The concentration camp syndrome in Miranda de Ebro survivors. Part One

How to cite: Ryn, Z.J. The concentration camp syndrome in Miranda de Ebro survivors. Bałuk-Ulewiczowa, T., trans. Medical Review – Auschwitz. January 2019. https://www.mp.pl/auschwitz/. Originally published as “KZ-syndrom u więźniów obozu koncentracyjnego Miranda de Ebro.” Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim. 1987: 34–44.

Author

Zdzisław Jan Ryn, MD, PhD, born 1938, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and formerly Head of the Department of Social Pathology at the Collegium Medicum, Jagiellonian University, Kraków. Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the Kraków Medical Academy (1981–1984). Polish Ambassador to Chile and Bolivia (1991–1996) and Argentina (2007–2008). Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Physical Education (AWF) in Kraków. Co-editor of Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim.

Part One

Introduction

The term generally used in the professional literature for the medical effects in persons who have been detained in a concentration camp is “concentration camp syndrome” (German KZ‑Syndrom, Konzentrationslagersyndrom). This term has been used to describe a variety of pathological conditions observed in survivors of the Nazi German concentration camps. Following the outbreak of the Korean War, and subsequently of the War in Vietnam, a new term entered the medical terminology, namely “prisoner‑of‑war disease,” to differentiate the condition from what had been observed in survivors of German concentration camps; while the term “barbed‑wire disease” had been coined in connection with the First World War. From the very outset doctors in various countries working on these issues have observed a wide range of different types and forms the condition may take, while some symptoms, such as its chronic and progressive character, are fixed.

Persons who have survived a series of camps have said that there were vast differences in the conditions and the way prisoners were treated. The same applied to incarceration in prisons prior to transportation to a concentration camp. On the whole, doctors examining survivors and trying to determine cause‑and‑effect relationships between their traumas and the long‑term post‑concentration camp effects have not gone into a detailed analysis of the different types and intensity of the aetiological factors involved, and instead have tended to reduce the end effect to an overlap or a simple summation of the diverse factors.

However, clinical practice shows that this does not hold for all cases, viz. that often the same traumas do not give rise to identical outcomes.

To a certain extent this paper may provide an explanation for the large differences between the clinical picture of the concentration camp syndrome observed in survivors, depending on the camps in which they were detained, and their predisposition prior to the illness.

In recent yearsa survivors who have come to the Kraków psychiatric clinic for help included a few who had been held in Miranda de Ebro in Spain, one of the largest concentration camps set up by the Franco regime to isolate off its opponents. Miranda de Ebro had been in operation already before the Second World War broke out.

Psychiatric contact with Miranda de Ebro survivors always drew our attention to the clear differences in the medical consequences for themb, as well as in the specific nature of the psychiatric experiences and traumas they sustained as a result of incarceration in Miranda de Ebro. At the peak of its operations this camp held about five thousand prisoners, and Poles made up a sizeable part of its foreign inmates. In comparison with the population of survivors of the German death camps, this is a small group, nonetheless, today in Poland, there are stillc several dozen survivors of this little known Fascist camp.

There are good scientific and practical reasons for a detailed presentation of the results of our medical observations and research carried out on a selected group of Miranda de Ebro survivors.

There is also a substantial moral value in publishing works on less well-known concentration camps such as Miranda de Ebro because apart from their documentary evidence and the contribution such publications make to science, they are what survivors and their families expect. Our papers on Miranda de Ebro published in Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim [Medical Review – Auschwitz] have persuaded the Polish authorities responsible for the employment of disabled persons, which have been reviewing applications from Miranda de Ebro survivors, to grant these people the status of war invalids. Just how much survivors of this camp have wanted such publications to appear is shown in a comment made by Edmund Szymiec, published in the magazine Perspektywy in 1982:

