by Rudolf Hoess
I had hardly begun to serve my sentence before I overheard a prisoner in a neighboring cell tell another about a robbery he had committed at a forester’s house. He had first made sure that the forester was sitting happily in the inn and had then, with an ax, killed first the servant girl and then the man’s wife, who was far advanced in pregnancy. The forester’s four small children began to cry and he seized each of them in turn and dashed their heads against the wall to stop their “hollering.” The filthy, insolent language that he used when recounting the details of this appalling crime made me long to fly at his throat. I could not sleep all that night. Later I was to hear far more terrible stories, but nothing w,as ever again to disturb me as much as what I heard on that day. The man who told this story was a murderer who had been condemned to death many times, but had always been reprieved. Even while I was serving my sentence, he broke out of the dormitory one evening, attacked with a length of iron a guard who was barring his way, and escaped over the prison wall. He was * arrested by the police after he had knocked down an innocent pedestrian in order to steal his clothes, and he then furiously attacked his captors, who immediately shot him dead.
The Brandenburg prison also held the cream of Berlin’s professional criminals. They ranged from international pickpockets to well-known safebreakers, gangsters, cardsharps, skilled confidence men, and men convicted of all kinds of disgusting sexual offenses.
The place was a regular school for criminals. The younger ones, the learners, were enthusiastically initiated into the secrets of their craft, although their instructors kept their personal tricks of the trade a close secret. The old convicts naturally saw to it that they were well paid for their services. Payment was often made in tobacco, which was the most usual form of prison currency. Smoking was strictly forbidden, but every smoker managed to procure tobacco for himself by going fifty-fifty with the junior guards. The provision of services of a sexual nature was also a customary form of payment. Sometimes, too, binding agreements were made for a share in a criminal undertaking planned to take place after release from prison. Many sensational crimes owed their origin to schemes hatched while their perpetrators were serving prison sentences. Homosexuality was widespread. The younger, good-looking prisoners were greatly in demand and were the cause of much bitter rivalry and intrigue. The more crafty of these made a good business out of their popularity.
In my opinion, based on years of experience and observation, the widespread homosexuality found in these prisons is rarely congenital, or in the nature of a disease, but is rather the result of strong sexual desires which cannot be satisfied in any other way. It arises primarily from a search for a stimulating or exciting activity that promises to give the men something out of life, in surroundings where absolutely no form of moral restraint applies.
Among this mass of criminals, who had become so from inclination or propensity, there were to be found a great many who had been driven to swindling and thieving through misery and want during the bad postwar years and the inflation period: men whose character was not sufficiently strong to enable them to withstand the temptation of getting rich quick by illegal means: men who by some unlucky chance had been dragged into a whirlpool of crime. Many of these struggled honorably and bravely to break away from the asocial influence of this criminal atmosphere, so that they might start a decent life once more, after they had served their sentences.
Many, however, were too weak to fight against this interminable, asocial pressure and the incessant terrorization, and they were soon condemned to a lifetime of crime.
In this respect, the prison cell became a confessional box. When I was in Leipzig jail being interrogated before my trial, I heard many window conversations: conversations in which men and women expressed their deeper anxieties and sought consolation from one another; conversations in which accomplices bitterly complained of betrayal, and in which the public prosecutor’s office would have shown great interest, since they threw light on many an unsolved crime.
I used to be amazed at the free and easy way in which prisoners would give utterance through the window to their darkest and best-kept secrets. Was this urge to confide born of the misery of solitary confinement or did it spring from the universal need of all human beings to talk to one another? While we were awaiting trial, these window conversations were extremely brief and were constantly threatened by the permanent watch which the guards kept on the cells. In the prison where we served our sentences, however, the guards only bothered about them if the voices became too loud. There were three types of prisoner in solitary confinement in the Brandenburg prison: 1. Political prisoners found guilty of a “crime of conviction”; these young first offenders were treated with consideration. 2. Violent criminals and troublemakers, who had become intolerable in the large, communal cells. 3. Prisoners who had made themselves disliked because of their refusal to acquiesce in the terrorism practiced by their fellow criminals, or stool pigeons who had betrayed their friends in some way and now feared revenge. For these it was a kind of protective custody.
Evening after evening I would listen to their conversations. I thus obtained a deep insight into the psyche of these condemned men.
Later, during the final year of my imprisonment, when my job as chief clerk in the general store brought me into daily, personal contact with them, I got to know them even more intimately and I found my previous knowledge of them abundantly confirmed.
The real, professional criminal who has become so either by choice or by reason of his inherent nature, has cut himself off from the society of his fellow citizens. He combats that society by means of his criminal activities. He no longer wants to lead an honest life, for he has become wedded to his life of crime and has made it his profession.
