The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

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  HOMO SACER III

  to watch them secretly and look for the skins in the trash so that I could eat them. I would spread jam on them; they were really good. A pig wouldn’t have eaten them, but

  I did. I’d chew on them until I felt sand on my teeth. . . . (Lucjan Sobieraj)

  I personally was a Muselmann for a short while. I remember that after the move to the barrack, I completely collapsed as far as my psychological life was concerned. The collapse took the following form: I was overcome by a general apathy; nothing interested me; I no longer reacted to either external or internal stimuli; I stopped wash-

  ing, even when there was water; I no longer even felt hungry. . . . (Feliksa Piekarska) I am a Muselmann. Like the other inmates, I tried to protect myself from getting pneumonia by leaning forward, stretching my shoulders as much as I could and,

  patiently, rhythmically moving my hands over my sternum. This is how I kept myself

  warm when the Germans weren’t watching.

  From then onward I went back to the camps on the shoulders of my colleagues.

  But there are always more of us Muselmänner. . . . (Edward Sokòl)

  I too was a Muselmann, from 1942 to the beginning of 1943. I wasn’t conscious of being one. I think that many Muselmänner didn’t realize they belonged to that category. But when the inmates were divided up, I was put in the group of Muselmänner.

  In many cases, whether or not an inmate was considered a Muselmann depended on his appearance. (Jerzy Mostowsky)

  Whoever has not himself been a Muselmann for a while cannot imagine the depth of the transformations that men underwent. You became so indifferent to your fate that

  you no longer wanted anything from anyone. You just waited in peace for death. They

  no longer had either the strength or the will to fight for daily survival. Today was

  enough; you were content with what you could find in the trash . . . . (Karol Talik) In general, one can say that among Muselmänner there were exactly the same differences, I mean physical and psychological differences, as between men living in normal

  conditions. Camp conditions made these differences more pronounced, and we often

  witnessed reversals of the roles played by physical and psychological factors. (Adolf Gawalewicz)

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  I’d already had a presentiment of this state. In the cell, I felt life leaving me. Earthly things no longer mattered; bodily functions faded away. Even hunger tormented me

  less. I felt a strange sweetness. I just didn’t have the strength to get off my cot, and if I did, I had to lean on the walls to make it to the bucket. . . . (Wlodzimierz

  Borkowski)

  In my own body, I lived through the most atrocious kind of life in the camp, the horror of being a Muselmann. I was one of the first Muselmänner. I wandered through the camp like a stray dog; I was indifferent to everything. I just wanted to

  survive another day. I arrived in the camp on June 14, 1940, with the first transport

  from the Tarnow prison. . . . After some initial hardships, I was put in the farming

  Kommando, where I worked at harvesting potatoes and hay and threshing until the

  fall of the same year. Suddenly something happened in the Kommando. They had

  discovered that civilians outside the camp were giving us food. I ended up among the

  disciplinary group, and that is where the tragedy of my life in the camp began. I lost my strength and health. After a couple of days of hard work, the Kapo of the old Kommando had me moved from the disciplinary group to the sawmill Kommando. The

  work wasn’t as hard, but I had to stay outside all day, and that year the fall was very cold. The rain was always mixed with snow. It had already begun to freeze over and

  we were dressed in light fabrics—underwear and shirts, wooden clogs without socks

  with cloth caps on our heads. In such a situation, without sufficient nourishment,

  drenched and frozen every day, death left us no way out . . . . This was the beginning of the period in which Muselmannhood [ das Muselmanntum ] became more and more common in all the teams working outdoors. Everyone despised Muselmänner;

  even the Muselmann’s fellow inmates. . . . His senses are dulled and he becomes completely indifferent to everything around him. He can no longer speak of anything; he can’t even pray, since he no longer believes in heaven or hell. He no longer thinks about his home, his family, the other people in the camp.

  Almost all Muselmänner died in the camp; only a small percentage managed to

  come out of that state. Thanks to good luck or provi dence, some were liberated. This is why I can describe how I was able to pull myself out of that condition. . . .

  You could see Muselmänner everywhere: skinny, dirty figures, their skin and faces blackened, their gaze gone, their eyes hollowed out, their clothes threadbare,

  filthy and stinking. They moved with slow, hesitating steps poorly suited to the rhythm of the march. . . . They spoke only about their memories and food—how many pieces of potato there were in the soup yesterday, how many mouthfuls of meat, if the soup was thick or only water. . . . The letters that arrived for them from their homes didn’t

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  comfort them; they had no illusions about ever going home. Muselmänner anxiously expected packages, thinking of being full at least once. They dreamt of rummaging through the kitchen trash to find pieces of bread or coffee grinds.