“I was very pleased to see Jerzy Gutkowski’s article on Miranda de Ebro in No.14/81 of Perspektywy. I’m glad someone has written about the camp, because I spent over two years in it (from December 1940 to June 1943). No one in ZBoWidd believed me that there had been such a camp and that in it we went through hell. After escaping from Stalag XIIIA near Nuremberg, a group of friends and I decided to head for Free France to join the Polish Armed Forces being formed in the West, and we decided it would be easiest and fastest to make our way across the Pyrenees, Spain, and Portugal, for Gibraltar, and from there to Britain. One of my colleagues died when we were crossing the Pyrenees, but the three of us left continued on our journey, yet near Gerona, in Spain, the Spanish police caught us, put us in prison, and from there sent us to Miranda de Ebro. On being released in 1943 I went to Madrid, and from there I travelled via Portugal to Gibraltar, and eventually joined the Polish Armed Forces. In Gibraltar I went through another shock—the death of General Sikorski. I had the honour of standing on guard duty beside his coffin.” (Szymiec, 1982)

This was how most of the Polish inmates of Miranda de Ebro found themselves imprisoned in it. Instead of getting them to Gibraltar and England, their trek across the Pyrenees landed them in a Spanish jail, and next in Miranda de Ebro.

The number of prisoners held in Miranda de Ebro gradually rose. More and more Poles who tried to cross the Pyrenees ended up there, although there were Polish inmates in other Spanish concentration camps, such as Pamplona and Logrono. It is estimated that in total, from one million to two million prisoners were confined in the Spanish concentration camps. Many of them had been maimed and disabled, and they included people who had been blinded. This was one of the tragic effects of the Spanish Civil War.

Life in Miranda de Ebro

Conditions in Miranda de Ebro were similar in many respects to the situation in the German concentration camps. Food rations were at the starvation level and meals were made of the cheapest products, often ones that had already gone bad.

Bolesław A. Wysocki, a survivor and author of a book entitled Nad rzeką Ebro [On the bank of the Ebro, 1979], has left a description of his first reaction to the realities of life in Miranda de Ebro:

“We were given a spoon and a metal plate each, and then we were lined up in pairs in front of the food pot. Supper consisted of two dishes: potatoes with rancid oil and potatoes with mouldy peas. As each of us had just one utensil, one took a double helping of the first dish for himself and his partner, and the other took a double serving of the second dish. We were put under the command of a ‘freedman,’ that is one of the Spanish ex‑prisoners who had served his sentence but stayed in the camp, working just for his food. He was called the sargente (sergeant); earlier he had been a barrack supervisor or a cabo, in charge of a few dozen prisoners, lording his power over them. Most cabos did not want to leave the camp on their discharge because they were afraid of retaliation by ex‑prisoners. Appointing some prisoners to serve as cabos—something that had been tried and tested in the German concentration camps—gave excellent results and helped to keep a harsh standard of discipline in the camp. ... I lay down on the bare boards and fell asleep. I didn’t even feel the bloodthirsty fleas biting me. There were so many fleas in the camp that there was no remedy against them—neither anti‑insect powder, nor any kind of disinfectant, nor shaking them out of your shirt or blanket. Not to speak of the bedbugs.” (Wysocki, 1979: 55–56)

The camp regulations and daily schedule were similar to the German concentration camps:

“In the morning a bugle‑call woke us up for reveille. Every activity in the camp was preceded by a bugle‑call, even when the first ladle went into the food pot at meal times. I washed in the River Bayas which flowed by the camp. There were crowds of prisoners along its banks. The entire length of its course through the camp, a few dozen metres, was used for everything: washing, bathing, washing up food utensils, washing dirty underclothes and... defecation. I was disgusted, but what else could I do? I felt the call of nature, so I climbed onto the gangway rigged up of planks. It shook under each step I made. Tied together with rags and ropes, it swayed to and fro like a swing, and no one fancied taking a dip in such dense water. Then there was another bugle‑call and we lined up, standing to attention in front of the coffee cauldrons. Yet another bugle‑call, and the cooks immersed their ladles, and a short while later the prisoners were relishing their black, unsweetened coffee and enjoying their bread as black as coal, which they had a daily ration of 125 gram. After breakfast we washed our dishes in the river. ...

