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Introduction:
Today the Holocaust is one of the best known genocides in history. However, people are unsure of why this mass murdering ever happened. Hitler came into power in 1933; it is then that he and other Nazis had strong ideas on what they viewed as a racially pure community of the people. Immediately they took action against those who they wanted to isolate, deport, or destroy. A German political prisoner who was an inmate from 1939 until liberation in 1945, Eugen Kogon, manages to comprise a classic account of life and death within concentration camps. Through this work, The Theory and Practice of Hell, Kogon shows what life inside the camps is like from a critical perspective using honest details. Ultimately though, how is it that awful things happen to such innocent people? Often society is in denial of the horrendous torture that individuals faced throughout their time within camps.
The truth is these horrible events happened to millions of people, but why, is the better question. The events of the Holocaust are due to the fact collaboration was in part one way to survive, evil people were involved, and some people were blinded by the Nazi ideology. These atrocities happened because of the systematic and psychological elements that made the existence and operation of the concentration camps become a reality. These atrocities were accomplished systematically through the precise division of labor. Psychologically the pressures individuals were under, both as inmates and the SS, caused people to act out in ways that are unimaginable.
Unlike many accounts that show the Holocaust as an unorganized slaughter, this account shows the ways in which a systematic routine tortured and killed six million innocent human beings. After reading this book, a strong sense of realism reveals the depths to which individuals stoop when all restraints are detached. The reality shown by Kogon is that Nazi concentration camps were based upon forced labor under atrocious conditions. “Some of the work in camp was useful, but some of it was utterly senseless, intended only as a form of torture, a diversion engaged in by the SS for fun,” proving that the Nazis were simply acting inhumanly (86). At the same time it is hard for someone in a normal state of mind to begin to dream up these cruel acts.
Eugen Kogon:
Eugen Kogon, while a prisoner in the German concentration camps, also served as a medical assistant for many years until the war ended. However, before becoming a prisoner he studied sociology at the Universities of Munich, Florence, and Vienna, thereby further validating his observations and ideas while in the concentration camps. Sociology is a science that attempts the interpretative understanding of social action in order to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects, according to sociologist Max Weber. Therefore, one could better understand how Kogon may have been able to report back on the overall events that took place while in camp life. Many personal accounts have been written over the years, but yet fail to explain the true practices of the SS. Kogon’s account shows not individual stories, but rather a picture of the system as a whole. In Kogon’s eyes, “ The truth alone can set us free” (13).
The Camp System:
Initially concentration camps were established to imprison Communists, Socialists, asocials, or others who did not fit into the national community according to Nazi standards. The primary goal of the Nazis was to “teach” these Germans what they needed to know to return to society. According to Nazi ideology Jews could never belong to the national community, so that political and social “reeducation” was a mere waste. Therefore, it became the task of the SS to train the new ruling class while eliminating all opposition.
There were numerous aims which the institutions of the concentration camps were to serve. First, the camps served as the training ground where the SS Death's-Head units were trained to brutalize. The training was meant to get these people to act without feelings against the inferior race. Second, the concentration camps were for the collection and exploitation of SS labor slaves. It was said that, “So long as these slaves were permitted to live at all, they lived only to serve their masters” (32). It was always about getting the most out of individuals before they were gone; therefore, if that meant grueling work for a slave then so be it. Third, the camps were used for large-scale scientific experimentation claiming to benefit mankind. The thought process behind this was that if a person was already doomed to death; why not gain some experimental knowledge beforehand. The SS received complete satisfaction with the steady increase in numbers. Their main mission had become a reality, “Resistance to the regime by disaffected elements grew feebler and feebler” (32).
The concentration camps were planned out in great detail as to how people entering them would be displaced. Classification of the camps was designed to get the most “dangerous” exterminated as quickly as possible. The Main Economic and Administrative Office designated three progressive classes of concentration camps.
Class I (labor camps) represented the mildest form. Class II meant that living and working conditions were more rigorous. Class III stood for the “mills of death” which the prisoners seldom left alive. The Gestapo never fully achieved its goal--to place all criminals, homosexuals, Jews and political prisoners deemed especially dangerous in Class III camps. (35)
This set up shows that the Nazis were well aware of the types of people they felt to be superior to as well as the ones they wanted to get rid of. However, Kogon states that these classifications were merely an ideal compared to the true picture. For example Dachau was always a Class I camp, where by those who actually experienced life there would be baffled by this statement. Therefore, where the Nazis actually had a plan in tact; however, the follow through of it may not be accurate.
Even the physical set-up of the concentration camps was well thought out. The SS consistently chose inaccessible areas to place the various camps. Camps were to be placed in forests and moors, not too far away from the larger cities; this in itself served various purposes. “The camps were to remain isolated from the outside world, while the SS itself was to retain access to urban amenities” (48). This allowed for the Nazis to supply the camps with the necessary amenities while keeping the rest of the populace in a state of unknown. The Nazis were carrying out their individual plans of extermination while keeping the rest of society in constant fear. Again this was the Nazis’ way of proving to the people they were in charge based on their superiority.
