Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945–1979. Jonathan Huener
account from one of Levi’s memoirs, although descriptive only of one part of the Auschwitz complex in early 1944, suggests that although all prisoners were subjected to strict control, there were clear discrepancies in status and in the severity of their treatment at the hands of the Kapos and SS. Because of this structure, tensions, resentment, and divisions were common, not only among prisoners of various nationalities, faiths, and Nazi-fabricated “racial” categories, but also between members of the various strata of authority. These included “ordinary” prisoners such as Levi, the Kapos in charge of work commandos, Lagerälteste (camp elders), the individual block supervisors, and those prisoners who enjoyed privileged and powerful work assignments, such as those occupying clerical and administrative posts. In Auschwitz I, Poles, the largest prisoner group there, held most positions of authority. In Birkenau, some official prisoner posts were held by Jews. German criminals, employed in functionary positions across the Auschwitz complex, were often the most feared. Regardless of the nationality of the functionary prisoners, differences in status added to existing rivalries, fears and resentments among inmates—a fact not lost on the SS. Moreover, the differing roles of prisoners in the camp structure and administration often blurred the dividing lines between perpetrators, bystanders, and victims at Auschwitz, placing many inmates into what Levi has called the “gray zone” of moral culpability located somewhere between the poles of good and evil, righteous and reprobate.16
Even if such discrepancies in status and moral culpability at Auschwitz had not existed, the camp atmosphere in general did not encourage solidarity and mutual support among the prisoners. As Yisrael Gutman writes, “In a world with all moral norms and restraints lifted and no holds barred, where congestion, severe deprivation, and nervous tension were ubiquitous, the prisoners easily succumbed to violence and rudeness. Conditions of life in the camp managed to undermine any solidarity that might be expected to arise among human beings who found themselves in identical situations. The assumption that common suffering bridges distances separating people was not borne out by camp reality.”17 Altruism and mutual aid were certainly not unknown in the camp, but Gutman’s observation challenges the myth of unwavering solidarity among camp inmates, a myth—like that of the prototypic prisoner—so prevalent in the various commemorative agendas that manifested themselves at Auschwitz in the postwar years.
The conditions of which Gutman writes were intended to breed competition, further divest the prisoners of their traditional notions of human behavior and morality, and, most importantly, keep the prisoners at the edge of survival. The quarters in which ordinary prisoners lived were stifling, poorly heated in the wintertime, rife with vermin and disease, and offered no privacy. “The ordinary living blocks,” Levi wrote,
are divided into two parts. In one Tagesraum lives the head of the hut with his friends . . . on the walls, great sayings, proverbs and rhymes in praise of order, discipline and hygiene; in one corner, a shelf with the tools of the Blockfrisör (official barber), the ladles to distribute the soup, and two rubber truncheons, one solid and one hollow, to enforce discipline should the proverbs prove insufficient. The other part is the dormitory: there are only one hundred and forty-eight bunks on three levels, fitted close to each other like the cells of a beehive, and divided by three corridors so as to utilize without wastage all the space in the room up to the roof. Here all the ordinary Häftlinge live, about two hundred to two hundred and fifty per hut. Consequently there are two men in most of the bunks, which are portable planks of wood, each covered by a thin straw sack and two blankets.18
In comparison to huts such as these in Monowitz, the two-story heated blocks of Auschwitz I were relatively comfortable. Far worse, however, were living conditions in Birkenau, where prisoners in sector BII (the largest and most populated part of the camp) were housed in prefabricated wooden huts originally designed as stables for fifty-two horses.19 At Birkenau they were intended to house some four hundred prisoners, but often held hundreds more.
While poor housing contributed in various ways to the death rate among inmates, the prisoners’ inadequate diet, combined with work that was usually physically exhausting, made their survival even more precarious.20 In the morning prisoners received a half-liter of ersatz coffee or tea, at midday approximately 3/4 liter of thin soup averaging 350–400 calories, and for supper about 300 grams of bread with a small amount of sausage, margarine, cheese, or jam. Prisoners engaged in heavy labor were given slightly larger, yet still insufficient rations. The nutritive value of meals at Auschwitz depended on the dietary norms set for inmates of concentration camps, and these norms changed several times from 1940 to 1945. But generally, the amount and quality of food distributed at Auschwitz was far below these norms. Whereas regulations called for 1,700 calories per day for prisoners engaged in lighter work and 2,150 calories for prisoners doing heavy labor, such prisoners at Auschwitz received an average of 1,300 and 1,700 calories per day, respectively.21 The discrepancy resulted from SS plundering of foodstuffs or the maldistribution of food by functionary prisoners, who often had the power of life and death over the inmates in their charge. Whether, for example, one’s soup was served from the top or the bottom of the vat could make a tremendous difference in caloric intake.
Poor housing, inadequate diet, and physically demanding work all made the mortality rate among registered prisoners extremely high. Jewish registered prisoners, who by mid-1944 made up approximately two-thirds of all Auschwitz inmates, had an even higher mortality rate. Their treatment at the hands of the SS and functionary prisoners was generally worse than that meted out to other prisoner groups; they were frequently perceived as inferior by their fellow prisoners; and they suffered from an additional psychological burden, namely, that Jews “lived in the shadow of certainty that their relatives had perished, that their own fate was sealed, and that their incarceration in the camp was but a reprieve granted by the Germans to drain them of their strength through slave labor before sending them to their deaths.”22
Yet those Jews who entered Auschwitz as registered prisoners were, in fact, a small minority of deportees. Although the exact number of Jewish victims will never be known, according to data compiled by Auschwitz historian Franciszek Piper, 890,000 (about 81 percent) of the Jews deported to the Auschwitz complex were not registered, but rather met their deaths immediately after arrival.23 There is, moreover, a crucial point to be emphasized here: unlike other prisoners at Auschwitz (with the important exception of Gypsies), the overwhelming majority of Jews deported to Auschwitz were not brought there on the grounds of criminal charges, anti-Nazi conspiratorial activity, service in an enemy army, religious convictions, or “asocial” behavior. Jews were deported to Auschwitz for exploitation and extermination because they were defined and identified as Jews by Nazi racial laws. This is the critical distinction that must be made between Jews and Gypsies on the one hand and, on the other, Poles, Soviet POWs, and other prisoner groups.24 It is also a distinction that has frequently been lost on postwar memorialists of Auschwitz.
The above description offers a picture of conditions for registered prisoners, but such a generalization should not overlook an element of Auschwitz history that sets it apart from other camps: the variety of ways in which registered prisoners lived, worked, and died there. The prisoner’s experience depended on a myriad of factors. State of health upon arrival, location in the camp complex, work assignment, nationality, ability to communicate with guards, Kapos, and other prisoners, relationships with supervisors, relationships to the camp resistance movements, the length of time in the camp, the personal will to survive—these are only a few examples of the factors that could determine how, and whether, a prisoner lived or died.
Moreover, the differences in the ways prisoners experienced Auschwitz were at times shockingly crass. Some prisoners fought to stay alive by any means available; others quickly lost their will to live, became so-called Muselmänner,25 and were dead within weeks of arrival. Some prisoners were well fed, although the diet of nearly all was woefully insufficient. Some prisoners enjoyed solidarity and mutual support among their peers; others were taken advantage of, abused, and left to die, friendless and alone. Some prisoners had the connections and courage to become active in covert resistance; others remained unaware of any underground conspiracy whatsoever. Treatment of Soviet POWs was infinitely worse than treatment of German criminals. One prisoner may have been in Auschwitz because of her politics, another because of