KL stands for 'Konzentrationslager' and this is their history. "Terror stood at the center of the Third Reich, and no other institution embodied Nazi terror more fully than the KL." The first incarcerations were of politicals, primarily communists. Intitially, the camps were impromptu and set up on any available site. Dachau, the only camp to operate from 1933-1945 was established on the grounds of a deserted munitions plant. It was at Dachau that Himmler and his SS took over and began their campaign to run the entire KL system. A year later, the purge of Rohm and the SA was determinative in the eventual ascension of the SS. "It helped to clear the way for a permanent system of lawless imprisonment in the SS concentration camps." Soon Himmler was supervising the KL, run by Eicke and the Gestapo, run by Heydrich. The state prison system remained separate, but all policing power was now in Himmler's hands. Recruitment and training of the guards became systematized, as did the physical layouts of the camps and the uniforms of the prisoners. The KL's of the late thirties featured the imprisonment of hardened criminals, asocials, unemployables, the dim-witted, homosexuals, gypsies and religious opponents of the regime, necessitating an expansion of the number of camps. Only after Kristallnacht in Nov. 1938 did Jews arrive in the camps in meaningful numbers and as the sworn enemies of the Reich, they were met with ferocity and brutality. On the eve of the war, the combined headcount at Dachau, Buchenwald, Ravensbruck, Sachsenhausen, Mathausen and Flossenburg was just over 21,000. The existence, staffing and philosophy of the camps may have foreshadowed what was to come. But, it was not a certainty.
War brought foreigners into the system and led to construction of new facilities beyond the borders of the Reich. The first new camp, in Upper Silesia, was at Auschwitz, where one million would eventually die. Around the system, casual, unofficial and extra-judicial murder quickly became the norm. Prisoners could be murdered without anyone asking questions. And murdered they were, particularly Poles and Jews. The pace picked up so much that the SS camps built their own crematoria. "The transition from mass death to systemic mass extermination did not take place until spring and summer 1941, when Nazi leaders took the next steps on the road to genocide in the KL." The killing of the weak and disabled had begun before the war and accelerated in 1941, the same year that saw the SS Einsatzgruppen dispatching hundreds of thousands of Jews as the army rolled into the USSR and began the starvation of Soviet prisoners that eventually led to millions of deaths. It was Soviet commissars who were the first victims of the Zyklon-B experiments at Auschwitz. "Systemic mass killing turned to genocide in 1942 as the Holocaust entered the KL."
Beginning at the camps at Belzec*, Sobibor*, Treblinka* and Birkenau, the Jews, who were held in ghettos throughout Poland, were led to the gas chambers. It was at Auschwitz, though, that the Holocaust reached it peak. "The Nazis murdered almost one million Jews here, more than in any other single place. And, only in Auschwitz did they systematically kill Jews from all across the continent, deported to their deaths from Hungary, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Italy, and Norway." Auschwitz resonates throughout history because there were survivors who told of their experience. At Treblinka, there were only three known survivors. The difference is that Auschwitz was also a work camp, where Himmler housed tens of thousands in a vain attempt to build an economic empire on the backs of the downtrodden. Death is what we associate with the camps, but they equally excelled in forced slave labor. Throughout the Reich and right up to the end, prisoners worked in inhuman conditions, often until their death. And right up to the end, the KL camps were packed. There were over 700,000 prisoners in January 1945. It is believed 40% died during the death throes of the Reich. Outright murder, starvation, typhus, and an endless litany of diseases and cold were the contributors. Soviet, British and American soldiers liberated the survivors.
"The memories of the camps was far more torturous for the survivors, than for the perpetrators,who often settled into quiet lives and forgot about the KL..." Survivors were never free of the memories and carried them to their graves. To have been a victim of and an observer of such a vast genocide was not something one could move on from. Many were irretrievably broken. Many of the KL perpetrators, particularly the commandants and senior staff, were found, tried and executed by the Allies. The majority of evildoers escaped what can only be characterized as erratic revenge, retribution or justice.
A reunified Germany has acknowledged its past with memorials to the murdered dead around the country. Wachsmann chooses to close the book where it began - at Dachau. Today there is a museum, and the roll call square is just behind the entry gate with an arch with the words Arbeit Macht Frei.
This book is very well written and is as thorough an examination of the KL's as I can imagine. It is, however, very hard slogging. The topic is debilitating and simply wore me out, as is obvious by the almost two weeks it took to complete. And to be frank, I started skimming early and skipped a few chapters. It is not for the faint of heart.
*These three camps were not part of the KL, nor were they operated by the SS. They were under the jurisdiction of the General Government, Poland and staffed by the Reich's Chancellery in Berlin.
No comments:
Post a Comment