The above statements, however, only apply where the conditions are normal.
Only thus can the slogan “Work Brings Freedom” be understood.[28]
It was Eicke’s firm intention that no matter what category, those prisoners whose steady and zealous work marked them out from the others should in due course be released, regardless of what the Gestapo and the Criminal Police Office might think to the contrary. Indeed, this occasionally happened, until the war put an end to all such good intentions.
I have written exhaustively on the subject of work, because I have myself had such ample opportunity of appreciating its psychological value, and because I wished to show the beneficial effect it always has on a prisoner’s mind, as I know from firsthand experience.
I shall write later about what was afterward done in this matter of work and the planned use of camp labor.
In Dachau, as block leader, I now came into direct contact with the individual prisoners, and not only with those of my own block.
As block leaders we had at that time to censor the prisoners’ outgoing mail. Any man who has spent a considerable time reading a prisoner’s letters, and who possesses adequate knowledge of human nature, will obtain a clear picture from them of the prisoner’s psyche. Each prisoner tries in his letters to his wife and mother to describe his needs and his troubles and, depending on his disposition, will be more or less outspoken. In the long run no prisoner can disguise his true thoughts. He can, in the final analysis, deceive neither himself nor the practiced eye of the experienced observer. And it is the same with the letters he writes.
Eicke had drummed the notion of “dangerous enemies of the state” so firmly and persuasively into the heads of his SS men, and had been preaching this for so many years, that any man who knew no better believed in it. I also believed. I now sought to study these “dangerous enemies of the state,” and to find out why they appeared so dangerous.
What did I find? A small number of dyed-in-the-wool Communists and Social Democrats, who, if they had been given their freedom, would have stirred up unrest among the people and would have stopped at nothing to make their illegal work effective. They quite openly admitted this.
But the great mass of them, although they had indeed been Communists or Social Democrat officials, who had also struggled and fought for their ideals, and who had in some cases done considerable harm to the nationalist concepts of the NSDAP, appeared at closer glance and after daily contact harmless and peaceable men who, having seen their world destroyed, wished only to find some quiet job and to be able to go home to their families. I am certain that during the period 1935-1936 three-quarters of the political prisoners in Dachau could have been released without any resultant harm whatsoever to the Third Reich.
There remained, nevertheless, that quarter who were fanatically convinced that their world would rise again. These people had to be kept shut up and it was they who were the “dangerous enemies of the state.” They were, however, easily recognizable, even though they did not openly express their views but on the contrary tried skillfully to disguise them.
Far more dangerous to the state and the people as a whole were the professional criminals, asocials with more than twenty or thirty convictions behind them.
It was Eicke’s intention that his SS men, by means of continuous instruction and suitable orders concerning the dangerous criminality of the inmates, should be made basically ill-disposed toward the prisoners. They were to “treat them rough,” and to root out once and for all any sympathy they might feel for them. By such means, he succeeded in engendering in simple-natured men a hatred and antipathy for the prisoners which an outsider will find hard to imagine. This influence spread through all the concentration camps and affected all the SS men and the SS leaders who served in them, and indeed it continued for many years after Eicke had relinquished his post as Inspector.[29]
All the torture and ill-treatment inflicted upon the prisoners in the concentration camps can be explained by this “hate indoctrination.”
This basic attitude toward the prisoners was exacerbated by the influence of the senior commandants such as Loritz and Koch, who did not regard the prisoners as men, but as “Russians” or “Kanakas.”
The prisoners were of course not unaware of this artificial hatred that had been whipped up against them.
The more fanatical and stubborn among them were only reinforced thereby in their attitudes of mind. The men of good will, on the other hand, were hurt and repelled.
It was easy to tell when a new Eicke instruction had been issued to the concentration camp guards. Morale sank at once. Every action of the SS men was watched with fearful alarm. Rumors of new measures came thick and fast. A general feeling of uneasiness filled the camp. It was not that the prisoners feared that some new form of ill-treatment would be meted out to them. Rather it was that the hostile attitude of the greater proportion of the guards and supervisory personnel toward the prisoners became more strongly felt.
I must emphasize again that prisoners, and especially those in concentration camps, are oppressed and tormented and brought to the verge of despair, far, far more by the psychological than by the physical effects and impressions of the life.
To most prisoners it is not a matter of indifference whether their guards are hostile, or neutral, or sympathetic. Even though the guard never comes near the prisoner, his hostile attitude and his scowling, hate-filled glance are alone sufficient to frighten, depress, and torment him.
Time and again in Dachau I used to hear prisoners say:
“Why do the SS hate us so? After all, we are men like them.”
This alone makes clear the general relationship between the SS men and the prisoners.
I do not believe that Eicke personally hated and despised the “dangerous enemies of the state,” as he constantly described them to the men. I am rather of the opinion that his perpetual “cult of severity” had the sole purpose of keeping the SS men at all times on their toes. But thought of the results of this policy, of the far-reaching effects of this deliberate “baiting,” never entered his mind.
It was in this atmosphere fostered by Eicke that I was trained, and that I bad to carry out my concentration camp duties as block leader, as Rapportführer, and as stores administrator. And here I must make a statement: I always carried out my duties carefully and conscientiously to everyone’s satisfaction. I never indulged the prisoners, and I was firm and often severe. But I had been a prisoner myself for too long not to perceive their needs. It was not without an inner feeling of concern that I observed the “goings-on” in the camp.
Outwardly cold and even stony, but with most deeply disturbed inner feelings, I attended the inquiries and examined the bodies of those prisoners who had committed suicide, or had been shot while attempting to escape—and I was well able to recognize whether such cases were genuine or not, or had been accidentally killed at work, or had “run into the wire,” or had been legally executed and now lay in the dissecting room.
It was the same with the floggings and other punitive measures ordered by Loritz, most of which he supervised himself. These were “his” punishment fatigues, “his” executions of sentence.
My stony mask convinced him that there was no need to “toughen me up,” as he loved to do with those SS men who seemed to him too weak.
And it is here that my guilt actually begins.
It was clear to me that I was not suited to this sort of service, since in my heart I disagreed with Eicke’s insistence that life in the concentration camp be organized in this particular way. My sympathies lay too much with the prisoners, for I had myself lived their life for too long and had personal experience of their needs.
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