Suffering

In The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi (1986) suggests that the concentration camps were structured in the spirit of the drill or barracks code. In many of its painful and absurd aspects, the concentration world was “only a version, an adaptation of German military procedure.” The army of prisoners in camps was an “inglorious copy of the army proper or, more accurately, its caricature.” One may hypothesize that Jews in the concentration camps enacted an extreme version of basic training.

GERMAN SOLDIERS AT BASIC TRAINING

The passages below are excerpts from Stephen Fritz’s Frontsoldaten (1995), in which he conveys the experience of “basic training” for young Germans who participated in organizations such as Hitler Youth, the Labor Service, and the Wehrmacht (German army) after the Nazis came to power in the 1930s.

  • “Early in the morning at 4:00 a.m., out of our beds. In half an hour, I have to be washed and have my area cleaned up. It is very difficult for me to make my straw bed in accordance with military regulations. If the bed is not made properly, the supervising officer simply throws the whole thing into the floor, and you have to start over again. Already at 4:00 a.m., we are marching to the labor site.”
  • “The normal routine was followed by the first night drill. It was miserable. Just as we were thinking we would be able to sleep when we got up in the morning, they announced that we had only 45 minutes before resuming our normal schedule. We expected we would sleep much better that night, but that evening they announced that we had to assemble in one hour to repeat the night drill. At sunrise the next morning, we stood there again, covered in dust, filthy, and wanting nothing more than to hit the hay. But two hours later, weapon and gun roll call.”
  • “One sweated blood. One was either hospitalized after a week of almost insane effort or incorporated into the division & marched off to the war. The word ‘exhaustion” has nothing to do with the ‘exhaustion’ I’ve encountered since the war. At that time & place, it meant a power which could strip a strong man of fifteen pounds of weight in a few days.”
  • “We were put on thirty-six hour shifts, which were broken by only three half-hour periods. There were false alarms, which tore us from our leaden sleep and forced us into the courtyard fully dressed and equipped. Sometimes a fellow would drop from exhaustion, obliging his comrades to get the fellow onto his feet again, slapping him and spraying him with water. Nothing ever affected the routine. Captain Fink simply carried on, in total disregard of our bleeding gums and pinched faces, until the stabbing pains in our heads made us forget the bleeding blisters on our feet.”

JEWISH PRISONERS IN THE CAMPS

The following quotations take you through the day of a concentration camp prisoner. These descriptions are taken from various accounts, including Just a Normal Day in the Camps by Vincent Châtel, and Primo Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved.

  • Reveille: You are awakened at 4:00 a.m. by the kapo barking at you. Hurry up! Prisoners have to share toilet facilities. No privacy or sanitation is provided. Having woken up and “washed”, the day begins.
  • Bed-making (Der Bettenbau): Bed-making is a barracks ritual and preoccupation. If your straw mattress was not fluffed up enough and covered with a horse blanket to make a perfect flat surface without a dent, you could fetch quite a few well-placed strokes. The beds had to be made immediately after reveille, and put in order within a minute or two.
  • Roll call: Prisoners are lined up in rows of ten. Everyone must be at the roll call. Under control of the SS guards and officers, the kapos count the prisoners. One mistake during the counting and everything must start again. During roll call, you must stand at attention for hours, even if it is raining or snowing.
  • Off to work: You run to join your work team, leaving the camp under the heavy guard of SS and kapos, always barking at you. You reach the yard on foot. Maybe you’ll have to march off to the beat of the music played by the camp orchestra. Or maybe the SS will order your work team to sing during the march. Just at the gate of the camp, there is a row of SS waiting for your work team. Beatings, insults, barking again and again.
  • The “Business of the Caps”: Remembered with loathing by many survivors, this parody of military élan kept scarecrows drilling and drilling until at ‘Caps off!’ these ramshackle recruits would snatch caps from heads and slap them against hollow sides with an audible crack. Punishment for “slackness” was immediate. Men who performed the maneuver with inadequate crispness were plucked out of the ranks.
  • Evening Roll Call: The prisoners are lined up by rows of ten. The kapos are counting the prisoners. If a prisoner tried to escape, all the prisoners will stand at attention at their roll-call place until he is retrieved. The evening roll call takes hours, sometimes even 10 hours, before it is over.