Comradeship for him is based solely on expediency, though he also can slip into a sort of bondage relationship, similar to that between a prostitute and her pimp, which endures however badly he may treat her. Moral concepts such as sincerity and honesty are as laughable to him as is the notion of private property. He regards his conviction and sentence as a bit of commercial bad luck, a business loss, a hitch, nothing more. He attempts to make his prison sentence as tolerable and even as pleasant as possible. He knows the insides of many prisons, their peculiarities and the influence wielded by their officials, and he makes every effort to be transferred to the one he prefers. He is no longer capable of any generous feelings. Every effort, by education or kindness, to lead him back into the right path, is rebuffed. Now and again, for tactical reasons, he will play the part of the repentant sinner in order to have part of his sentence remitted. He is generally rough and common, and it affords him great satisfaction to trample upon everything that others regard as sacred.
One incident will serve as an illustration. During the years 1926 and 1927 humane and progressive methods of punishment were introduced into the prison. Among other innovations a concert was held each Sunday morning in the prison church, in which some of Berlin’s foremost performers took part. At one of these a famous Berlin singer sang Gounod’s Ave Maria with a virtuosity and a tenderness such as I have seldom heard. Most of the prisoners were enraptured by this performance, and even the most callous may well have been stirred by the music. But not all. Hardly had the last notes died away, when I heard one old convict say to his neighbor: “What wouldn’t I do to get my hands on those sparklers, mate!” Such was the effect of a deeply moving performance on criminals. Asocial, in the true meaning of the word.
Among this mass of typical professional criminals was a great number of prisoners who could not be included in quite the same class. They were borderline cases. Some were already treading the slippery path that leads to the tempting and exciting world of crime, while others were fighting with all their strength against being enmeshed in its will-o’-the-wisp attractions. Others, led astray for the first time but weak by nature, found themselves in a constant state of vacillation between the external pressures of prison life and their own inner feelings.<
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The mentality of this group was made up of diverse characteristics and ranged through the whole scale of human sensibility. They often rushed between one extreme and the other.
Prison had no effect at all on men of a lighthearted and frivolous nature. Their souls lacked ballast and they lived gaily from day to day. They gave no thought to the future and would continue to amble easily through life as they had done before, until some new trouble overtook them.
It was quite different with those whose minds were of a serious bent. They tried to avoid the poisonous atmosphere of the communal cells. Most of them, however, found that they were unable to endure the rigors of solitary confinement; they were frightened by loneliness and the perpetual self-examination that it entailed, and they soon returned to the squalor of the crowded cells.
There was, indeed, the possibility of sharing a cell with two other men. But it was rare to find three men who could, for any length of time, endure living together at such close quarters. These little groups had repeatedly to be broken up. I knew of none that lasted long. A lengthy term of imprisonment makes even the best man irritable, unsociable, and lacking in consideration. In such close quarters, consideration for one’s companions is an essential.
It was not only the imprisonment itself, the monotonous sameness of the daily round, the perpetual discipline imposed by countless orders and regulations, the endless bawling and cursing of the guards over trifles, that crushed their serious-minded prisoners, but even more it was the prospect of the future and of what they were to do with their lives after they had served their sentences. Their conversation usually revolved about this. Would they be able to fit into normal life again, or would they find themselves outcasts?
If they were married as well, their families were a further cause of gnawing anxieties. Would their wives remain faithful during such a long separation? Such considerations had a deeply depressing effect on men of this kind, which not even the daily work or the serious literature that they read in their spare time could dispel.
Often their minds became deranged, or they committed suicide for no real reason. By “real reasons” I mean such as bad news from home, divorce, the death of near relatives, refusal of a petition for mitigation of sentence, and so on.
Nor was imprisonment easy for the irresolute types, the ones who could never make up their minds. They were too impressionable and easily influenced by the others. A few tempting words from some old convict, or a wad of tobacco, could be sufficient to scatter their best intentions to the winds.
On the other hand, a good book or a serious conversation would induce such men to peaceful self-contemplation and meditation.
In my opinion many of the inmates could have been brought back to the right path if the senior officials had been more human and less conscious of their official positions. Especially was this so with regard to the priests of both confessions, who through their functions as censors of correspondence as well as through their official duties were well aware of the condition and frame of mind of the men who composed their flocks.
All these officials, however, had grown dull and gray in the perpetual monotony of their work. Their eyes were blind to the needs of a man struggling earnestly to remake his life. Should such a prisoner manage to summon enough courage to ask his priest or clergyman for advice in his troubles, he was immediately greeted with the standard assumption: that he was feigning repentance in order to obtain a remission of sentence.
It is true that the officials had become accustomed to such deceptions, practiced by men unworthy of pity or understanding. Even the most cynical criminal became devout when the time drew near for his petition for remission of sentence to be examined, though there might be only the smallest prospect of its success.