“The camp at Miranda de Ebro was dirty and everywhere there was an unpleasant smell, yet I soon got used to it. The camp comprised twenty‑six low prisoners’ huts arranged in two rows, and another ten huts in two more rows accommodating the workshops and infirmary. The kitchen fitted out with several stoves stood by the riverside, and at the entrance to the camp there was a house with a watchtower for the jefe (chief) or commandant of the camp and his officials. A tall brick wall topped with barbed wire ran around the whole of the camp and every few metres on the other side of the wall there was a guardhouse.” (Wysocki, 1979: 56–57 )

In another passage of his recollections Wysocki wrote:

“From the very outset in the camp there was rampant hunger. The Spanish prisoners put it laconically: ‘Poco pan, mucho chinches’ (Not much bread, a lot of bedbugs). We sold everything, even our wedding rings and silver medals, to get money to buy food. A prisoner’s meal consisted of black coffee, a piece of bread, usually a piece of fish that had gone bad, rarely a piece of meat with rice and tomatoes, and always ‘soup,’ that is boiled water with potato peels, as the potatoes were pilfered by the soldiers guarding prisoners.” (Wysocki, 1979: 61)

“We were always hungry because we only got a daily bread ration of 100 gram, and the canteen was so crowded you couldn’t get to it to buy a bocadillo [sandwich], and, at any rate, only a limited amount of them were brought to the camp, not enough for our needs. There were two sales counters in the canteen, one for the Spanish soldiers, and one for the prisoners. The soldiers bought five or more bocadillos each and then resold them to us at twice or even five times the price. There was nothing to eat. ... I was one of the unlucky ones; for weeks on end on I never managed to get a bocadillo, by the time I got to the counter the shelves in the canteen were empty. The hunger went hand‑in‑hand with the brutal treatment we got from the Spaniards, and what made matters worse was that the Polish mission in Madrid was still doing nothing to have us released.” (Wysocki, 1979: 77)

This is what hygiene was like in the camp:

“The prisoners’ quarters were worse than the most primitive conditions you could imagine. We slept on [the floor] boards, bitten by lice and bedbugs, next to mice and rats. Everywhere we went we were in danger of contracting a diversity of diseases, from scabies up to and including syphilis. When night came, thousands of bedbugs fell from the ceiling, enticed by our warm breath, and landed like paratroopers on prisoners’ faces. Eventually, after a lot of effort, the Spaniards allowed us to have an iron heater put into the hut, but it did not heat the place up, all it was good for was for cooking something on it. I remember how in January 1941 our boys caught some cats and dogs in the camp and made steaks on the heater.

“It was so cold that we were constantly catching colds and a few Polish inmates even contracted pneumonia, which was very dangerous. Bladder inflammation became so common that we had to keep running to the latrine, which was well over a hundred steps away. We tried to remedy the problem by using old tins. But on 6 February 1941, when Alferez Alonzo learned of this, he had all the tins hunted out and made us wash in the urine he found in them. And he made any prisoners who did not manage to get to the toilet crawl along the pavement and lick up the frozen urine. ...

“There were many cases of people losing their senses, and when that happened the poor fellows were kept for a long time in the dungeon before a decision was made to send them to the hospital. ... Gradually, internees became apathetic and sometimes did things which gave the guards a reason to treat them brutally. ...

“Often prisoners who could not adapt to the severe conditions of life in the camp developed psychosomatic conditions, such as skin rashes all over their bodies, digestive disorders such as stomach and intestinal pain, constipation or diarrhoea, and even problems with their sight or hearing. The hopelessness of the situation made some of them turn into mechanical robots bereft of all human feelings, not wanting or needing anything, with no emotions, which was a psychological defence mechanism in the hard conditions in the camp.” (Wysocki, 1979: 99–100)

