The Men Who Ran the Camps

 

 

"They were people, not monsters. People who did a monstrous thing. People...like you and like me."

~Michael Berenbaum (Ph.D. Director of the Ziering Holocaust Institute)

 

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Heinrich Himmler 

 

By 1944, over 800,000 men and women had joined the SS. The men and women who ran the concentration camps had been deceived by Hitler and allowed their own misgivings to shape their actions. Perhaps more disturbing than what they did, is the realization that they were human. It would be far easier to accept the horrible crimes that the SS committed had they been demons, but they were just men and women. Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz is a riveting book which gives readers a glance into the mind of it's author, Rudolph Hoss. As the book unfolds, we see this Nazi Kommandant has feelings, dreams, emotions, and regrets.

 

"As the doors were being shut, I saw a woman trying to shove her children out of the [gas] chamber, crying out, 'Why don't you at least let my precious children live?' There were many heartbreaking scenes like this one which affected all who were present."

~Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz

 

 

Franz Zereis

 

Through Hoss's writing we see the Nazis' deep conviction that the Jews must be eliminated, yet the human sorrow at seeing other people die. Hoss was in charge of developing the gas chambers. He perfected the system, chose the gas, and oversaw the building of the first chamber. As the project progressed, he wrote of his excitement that at last the victims would die peacefully (not mowed down by machine guns as with the Einsatzgruppen). He naively envisioned Jewish men, women, and children calmly going into a shower and falling peacefully asleep as they were enveloped in poisonous gas.

 

 

In his Memoir, SS Kommandant Rudolph Hoss defined the purpose of the concentration camps as:

 

"The destructive, subversive activities of the enemies of the state shall be neutralized by putting them in protective custody in a concentration camp...Incorrigible criminals who constantly had relapses into crime shall be excluded from the German people..."

 

 

Adolph Eichmann 

 

In his Memoir, Hoss also described the organization of camp officials: 

 

"I. Kommandant's Office

     A. Camp Kommandant - the highest authority in the camp/in charge and responsible for everything

     B. Adjutant Master Sergeant - sets up all appointments for the Kommandant and looks through all mail (delivering it to the proper departments)

     C. Mail Censorship Office - read all outgoing and incoming mail, if anything questionable is found it is placed in that prisoner's file and they are put under strict supervision

 

II. Political Division

     A. Director of Political Division - conducts investigations and sets up prisoner files for new arrivals

     B. Records Department - takes pictures, fingerprints, and detailed histories of all prisoners

 

III. Protective Custody Camps

     A. Protective Custody Camp Commander - is in charge of camp surveillance, choosing Kapos, overseeing work, and supervises food distribution

     B. Officer of the Day (Rapportfuhrer) - in charge of counting prisoners at Appell, is in charge of carrying out all punishments

     C. Block Leader - are assigned responsibility over a specific number of prisoners, can give opinions of prisoners under them

     D. Labor Service Leader - supervises all prisoners who exist and enter the gate of the camp, he is required to refuse the entrance of any unauthorized person (even SS members or Germans)

     E. Kommando Leader - finds out the abilities and skills of each prisoner and gives them work based on their giftings, suggests potential Kapos and foremen to the Protective Custody Camp Commander

 

IV. Administration

     A. Administrative Director - responsible for housing, clothing food, and wages of all SS employees and prisoners

     B. Prisoner Property Administration - organizes all belongings confiscated from prisoners

     C. Camp Engineer - in charge of all technical instillations, daily security tests (electric fences, sirens, and searchlights), checks the water system, oversees the fire brigade

 

V. Camp Doctor - in charge of providing health care to all prisoners, choosing assistants, and conducting experiments

 

VI. Guard Troops - present in case of emergency circumstances

     Duty Officer - is changed daily and responsible for overseeing the guards, he must be present when prisoners leave the camp for outside work"

 

Karl Hoecker 

 

"The Nazis were profoundly tempted, on the one hand to hide what they were doing, and, on the other hand, to broadcast it...They took professional pride in what they were doing."

~Michael Berenbaum (Ph.d. Director of the Ziering Holocaust Museum) 

 

One of the way Nazis "bragged" about their accomplishments was through photography. Many pictures were taken by SS officials of the concentration camps. The Nazi Photo Albums

 

Theodor Eicke of Dachau Concentration Camp

 

However, though the SS guards seemed cold and though their actions seemed to say they enjoyed their work, personal accounts have spoken just the opposite. Could the Nazis really have performed their actions out of duty and hid their true feelings out of necessity?

Psychology of Genocide

 

"The mass annihilation with all the accompanying circumstances did not fail to affect those who had to carry it out. They just did not wacth what was happening. With very few exceptions all who performed this monstrous 'work' had been ordered to this detail...Many of the men often approached me during my inspection trips throughout the killing areas and poured out their depression and anxieties on me...the question rose again and again, 'Is what we have to do here necessary? Is it necessary that hundreds of thousands of women and children have to be annihilated?' And I, who countless times deep inside myself had asked the same question, had to tell them off reminding them that it was Hitler's order...it was the duty of the SS to carry it out. However, secret doubts tormented all of us. Under no circumstances could I reveal my secret doubts to anyone. I had to convince myself to be like a rock when faced with the necessity of carrying out this horribly severe order, and I had to show this in every way, in order to force all those under me to hang on mentally and emotionally. Everyone watched me. They all wanted to see what kind of impression this made on me. [While watching two children being dragged into the gas chamber] believe me, I felt like shrinking into he ground out of pity, but I was not allowed to show the slightest emotion."

~ Rudolph Hoss

 

As far as the citizens were concerned, most Germans realized what was happening to the Jews. They understood that they were being rounded and placed in concentration camps, however, the mass gassing of over 1/3 of the world Jewish population was not as widely known, especially among Jewish communities. There were many rumors that the Jews who arrived at concentration camps were being murdered; however, some chose to ignore the facts and others simply could not believe it. Even though American newspapes and magazines had first started writing about the existance of concentration camps as early as 1933, in most countries, the Holocaust was virtually unheard of. Even as late as 1944, the Jews of Hungary had never heard of a concentration camp...unfortunately, they were next on the Nazis hit list. In 1944, Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz in an effort to let the world know what was happening. Their testimonies were published. However, they were not believed until it was too late to stop the largest deportation of Jews in the entire history of the Holocaust. In 1944 during the 54 days between June 15th and July 8th, 437,402 Hungarian Jews were shipped to Auschwitz on 147 trains - over 80% of them died immediately. 8,000 people were murdered every day.

 

When the Allied armies discovered the concentration camps they were appalled. Walking skeletons and piles of corpses met them. They were unprepared for what they had stumbled on.

 

 

To see what happened to them after the war visit Post World War II

 

 

Return to Concentration Camps home page or continue on and read about Liberation of the Camps