  Muselmänner worked out of inertia or, rather, pretended to work. For example, during my work at the sawmill, we used to look for the blunter saws that were easier

  to use, without worrying about whether they actually cut or not. We often pretended to work like that for a whole day, without even cutting one block of wood. If we were sup posed to straighten nails, we would instead hammer away at the anvil. But we

  had to make sure that no one saw us, which was also tiring. Muselmänner had no goals. They did their work without thinking; they moved around without thinking,

  dreaming only of having a place in the line in which they’d be given more soup, more thick soup. Muselmänner paid close attention to the gestures of the food officer to see if, when he ladled out the soup, he drew it from the top or the bottom. They ate

  quickly and thought only about getting second helpings. But this never happened—

  the only ones who got second helpings were those who had worked the most and the

  hardest, who were favored by the food officer. . . .

  The other inmates avoided Muselmänner. There could be no common subject

  of conversation between them, since Muselmänner only fantasized and spoke about food. Muselmänner didn’t like the “better” prisoners, unless they could get something to eat from them. They preferred the company of those like themselves, since then they could easily exchange bread, cheese, and sausage for a cigarette or other kinds of food.

  They were afraid of going to the infirmary; they never claimed to be sick. Usually they just suddenly collapsed during work.

  I can still see the teams coming back from work in lines of five. The first line of

  five would march according to the rhythm of the orchestra, but the next line would

  already be incapable of keeping up with them. The five behind them would lean

  against each other; and in the last lines the four strongest would carry the weakest one by his arms and legs, since he was dying. . . .

  As I said, in 1940 I drifted through the camp like a stray dog, dreaming of coming

  across at least a single potato skin. I tried to lower myself into the holes near the sawmill, where they fermented potatoes to make fodder for the pigs and other animals.

  The inmates would eat slices of raw potatoes smeared with saccharin, which tasted

  somewhat like pears. My condition grew worse everyday; I developed ulcerations on

&nb
sp; my legs and I no longer hoped to survive. I hoped only for a miracle, although I didn’t have the strength to concentrate and pray faithfully. . . .

  This was the state I was in when I was noticed by a commission of officers who

  had entered the barracks after the last roll call. I think they were SS doctors. There were three or four of them and they were particularly interested in Muselmänner. In

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  addition to blisters on my legs, I also had a swelling the size of an egg on my ankle

  bone. This is why they prescribed an operation and moved me, together with some

  others, to Barrack 9 ( which used to be Barrack 11) . We were given the same food as the others, but we didn’t g0 to work and we were allowed to rest all day long. Camp

  physicians visited us; I was operated on—the scars from the operation are still visible today—and I got better. We didn’t have to be present at the roll call; it was warm and we were doing well. Then one day, the SS officers who were responsible for the barrack didn’t come. They said that the air was suffocating and ordered all the windows to

  be opened. It was December, 1940. . . . After a few minutes, we were all shivering

  from the cold; then they made us run around in the room to heat ourselves up, until we were all covered in sweat. Then they said, “Sit down,” and we did as they said.

  Once our bodies had cooled down, and we were once again cold, it was time for more

  running—and so it lasted for the whole day.

  When I understood what was going on, I decided to leave. When it was time for

  me to be examined, I said that I was all better and that I wanted to work. And this

  is what happened. I was transferred to Barrack 10 (which had become number 8).

  They put me in a room in which there were only new arrivals. . . . Since I was an old prisoner, the head of the barrack liked me, and he spoke of me as an example for the other prisoners. . . . As a result I was transferred to the Farming Kommando, in the cowshed. There I also won the trust of the other inmates, and I had extra food, pieces of beetroot, black sugar, soup from the pig’s sty, large quantities of milk and, what’s more, the heat of the cowshed. This got me back on my feet again; it saved me from Muselmannhood. . . .

  The period in which I was a Muselmann left a profound impression on my memory. I remember perfectly the accident in the sawmill Kommando of fall 1940; I still see the saw, the heaps of wood blocks, the barracks, Muselmänner keeping each other warm, their gestures. . . . The last moments of the Muselmänner were just as they say in this camp song:

  What’s worse than a Muselmann?

  Does he even have the right to live?

  Isn’t he there to be stepped on, struck, beaten?

  He wanders through the camp like a stray dog.

  Everyone chases him away, but the crematorium is his deliverance.

  The camp infirmary does away with him!

  (Bronislaw Goscinki)

  (Residua desiderantur)

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  Bibliography

  Translator’s Note: The bibliography contains only those works cited in the text. All texts have been cited from the editions listed below. In the case of foreign works that have not appeared in English, I have translated all passages from the original languages for this book.

  Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1973).

  ———, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1974).

  Agamben, Giorgio, Language and Death: The Place of Negativity, trans. Karen E. Pinkus with Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1991).

  Améry, Jean, At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities, trans.

  Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosenfeld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980).

