by Rudolf Hoess
This inner harmony has remained with us throughout all our married life, undisturbed by all the accidents of daily life, through bad times as through good, unaffected by the outside world.
Yet there was one matter that caused her perpetual sorrow. I could never talk to her about those things that most deeply moved me, but was always forced to ponder them over in my own mind, alone.
We got married as soon as possible, so that we might share the hardships of the life which we had willingly chosen.[22]
We were under no illusions concerning the difficulties that lay ahead, but we were determined that nothing should stand in our way. Our life during the next five years was certainly not an easy one, but we never let ourselves be disheartened by any hardships. We were happy and satisfied when we were able, by our example and training, to win new adherents to our beliefs.
Three of our children had already been born; they were ready to take their place in the bright future we were planning. Soon our land would be allotted to us.
But it was not to be!
In June 1934 came Himmler’s call to join the ranks of the active SS. This was to take me away from the life which had hitherto seemed so secure and with so well-defined a purpose.[23]
I was unable to come to a decision for a long, long time. This was quite unlike my usual self.
The temptation of being a soldier again was, however, too strong. Stronger than my wife’s expressed doubts as to whether this profession would really give me complete fulfillment and inner satisfaction. But when she saw how deeply I was drawn to a soldier’s life, she finally agreed with my wishes.
Because of the reasonably certain prospect of rapid promotion and the financial emoluments that went with it, I became convinced that I must take this step. But at the same time I felt that I could still keep to my aim of ultimately settling down as a farmer.
This aim in life, a farmstead home for ourselves and our children, was one which we never lost sight of. Even in the years to come I never changed my mind about this. It was my intention to go back to farming immediately I was retired from active service after the war.
It was only after many doubts and hesitations that I finally decided to join the active SS.
Today I deeply regret having abandoned my previous way of life.
My life and that of my family would have taken a different turn. Even though today we would be equally without a home and without a farm, yet we would in the meantime have had several years of soul-satisfying work.
Yet who is able to foresee the intricate course of a man’s destiny?
What is right? And what is wrong?
When I read Himmler’s invitation to join the ranks of the active SS as a member of the unit guarding a concentration camp, I gave no thought to the reference to concentration camps. The whole idea was too strange to me. It was quite beyond my powers of imagination. In the seclusion of our country existence in Pomerania we had hardly heard of concentration camps.
To me it was just a question of being an active soldier once again, of resuming my military career.
I went to Dachau.
Once more I was a recruit, with all the joys and sorrows that that entails, and soon I was myself training other recruits. The soldier’s life held me in thrall.[24]
During our training, we were told about the “enemies of the state” (as Eicke, the Inspector of Concentration Camps, called them), that is to say the prisoners behind the wire. We were given instruction concerning our relations with them, and their custody, and the use of our arms. It was impressed on us how dangerous these prisoners were.
I observed them at work and as they marched in and out of the camp, and I heard a lot about them from those of my comrades who had served in this camp since 1933.
I can clearly remember the first flogging that I witnessed. Eicke had issued orders that a minimum of one company of troops must be present during the infliction of these corporal punishments.
Two prisoners who had stolen cigarettes from the canteen were sentenced to twenty-five strokes each with the lash.
The troops, bearing arms, were formed up in an open square, in the middle of which stood the whipping block.
The two prisoners were led forward by their block leaders. Then the commandant arrived.[25]
The commander of the protective custody camp and the senior company commander reported to him.
The Rapportführer read out the sentence and the first prisoner, a small, impenitent malingerer, was made to lie across the block. Two soldiers held his head and hands and two block leaders carried out the punishment, delivering alternate strokes. The prisoner uttered no sound. The other prisoner, a professional politician of strong physique, behaved quite otherwise. He cried out at the very first stroke, and tried to break free. He went on screaming to the end, although the commandant shouted at him several times to be quiet. I was stationed in the front rank and was thus compelled to watch the whole procedure. I say compelled, because if I had been in the rear of the company I would not have looked. When the man began to scream, I went hot and cold all over. In fact the whole thing, even the beating of the first prisoner, made me shudder. Later on, at the beginning of the war, I attended my first execution, but it did not affect me nearly so much as witnessing this corporal punishment. I am unable to give an explanation of this.
Corporal punishment was standard practice in the prisons up to the 1918 revolution, but was then abolished.