On countless occasions I heard prisoners complaining to one another how grievously they felt the lack of help from the prison administration in their worries and anxieties.
The psychological effect of their punishment on these serious-minded prisoners, who genuinely wished to be better men, was far greater than that caused by physical hardship. In comparison with their more irresponsible comrades, they were punished twice over.
After the consolidation of the political and economic situation following the inflation, a broadly democratic outlook prevailed in Germany. Among many other government innovations in those years was the introduction of a humane and progressive attitude toward the purpose of prison sentences. It was believed that those who had broken the law of the state could be made into good citizens again by means of education and kindness. The theory was that every man is the product of his environment. If one gave the lawbreaker who had served his sentence an economically adequate and secure existence, this would provide him with an incentive for social advancement, and he would be saved from going astray once more. Suitable social trust would enable him to forget his asocial attitude and would prevent him from slipping back into a life of crime.
The cultural standards of the penal establishments were to be raised by educational means, such as musical performances, which would enliven the spirit, and well-chosen lectures on the basic moral laws governing human society and on the fundamental principles of ethics and other such themes.
The senior prison officials were to devote more attention to the individual prisoners and to their psychological troubles. The prisoner himself, owing to a three-degree system offering many kinds of contractual privileges hitherto unknown, could gradually advance, by means of good behavior, diligent work, and proof of a change of heart, to the third degree and thus obtain an early release on probation. In optimum cases he could obtain a remission of half his sentence.
I myself was the first of approximately 800 prisoners to reach the third degree. Up to the time of my release there were not more than a dozen who, in the opinion of the authorities, were worthy of wearing the three stripes on their sleeve. In my case all the aforementioned qualifications were present. I had never been given any kind of house punishment or even a reprimand; I had always completed more than my daily work task; I was a first offender who had not been deprived of civil rights, and I was classified as guilty of a “crime of conviction.” Since, however, I had been condemned by the political tribunal, I could only be released before completing my sentence as the result of an Act of Grace on the part of the President of the Reich, or of an amnesty.
Almost as soon as I had begun to serve my sentence, I finally realized the full nature of my predicament. I came to my senses. There could be no doubt that I was faced with the almost certain prospect of serving a sentence of ten years’ hard labor. A letter from one of my defending lawyers on the matter at last confirmed what I now knew to be the case. And I accepted the reality of this ten-year sentence. Up to then I had enjoyed each day as it came, had taken the good with the bad, and had never given a serious thought to my future. Now I had leisure enough to reflect on my past life, to recognize my mistakes and my weaknesses, and to train myself for a richer and more rewarding life in the future.
I had indeed found, in the periods between my Freikorps activities, a profession that I enjoyed and loved and in which I could do well. I had developed a passion for farming and had done well as a farmer; witnesses who gave evidence at my trial confirmed this.
But the real essence of life, that which makes living a true fulfillment, was still unknown to me at the time. I began to seek for it, absurd as this may sound, behind my prison walls, and found it, later!
I had been taught since childhood to be absolutely obedient and meticulously tidy and clean; so in these matters I did not find it difficult to conform to the strict discipline of prison.
I conscientiously carried out my well-defined duties. I completed the work allotted me, and usually more, to the satisfaction of the foreman. My cell was a model of neatness and cleanliness, and even the most malicious eyes could see nothing there with which to find fault.
I even became accustomed to the perpetual monotony of my daily existence, which was rar
ely broken by any unusual event, although this acceptance was quite contrary to my restless nature. My former life had been extremely hectic and lively.
An outstanding event during the first two years was the arrival of the letter which we were allowed to receive every three months. I would think about it for days before it came, imagining and envisaging everything it might possibly contain. The letter was from my fiancée. At least she was my fiancée as far as the prison administration was concerned. She was the sister of a friend of mine and I had never seen her or heard of her before. Since I was only allowed to correspond with relatives, my friends, when I was in Leipzig jail, had produced a “fiancée” for me. This girl wrote to me faithfully throughout all the long years of my imprisonment. She did everything I asked of her, kept me informed of all that went on in my circle of friends outside, and passed on all my own news.
Yet I never became accustomed to the petty chicanery of the junior officials. This always had an extremely disturbing effect on me, especially when it was deliberate and malicious. The senior officials, up to the prison warden himself, always treated me correctly. So too did the majority of the junior officials with whom I came in contact during the course of the years. But there were three of these who, for political reasons, being Social Democrats, bullied me whenever they could. This bullying usually consisted of mere pinpricks, but they nevertheless managed to wound me severely. In fact they hurt me much more in this way than if I had been physically beaten.
Every prisoner who lives a sensitive inner life suffers far more from unjustified, malicious, and deliberate acts of spite, in a word, from acts of mental cruelty, than ever he does from the physical equivalent. Such acts produce a far more ignominious and oppressive effect than does corporal maltreatment.