, 1982.