The guard who had always carried out this punishment was still in the prison service and was nicknamed “the bone-breaker.” He was a rough, dissolute fellow, always reeking of alcohol, who regarded prisoners as no more than numbers. He was just the man for the job. When under arrest I had seen the block and the whips in the punishment cellar, and I felt my flesh creep as I pictured the “bonebreaker” at work.
After this first experience I always took care to be in the rear rank when, as a private soldier, I had to attend these whippings.
Later, as block leader, I avoided them as best I could or at least always left the parade before the actual whipping began.[26]
I found it easy to do this, for some of the block leaders were only too eager to attend. As Rapportführer, and later as commander of the protective custody camp, I was forced to be present, much as I disliked it.
When I became commandant and therefore responsible for ordering corporal punishment, I rarely attended in person. I certainly never ordered it without first giving the matter very careful consideration.
Why did I have such an aversion to this form of punishment? With the best will in the world I am unable to answer this question.
There was another block leader at this time who was affected in the same way and who always tried to avoid attending these affairs. This was Schwarzhuber, who later commanded the protective custody camps at Birkenau and Ravensbrück.
The block leaders who hastened to these whippings, and whose taste for these spectacles I learned to know, were almost without exception sly, rough, violent, and often common creatures, whose behavior toward their comrades and their families was in character with their natures.
They did not regard prisoners as human beings at all.
Three of them later hanged themselves while under arrest, after they had been held responsible for brutally mistreating prisoners in other camps.
There were also plenty of SS men among the troops who regarded the sight of corporal punishment being inflicted as an excellent spectacle, a kind of peasant merrymaking.
I was certainly not one of these.
The following incident occurred while I was still a recruit at Dachau. It was discovered that an immense racket had been organized in the butcher’s shop by the prisoners and by noncommissioned officers of the SS. Four members of the SS were sentenced by a Munich court—SS courts were not then in existence—to long terms of imprisonment.
These four men were then paraded in front of the entire guard unit, personally degraded by Eicke, and discharged with ignominy from
the ranks of the SS. Eicke himself tore off their national emblems, their badges of rank and SS insignia, had them marched past each company in turn, and then handed them over to the prison authorities to serve their sentences. Afterward he took this opportunity to deliver a long, admonitory speech. He said that he would have dearly liked to have seen these four men dressed in concentration camp clothes, flogged, and put behind the wire with their associates. The Reichsführer of the SS, however, had not allowed him to do this.
A similar fate would overtake anyone who was caught having dealings with the prisoners, whether with criminal intent or from pity. Both motives were equally reprehensible. Any show of sympathy would be regarded by the “enemies of the state” as weakness, which they would immediately exploit. Furthermore, it was unworthy of an SS man to feel pity for “enemies of the state.” He had no room for weaklings in his ranks, and if any man felt that way he should withdraw to a monastery as quickly as possible. Only tough and determined men were of any use to him. It was not for nothing that they wore the death’s head badge and always kept their weapons loaded!
They were the only soldiers who, even in peacetime, faced the enemy every hour of the day and night—the enemy behind the wire.
The degradation and dismissal of these men were painful events that affected every soldier and especially myself, for I was witnessing such a scene for the first time. But Eicke’s address gave me even more to think about. I was still, however, not able to understand clearly what he meant by “enemies of the state” and the “enemy behind the wire.” I did not know enough about them, although I was not to be left in ignorance for long!
After I had served six months with my unit, Eicke suddenly gave orders that all the older officers and noncommissioned officers were to leave their units and be given official positions in the camp. I was one of these.
I was made block leader in the protective custody camp. That was a position that I had no desire whatever to hold. Shortly afterward, Eicke visited the camp and I submitted a formal request for an interview. I asked him if he would make an exception in my case, and let me rejoin my unit. I explained that soldiering was in my blood, and that it was entirely because of my longing to be a soldier once more that I had applied for active service with the SS.
He was well aware of my past history and considered that my personal experiences of prison life made me eminently suitable for taking charge of prisoners myself. In fact there was no one better qualified than I for duty in the protective custody camp.
In any case he was not prepared to make any exceptions. His order had been drafted on basic principles and would not be altered in any way. I must obey, since I was a soldier.
Yes, I had wanted to be a soldier. Yet at that moment I yearned for the rich soil, and longed to return to the hard but free life I had left behind.
But there was no returning now!
