Because of the general untrustworthiness that surrounded me, I became a different person in Auschwitz.
Up to then I had always been ready to see the best in my fellow creatures, and especially in my comrades, until I was convinced of the contrary. I had often been badly let down by my credulity. But in Auschwitz, where I found my so-called colleagues constantly going behind my back, and where each day I suffered fresh disappointments, I began to change. I became distrustful and highly suspicious, and saw only the worst in everyone. I thus snubbed and hurt many honest and decent men. I had lost all my confidence and trust.
The sense of comradeship, which up to then I had regarded as something holy, now seemed to me to be a farce. The reason was that so many of my old comrades had deceived and double-crossed me.
Any form of friendly contact became repugnant to me. I repeatedly refused to attend social gatherings, and was glad when I could find a plausible excuse for staying away. My comrades strongly and repeatedly reproached me for this. Even Glücks drew my attention more than once to the lack of that friendly comradeship which should have linked the commandant and his officers at Auschwitz. But I simply could not do it any more. I had been too deeply disillusioned.
I withdrew further and further into myself. I hedged myself in, became unapproachable, and visibly harder.
My family, and especially my wife, suffered on account of this, since my behavior was often intolerable. I had eyes only for my work, my task.
All human emotions were forced into the background.
My wife was perpetually trying to draw me out of my seclusion. She invited old friends from outside the camp to visit us, as well as my comrades in the camp, hoping that I would be able to relax in their company. She arranged parties away from the camp with the same end in view. She did this in spite of the fact that she had never cared for this-sort of social life any more than did I.
These efforts did succeed for a time in making me abandon my self-imposed seclusion occasionally, but new disillusionments quickly sent me back behind my glass wall.
Even people who hardly knew me felt sorry for me. But I no longer desired to change, for my disillusionment had, to a certain extent, made me into an unsociable being.
It often happened that when I was with friends whom I had invited, and who were close friends of ours, I would suddenly become tongue-tied and even rude. My only desire then was to run away, and be alone, and never see anyone again. With an effort I would pull myself together and try, with the help of alcohol, to put my ill-humor aside: I would then become talkative and merry and even boisterous. Alcohol, more than anything else, was able to put me in a happy and contented frame of mind. Drink has never made me quarrel with anyone. It has, however, made me admit to things that I would never have divulged when sober. I have never been a solitary drinker, nor have I ever had a craving for drink. I have never been drunk or given way to alcoholic excesses. When I had had enough, I would quietly disappear. There was no question of neglecting my duties through overindulgence in alcohol. However late I returned home, I was always completely fresh for work and ready for duty next morning. I always expected my officers to behave in the same way. This was on disciplinary grounds. Nothing has a more demoralizing effect on subordinates than the absence of their superior officers at the beginning of the day’s work due to overindulgence in alcoholic consumption on the previous night.
Nevertheless, I found little sympathy for my views.
They only obeyed because they knew that I was watching them, and they cursed “the old man’s bad temper.” If I wanted to carry out my task properly, I had to be the engine, tirelessly and ceaselessly pushing on the work of construction and constantly dragging everyone else along with me. Whether SS man or prisoner, it made no difference. ”
Not only had I to struggle with all the tedious wartime difficulties in connection with construction work, but also, daily and even hourly, with the indifference and sloppiness and lack of co-operation of my subordinates.
Active opposition is something that can be met head-on and dealt with, but against resistance a man is powerless; it eludes his grasp, even though its presence can be felt everywhere. I had to urge on the reluctant shirkers when there was no alternative by force.
Before the war, the concentration camps had served the purpose of self-protection, but during the war, according to the will of the Reichsführer SS, they became a means to an end. They were now primarily to serve the war effort, the munitions production. As many prisoners as possible were to become armaments workers. Every commandant had to run his camp ruthlessly with this end in view.
The intention of the Reichsführer SS was that Auschwitz should become one immense prison-cum-munitions-center.
What he said during his visit in March of 1941 made this perfectly plain. The camp for 100,000 prisoners of war, the enlargement of the old camp to hold 30,000 prisoners, the earmarking of 10,000 prisoners for the synthetic rubber factory, all this emphasized his point. But the numbers envisaged were at this time something entirely new in the history of concentration camps.
At that time a camp containing 10,000 prisoners was considered exceptionally large.
The insistence of the Reichsführer SS that the construction work must be pushed on regardless of all present or future difficulties, many of which were and would be well-nigh insuperable, gave me much food for thought even then.
The way in which he dismissed the very considerable objections raised by the Gauleiters and by the local authorities was itself enough to indicate that something unusual was afoot.
I was accustomed to the ways of the SS and of the Reichsführer SS. But his stern and implacable insistence on these orders being carried out as speedily as possible was new even in him. Glücks himself noticed this. And it was I and I alone who was to be responsible for it all. Out of nothing, and with nothing, something vaster than ever before had to be built in the shortest possible time; with these people to work with and, to judge by previous experience, without any help worth mentioning from higher authorities.
And what was the situation as regards my labor force? What had been happening to the protective custody camp in the meantime?
The officers of the camp had taken great care to observe the Eicke tradition in their treatment of the prisoners. Fritzsch from Dachau, Palitzsch from Sachsenhausen, and Meier from Buchenwald had competed among themselves in the employment of ever-better “methods” of dealing with the prisoners along the lines laid down by Eicke.
My repeated instructions that Eicke’s views could be abandoned as hopelessly out of date in view of the new functions of the concentration camps fell on deaf ears.
It was impossible for their limited minds to forget the principles that Eicke had taught them, for these were admirably suited to their mentality. All my orders and instructions were “turned about” if they ran contrary to these principles.
For it was not I, but they, who ran the camp. It was they who taught the Capos, from the chief block senior down to the last block clerk, how to behave.
They trained the block leaders and told them how to treat the prisoners.
But I have said and written enough on this subject. Against this passive resistance I was powerless.
This will only be comprehensible and credible to men who have themselves served for years in a protective custody camp.
I have already described the influence which the Capos generally exercised over the lives of their fellow inmates. This influence was especially noticeable in this concentration camp. It was a factor of decisive importance in Auschwitz-Birkenau where the masses of prisoners could not be supervised. One would have thought a common fate and the miseries shared would have led to a steadfast and unshakable feeling of comradeship and co-operation, but this was far from being the case.