  Antelme, Robert, The Human Race, trans. Jeffrey Haight and Annie Mahler (Marlboro, VT: Marlboro Press, 1992).

  Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (London: Penguin, 1992).

  ———, Essays in Understanding (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993).

  Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. Christopher Kirwan (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1993).

  Bachmann, Ingeborg, Frankfurter Vorlesungen: Probleme zeitgenössicher Dichtung (Zurich and Munich: Piper Verlag, 1982).

  Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, vol. 3: The Doctrine of Creation, Part 2 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960).

  Benjamin, Walter, One-Way Street and Other Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (London: Verso, 1979).

  Benveniste, Emile, Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1971).

  ———, Problèmes de linguistique générale, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1974).

  Bertelli, S., “Lex animata in terris,” in La città e il sacro, ed. Franco Cardini (Milan: Garzanti-Scheiwiller, 1994).

  Bettelheim, Bruno, The Empty Fortress (New York: The Free Press, 1967).

  ———, The Informed Heart (New York: The Free Press, 1960).

  ———, Surviving and Other Essays (New York: Knopf, 1979).

  Bichat, Xavier, Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort (Paris: Flammarion, 1986).

  Bin, Kimura, Ecrits de psychopathologie phénoménologique (Paris: Presses Univer sitaires de France, 1992).

  Binswanger, Ludwig, Being-in-the-world: Selected Papers of Ludwig Binswanger, trans. Jacob Needle-man (New York: Basic Books, 1963).

  Blanchot, Maurice, The Infinite Conversation, trans. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).

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  Cardini, Franco, ed. La città e il sacro (Milan: Garzanti-Scheiwiller, 1994).

  Carpi, A., Diario di Gusen (Turin: Einaudi, 1993).

  Chrysostome, Jean, Sur l’incompréhensibilité de Dieu (Paris: Editions de Cerf, 1970).

  Derrida, Jacques, Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).

  Des Pres, Terence, The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps (New York: Washington Square Press, 1976).

  Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York and London: Routledge, 1992).

  Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972).

  ———, Essential Works, vol. 2: Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, ed. James D. Faubion, trans.

  Robert Hurley and others (New York: The Free Press, 1998).

  ———, Il faut défendre la société (Paris: Gallimard-Seuil, 1997).

  Frontisi-Ducroux, Françoise, Du masque au visage (Paris: Flammarion, 1995).

  Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 2 vols, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).

  Heidegger, Martin, Bremer und Freiburger Vorträge, in Gesamtausgabe, vol. 79 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1994).

  ———, Parmenides, trans. André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).

  ———, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).

  Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1979).

  Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929).

  Kantorowicz, Ernst, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theol ogy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957).

  Keats, John, The Letters of John Keats, ed. Maurice Buxton Forman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935).

  Kerényi, Karl, La religione antica nelle sue linee fondamentali, trans. Delio C
anti mori (Bologna: N.

  Zanchelli, 1940).

  Kogon, Eugen, The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them, trans. Heinz Norden (New York: Octagon Books, 1979).

  Langbein, Hermann, Auschwitz: Zeugnisse und Berichte, eds. H. G. Adler, Hermann Langbein, and Ella Lingens-Reiner (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1988).

  ———, Menschen in Auschwitz (Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1972).

  Levi, Primo, Ad ora incerta, in Opere, vol. 2 (Turin: Einaudi, 1988).

  ———, “L’altrui mestiere,” in Opere, vol. 3 (Turin: Einaudi, 1990).

  ———, Conversazioni e interviste (Turin: Einaudi, 1997).

  ———, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Random House, 1989).

  ———, Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening: Two Memoirs, trans. Stuart Woolf (New York: Summit Books, 1986).

  Lévinas, Emmanuel, De l’évasion (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1982).

  Lewental, S., Gedenkbuch, Hefte von Auschwitz 1 (Oswiecim: Staatliches Auschwitz-Museum, 1972).

  Lyotard, Jean-François, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).

  Manganelli, Giorgio, La notte (Milan: Adelphi, 1996).

  Mauss, Marcel and Henri Hubert, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function, trans. W.D. Halls (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1964).

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  Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., prepared by J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, vol. vii (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989).

  Pessoa, Fernando, Always Astonished: Selected Prose, trans. and ed. Edwin Honig (San Francisco: City Lights, 1988).

  Rilke, Rainer Maria, The Book of Hours, trans. Stevie Krayer (Salzburg: Salzburg University, 1995).

  ———, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Random House, 1983).

  Ryn, Zdzislaw and Stanslaw Klodzinski, An der Grenze zwischen Leben und Tod. Eine Studie über die Erscheinung des “Muselmanns” im Konzentrazionslager, Auschwitz-Hefte, vol. 1 (Weinheim and Basel: Beltz, 1987), pp. 89–154.