Method or madness—reflections on the camp

Behind our backs we could hear the scrunch of the Blockführer’s boots—steady, slow, terrifyingly menacing until it grew in our minds into the intensity of the swishing of a timber saw. We tried to melt into the row of prisoners, become one with it, hardly breathe, all in order to avoid the cold knife‑like “raus!”, which meant the end.

After all, the brave, heroic son of the master race had to fulfil his duty to it and “liquidate” his daily dose of sub‑humans. The words of the camp’s Kommandant Ziereis had sunk deeply into his mind: “Germans are at the top. Behind them there are other Germanic nations. Then there is a long, long break. Then there is a pile of shit. Then again a long, long break and finally Jews, Poles and other filth.”

The Blockführer’s steps slowly moved away and at the same time the huge tension which had filled us wholly and entirely—receded. This time I managed it again, so it was not the end for me yet! My God, could we hold out like this for much longer?

The roll call was unusually long. We were counted again, checked meticulously, one after another, row after row of silent, mortally terrified prisoners, tired out by the exhausting work in the stone quarry.

Fluchtversuch! Everybody immediately understood the import of this word. Another escape attempt! From the individual point of view, a completely understandable, obvious act. But for our community it was a serious offence. How we hated the fugitive at that moment for his “imprudent” deed. How dare he give the Germans another excuse for murder?! We did not think at all that in two, three days at most they would kill us all one by one, and even if we were lucky as hell, we would starve to death in a few weeks. It did not even cross our minds that all we wanted was simply to live for a few more hours, not to be killed right now, in a moment.

The method or principle of collective responsibility the Germans applied with the systematic precision typical of them resonated with us. Each of us finally understood what it was all about, and so much so that today whenever I see a German, even a very young one, I make him responsible for everything his parents or neighbours did during the horrific times of the war, in spite of the senselessness of such an attitude. It’s stuck all too permanently in my conscious or subconscious; probably the engrams were imprinted too deeply in the information system of my brain tissue.

Interestingly, this concerns my most profound self, something I usually try to conceal even from myself. With everyone else I make an effort to sympathize with their attitudes; this is my internal moral compass. The compass starts going wild when it finds itself near the German magnetic field. In spite of that I hold on to the right course, and I suspect this is because I am pushed in the right direction by a stream, or even a river of other people who think normally and soundly and notice the effects of appropriate upbringing in the new generation of Germans.

So I try to assess Germans formally and justly. I do know I would depreciate myself as a person if I allowed myself to adhere to the German system of collective responsibility.

An attempt to escape meant responsibility of the inhabitants of the barrack in which the fugitive lived, the responsibility of the Arbeitskommando in which he worked, and the responsibility of the ethnic group he belonged to. Depending on the mood of the camp Kommandant, sometimes all the prisoners were kept out on the roll call square, where they were supposed to stand at attention until told otherwise, that is until the fugitive was found, the time could vary unpredictably, while on other occasions, the Kommando, the entire block or even the whole ethnic group the wretch belonged to was embraced with special—“very tender”—care. The result was always the death of a dozen or dozens of people, for which the murderers made the fugitive responsible.

The word “Westerplatte” evokes very unpleasant memories in me. The same Westerplatte in which the German, Emil Lipinsky, was the lord of life and death for all prisoners. This superbly tattooed professional pimp, an incorrigible, habitual offender probably originating from Saxony, was one of the first kapos who carried out mass exterminations in our camp and did it with great accuracy. Gusen was to be a camp free of priests. So a small area was isolated from Steinbruch Gusen, the main quarry, and labelled Westerplatte. All the Polish priests were relocated there and the kapo received the order to murder them all. “Handsome Emil” carried the order out. I do not remember how many priests were under his command, it could have been dozens or hundreds. One of the Kommandoführers, who boastfully considered himself a representative of the revived race of brave pagan Germans, lectured us that the doctrine of a god who not only did not let you kill your enemy but commanded you to love your neighbour was rubbish. The priests had to die for preaching it. He claimed that he and his comrades were our masters, rulers and gods.

Today when I read of methods of fighting bovine leukaemia in Denmark that have been developed by Bendixen and consist of killing off every single cow in the infected herds, at the mere thought of it I react with nausea caused by mental abhorrence. I do not even know if it is caused by the animals which have to die only because they belong—very passively—to some herd. The important thing is my own memory of belonging to a Bendixen group, a human one though. In Gusen an accurate and hard‑working German doctor could quickly and efficiently suppress an epidemic of typhoid fever—via the “slaughter” of all the sick and suspected of the disease. It was done “delicately,” in a highly “humanitarian” way by injecting petrol into the heart of the individual. One minute of fear and...