“Everywhere in the camp there was a ghastly smell and everything was filthy because there was no water to keep yourself and the things around you clean. In the washrooms there were about a dozen taps working for an hour for the needs of nearly five thousand people. If you went to the well, which had just a trickle of water, you had to queue up for hours just to fill up a bottle. But once a prisoner had obtained some water, he could not wash properly because the commandant had banned washing outside the barracks. The only toilet had about a dozen holes over a cesspool with no flushing device. In these conditions answering the call of nature was an immense problem.” (Wysocki, 1979: 109)

Antoni Kępiński in Miranda de Ebro

Readers of Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim have heard of and learned about Miranda de Ebro concentration camp from our 1978 publication of the biography of Antoni Kępiński (Ryn, 1978). The basic source of information on the camp at that time were Kępiński’s letters to his parents, which have fortunately been preserved. Although in his letters Kępiński played down the evil in the camp and presented a softened picture of the tragedies that occurred in it, nonetheless he conveyed a lot of important details of the history of Miranda de Ebro which would otherwise have been very difficult to reconstruct today. So let’s look at some of the passages from his letters again, ones which give an outline of the realities in the camp and present Kępiński’s subjective suffering.

“Our empty stomachs were rumbling a bit, and since our tummies are a basic need, we were all pulling long faces. ... Boredom is the most dreadful thing about this ‘holiday.’ You don’t think about anything but your stomach and the impossibility of filling it. Sometimes in the evening we talk about food. It’s a very dangerous subject, you can get someone imagining out aloud how he’d fancy just a simple dish of meat rolls with buckwheat and mushroom sauce, or some cheese pierogi, or a fairly big pork chop. And then the floodgates are flung wide open and there’s a torrent of memories, what you had and how you had it, what people used to eat in this or that part of Poland and we all look back to those days nostalgically, like Daddy used to, to the good old days of Franz Josef. ... Lately, we’ve all been in a very bad mood, as always when your cash runs out and you have to wait for your next money, and at night you dream of various titbits to eat, obviously under the impact of an empty stomach. ... It’s a few weeks now since the patatas stopped, and now you won’t come across even a sliver of spud in the soup. Instead, we get broad beans in our soup, done in a rather original way, that is cooked in the skin. But even that skin is quite tasty, almost like the skin of French beans. ... That’s how the days here pass by, one after another, each so like the day before that I’m losing count of the time and the meaning of time... Time in the camp, with nothing happening, is beginning to be a shapeless, empty space. ...

“These letters of mine, when I get to read them one day, I’ll be ashamed of them, because over half of each and every one I have writtten is on food and drink. But for now Lord Belly is indeed lording it over us.” (cf. Ryn, 1978)

Kępiński’s unsatisfied wants in the camp must have been very similar to what other inmates wanted. Above all, it was the want of freedom and activity. Imprisonment and humiliating treatment was a tremendous psychological shock. There was also the unsatisfied need of contact with those near and dear to them, parents and friends, who were thousands of kilometres away. There was a need for contact with the natural world, which was just beyond the camp’s barbed wire. There was the unsatisfied need for news about what was going on in the world, especially about the War. The monotony brought on a sense of deprivation, and prisoners’ remedy for that was to escape into the world of dreams and make-believe.

But as the passages I have quoted show, the most aggravating experience was hunger. That is why in Miranda de Ebro the symbol of existence and survival was the bocadillo. That is why eating made up such a big part of conversations, letters, and even dreams.

Kępiński tried desperately to fill the emptiness of life in the camp with study, lectures, and reading. He even managed to see whatever good there was in the nightmare of camp life. He did not lose hope and patiently put up with the vicissitudes day after day, living for short interludes in his protective world of illusion and fantasy. Writing letters to his parents was an important source of spiritual support. Thanks to the letters which have come down to us we can reconstruct many of the particulars relating to his time in the camp and identify the original sources for his later work on the pathology of concentration camps. It comes as no surprise that when Auschwitz survivors were reading Kępiński’s concentration camp essays, they saw him as one of the inmates of Auschwitz and sensed his special emotional closeness and empathy with former prisoners.