Psychology:
Seen from the outside, the reactions of the prisoners are far more comprehensible than those of their oppressors. The prisoners are nothing more than human beings, responding to horrific acts in ways that you would expect, much like a fight or flight response. However, the character of the SS is something much too inhumane to comprehend. The men involved with Hitler’s elite guards were of a nature that held a very primitive psychological mechanism. These men “suffered from no internal conflicts between instinct and reason” (258). The only limits were in the form of the actuality of their instincts and the correspondence to the prescribed SS goals. There was no concern for the schematics of it all just as long as the prisoners did the “work,” which was often accomplished by any means possible. In the minds of the SS it was logical to compensate for their sense of failure with arrogance, which they used to show they were better than the prisoners. By wearing down the prisoners they were ultimately trying to “outsmart” them in order to be at the top of the hierarchy. However, there were some individuals who “were quite simply attracted to the SS ideology as the mode of life that appealed to them and agreed to them” (260). In this sense they were so blinded by the Nazi ideology that they thought that these concepts were actually good.
Functional knowledge of the SS was very low, in fact they held the capacity of an eighth-grader most of the time, showing that they were not very bright. The only interest these men showed in gaining further knowledge was in the field of military, and this was only to enhance their own superiority. All that was needed “was conscious awareness of being the master class, of being an elite even within the Nazi party” (267). It was always about staying within the realm of SS desires and aspirations. The SS reached the psychological point that shooting down a prisoner was nothing to them carrying out orders. In addition, they earned a bonus for any mental and other discomforts the prisoner may have gone through. What society saw during the Holocaust was not “baffling mysteries of human nature, but violations of simple, basic, psychological laws in the evolution of inferior mind” (271). Basically what it came down to was inferiority that led these men into the SS, where they found refuge in the opportunity to assert their superiority. “The behavior of each individual SS member, whatever his rank, typified the system and its basic orientation” (271). This psychological mindset that against the norms of society in which one knows basic right from wrong. One can truly say that the men who performed these horrendous acts were not of the same nature as the prisoners.
As for the prisoners, it was hard for anyone to go out the same way they came in. Psychologically it was not possible for a human to experience such extreme conditions and not be affected in the way so many were. People were suffering tortures that most people cannot even begin to dream up, and yet these prisoners dealt with “psychological patterns that almost defy classification,” so that these people were going through an out of body experience (273). Mental types were formed by way of the process of adaptation to the new environment in order to survive. Living became a mind game for those stuck inside; how was one to deal with seeing their loved ones shot in front of them or forced to strip naked and be humiliated? It was the immediate effects of these acts of compulsion that ultimately determined the fate of a prisoner. At that moment a man would have already gone into an almost irresistible mental decline, or he would have begun to adapt himself to the concentration camp life.
Ultimately collaboration was one way to survive the concentration camps. Every prisoner was dependent on his fellow prisoners. Impulses that came upon them internally were based upon selfishness and common sense, often this was sharpened by feelings of aversion. A common camp saying was, “The prisoner’s worst enemy is the prisoner!” (279). This meant that at times it may not be what is best for the group but rather the individual that was at stake. However, “There were really but three forms of making an adjustment: to remain a lone wolf; to join a group; or to appear in the guise of a political partisan” (279). Each of the above came with positive and negative aspects, but depending on the individual it might work out to their benefit to fall into one of the three. Men who stayed alone were often of high integrity that had exceptional judgment. Many of these men were disliked by their fellow inmates, but at the same time lone wolves were more exposed to danger due to their isolation. Group allegiance gave some prisoners the sense of humanity back into their lives. It was said to be the finest experience during the concentration camps. Finally, political partisanship offered ulterior purposes within the camps. For every man on the left who found help and support, they were able to better adapt to camp life while making it much easier. However, very few of the men were ever able to escape the psychological mechanism that was so overpowering during their time within the camps.
Opposition:
Contrary to the evidence above, there are also accounts of people or systems failing to comply with the overall normal routines of camp life. For instance the organization of individual camps was not always paid attention to. “The Gestapo did not pay the least attention to whether the concentration-camp system of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office was able to cope with the masses of prisoners often dumped on the gatehouses without notice,” revealing contradictions in the division of labor that were supposed to be coordinated at all levels (270). At the same time the Gestapo did not care if there was space, clothing, food, or medicines. It was always about operating systems by oneself as well as moving up in the ranks. Therefore, any way to exploit the system of labor was seen as a sense of superiority. Also where every prisoner was said to be dependent on one another, there were cases of individuals sticking up for themselves; “There were, however, outstanding examples of solidarity to the death, of the unfaltering assumption of responsibility for the whole group down to the last” (278). By an individual not offering resistance upon a death sentence, it was his way of going out as an individual rather than being a part of a larger group.
Conclusion:
Kogon was one of the first people to attempt to explain the life within concentration camps and put it into perspective for society at large. However, the truth is, one cannot fathom these events nor relive them. The stories told throughout this book are ones that the human mind cannot even begin to picture. In the end, one can clearly note this genocide to be one that was systematically planned through a well organized division of labor. Some may still argue that this event was simply a mass murder of millions of innocent people, but the evidence proves otherwise. Kogon’s chilling account only begins to highlight the atrocities that were performed in camp life. However, it is the truth and this account is the beginning of setting those who experienced this mayhem free, as Kogon wrote (13).
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