Thus we can see that the “centre of gravity” of the collective responsibility method could be moved in any direction, depending on the circumstances, need or good humour of one of the gods. For instance, an assassination or act of sabotage occurred in Kraków—and right away the records of Gusen prisoners who were inhabitants of Kraków were drawn out in order to have them executed. The Kommandant of the camp was irritated by seeing too many surplus yellow triangles pasted on Jewish prisoners—and immediately his guards murdered them all. How could you irritate the Kommandant so much, when he’s so exhausted with his heavy duties? Das Konzentrationslager ist die zweite Front—the concentration camp is the second war front! And could the front‑line duty be light and not tire you out, even if you belonged to the master race?

No wonder then that during the roll calls we were afraid our numbers would be called out. They were our names in those days under the rule of collective responsibility. We were dead scared of that happening, since it almost always meant the end of our earthly existence. And we really wanted to live, and the overwhelming majority of us wanted to live without having been tainted with some betrayal committed to save ourselves. We did not want to lose the right to look at ourselves in the mirror without repulsion or disgust.

I tried to examine the motives for the conduct of several priests who saved their lives by not divulging their status at the roll call. Or the motives of dozens or maybe hundreds of those infected with typhoid fever who gave up the “treatment” during the epidemic but perhaps got their companions infected. Or the acts of despair committed by several of our companions who tried to escape and endangered the lives of many others.

I came to the conclusion that I was making a fundamental mistake in my reasoning. Namely I considered the methods used by the Germans as appropriate and the picture of the world seen through their eyes as normal. But it is the Nazi logic that characterizes the thinking of a paranoiac. During our first years in the camp we were infused with that paranoid thinking so much that we were happy that we did not happen to be priests, or on another occasion that we were not from Kraków, or that we were not Jews, or that we were not from the same block as the prisoner who had attempted to escape, or that we had not been infected during the typhoid epidemic.

It was only in the course of time, a few years later, that a broad sense of solidarity, community and friendship across ethnic boundaries developed among prisoners. We started to feel like one big family. The linguistic barriers were not a serious obstacle to establishing close relations, maybe also because of our jargon which developed after some time. This peculiar formation of a common language shared in such an environment should interest linguists.

To be fair, it should be added that even some Germans joined our family, only a few individuals, but still... In any case, they were not the master race. It seems to me that this type of attitude among prisoners was caused on the one hand by the easing of famine in the camp when relief packages were allowed in, and on the other by the first German war defeats as well as the establishment of the armaments factory in the camp and the employment of prisoners in it. The prisoners from new transports were worst off, since getting to know the specificity of the new camp demanded a lot of time even for an experienced “veteran” prisoner. The “new ones” were immediately assigned the hardest and most exhausting jobs. Many, very many of them were heroes of the underground army, resistance fighters who were captured by the enemy as a result of betrayal or defeat by overwhelming forces. In their struggle they had never been alone. They were assisted by the local population, both materially and through the inflow of volunteers. The resistance forces who fought on Polish territory consisted of Poles, Russians, Jews, or even Frenchmen, and others. All of them were united by the love for freedom and hatred for the monster of Nazism. We had similar news from Yugoslavians, Greeks, and Frenchmen—for them, too, the ethnic barriers ceased to exist and it turned out that there were many more ideals to unite people than to divide them. The Germans were very helpful in making people realize that, as they madly continued to practise the methods of collective responsibility. By doing so they hastened their own downfall.

It is to our friends in the underground resistance that we, veteran prisoners, owe the restoration of our self‑confidence, the belief that we could counteract the German paranoia. We tried to assist them to the best of our abilities. We shared our food parcels with them, we organized better jobs for them, and then we joined the camp resistance movement. Today, so many years later, we consider meeting those friends as meeting family members we haven’t seen for a long time. And a survivor’s profession or nationality does not matter in the least.

And even though it may sound utopian, I wish with all my heart that our camp solidarity could embrace not only individuals, but also societies and all nations, the entire world!

Translated from the original article: Wesełucha, P. Obłęd czy metoda? Refleksje poobozowe. Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim, 1969.