From other survivors’ accounts we know that Kępiński was maltreated and beaten up on several occasions. He went through starvation disease and for a time was in a condition of mental prostration: he went silent, sunk into a state of profound apathy, broke off his relations with fellow‑inmates and refused to take meals. For obvious reasons this episode did not get into his letters in full, for, of course, Kępiński wrote them to his parents and did not want to hurt them, thereby adding to their worries. Nonetheless, it is quite right to ask what kind of permanent impact his experiences of Miranda de Ebro made on his personality and on his mental and psychological condition.

Kępiński never mentioned the subject. Even though he wrote scores of papers on the psychology of the survivors of German concentration camps, in none of them did he ever make the slightest allusion to his own experiences. Not even his closest work associates knew very much about his tragic concentration camp episode. Perhaps the backdrop to this attitude of his was a sense of guilt that others, including people he had a close relationship with, had gone through much more in extermination camps or in jails; perhaps he felt guilty that he had not been through genuinely extreme situations, that he had not been put up against the ultimate test, that he had not satisfied his personal need for heroism.

But we can take an alternative view of Kępiński’s attitude. Perhaps his numerous papers on Auschwitz, so stirring for the depth of reflection in them, are a projection of his own experiences in Miranda de Ebro. Perhaps when he wrote about Auschwitz survivors, he was also writing about himself; maybe when he was writing about the pathology in the German concentration camps, he was also writing about Miranda de Ebro, which he knew from personal experience. As he examined the stories of those who survived the “heaven and hell” of Auschwitz, he must have been confronting their accounts with what he had been through himself.

His own experiences must have looked paltry in comparison with the Death Factory of Auschwitz. His Miranda de Ebro must have seemed well‑nigh grotesque with its pseudo‑kapos, its pseudo‑tortures, its pseudo‑calabos [camp prison] etc. So the experience of Miranda de Ebro faded away into the background, supplanted by experiences which were even crueller, because they were deadly. Maybe that is why we will not find a single mention of Kępiński’s two and a half years—the best years of his life—in Miranda de Ebro in his work, not even in some of his CVs. His only externalisation recording those years are the letters he sent from the camp, which look rather puerile, somewhat euphemistic, slightly detached from the brutal reality of Miranda de Ebro.

Yet, if it were not for Miranda de Ebro, we would certainly never have had Kępiński’s deeply moving Auschwitz essays [all of which have been translated into English and are available online; editor’s note]: “Nightmare,” “The Psychopathology of Power,” “The Ramp,” “Anus Mundi,” and many others. If it had not been for Miranda de Ebro, Auschwitz survivors would never have had him for their mentor and philosopher.

End of Part One

Translated from the original article: Ryn Z. J.: KZ-syndrom u więźniów obozu koncentracyjnego Miranda de Ebro Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim, 1987.

Notes:

a. viz. the 1980s
b. in comparison with what was observed in survivors of the Nazi German concentration camps
c. viz. the 1980s
d. the official Polish combatants’ and war veterans’ association

References

1. Kępiński, A. Tzw. KZ-syndrom. Próba syntezy. Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim. 1970: 18–23.
2. Masłowski, J. Człowiek. In Jakubik, A., and Masłowski. J., Antoni Kępiński – człowiek i dzieło. Warszawa: PZWL; 1981: 65–75.
3. Ryn, Z. Przez Pireneje do Mirandy. Z listów Antoniego Kępińskiego. In Wierchy Vol. 46. Kraków: PWN; 1978: 271–274.
4. Ryn, Z. Antoni Kępiński w Miranda de Ebro. Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim. 1978: 95–115.
5. Ryn, Z. Antoni Kępiński internowany na Węgrzech (1939–1940). Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim. 1979: 85–95.
6. Ryn, Z. Antoni Kępiński w Polskim Wydziale Lekarskim w Edynburgu (1945–1946). Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim. 1979: 95–114.
7. Szymiec, E. Miranda de Ebro. Perspektywy. 1982; 2: 30.
8. Wysocki, B. A. Nad rzeką Ebro. Wrocław: Ossolineum; 1979

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