With strange feelings I entered upon my new round of duties. It was an unknown world, and one to which I was to remain bound and fettered for the next ten years.
It is true that I had myself been a prisoner for six long years and therefore knew by heart the prisoner’s life and habits, his lighter and even more his darker moments, all his emotions and all his needs.
But the concentration camp was something new. I had first to learn the enormous difference between life in one of these and life in a prison or penitentiary. And I was to learn it, in every detail and often in more detail than I cared for.
With two other newcomers, Schwarzhuber and Remmele, later Commandant of Eintrachthütte, I was let loose among the prisoners, without very much instruction from the commander of the protective custody camp or the Rapportführer.
I felt quite embarrassed as I stood in front of the prisoners committed to forced labor who had been entrusted to my care, and noticed the curiosity with which they eyed their new company leader, as block leaders were then called. Only later was I to understand the searching expression on their faces.
My sergeant major, as the block senior was then called, had got the company, later called block, into good shape.
He and his five corporals, the room seniors, were political prisoners, dyed-in-the-wool Communists, but they had also been soldiers and loved retelling tales of their experiences in the army. Without a word from me, they imposed order and cleanliness upon the forced labor prisoners, most of whom had arrived in the camp in a thoroughly disreputable and slovenly condition. The prisoners themselves endeavored not to fall short of the standards set, since it depended on their conduct and industry whether they were released after six months or whether they were then required to do a further three or six months’ corrective training.
I soon got to know each of the two hundred and seventy men in my company well, and I could judge their fitness for release. There were only a very few, during the time I was block leader, whom I had to have transferred to prison on account of their incorrigibly asocial character. These men stole like magpies, shirked any kind of work, and were in every respect thorough slackers. Most of the men showed improvement by the end of their stipulated term of training. There were hardly any who later relapsed.
Provided they had not served numerous previous sentences or in some other way acquired asocial tendencies, imprisonment weighed heavily on these people. They were ashamed of being where they were, particularly the older men who had not previously come into conflict with the law. Now all of a sudden they found themselves punished because, out of pigheadedness or Bavarian stubbornness, they had consistently shirked their work or had shown an exaggerated fondness for beer. Or perhaps they had become idle for some other reason, and the Labor Office had sent them to the camp for training.
But all of them managed to remain more or less unaffected by the worse aspects of camp life, for they knew with reasonable certainty that after completing their sentence they would be set free.
It was quite another story, however, with the remaining nine-tenths of the camp. This consisted of one company containing Jews, emigrants, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, one company of asocials, and seven companies of political prisoners, mostly Communists.
The political prisoners had no idea how long their detention would last. This depended on factors that were incalculable. They knew this and the uncertainty made their captivity very hard to bear. On this account alone their life in camp was a torment. I have discussed this with many sensible and discerning political prisoners. All were unanimous that they could put up with all the inconveniences of camp life, such as the arbitrary powers of the SS men or of the prisoners’ leaders, the harsh camp discipline, the years of living as a member of a crowd, and the monotony of the daily routine; but the uncertainty of the duration of their confinement was something with which they could never come to terms.
It was this that wore them down and broke the strongest wills.
According to my experience and observation, it was this uncertainty, often dependent on the whim of some quite junior official, that had the gravest and strongest psychological effect on the prisoners.
A professional criminal, who might have been sentenced to fifteen years’ hard labor, always knew that he would at least regain his freedom at the end of this period, and probably much sooner.
A political prisoner, however, who had in many cases been taken into custody merely because of a vague accusation brought against him by some personal enemy, was sent to a concentration camp for an indefinite period. It might be for a year, or it might be ten. The quarterly review of prison sentences, as laid down for all German prisoners, was a mere formality. The final word lay with the office that had sent the man to the camp, and the last thing such an office wished to do was to admit to a mistake. The victim of mistake was inevitably the prisoner, who for good or ill had been handed over by the “sending office.” He could make no appeal or complaint. Favorable circumstances might in exceptional cases lead to a “recheck” and result in an unexpected release.
But these were invariably exceptions. A
s a general rule the period of detention remained in the lap of the gods!
The guards who have the duty of supervising prisoners can be divided into three distinct categories, and this applies equally to remand prisons, penitentiaries, and concentration camps. They can make life hell for the prisoner, but they can also make his wretched existence easier and even tolerable.
Malicious, evil-minded, basically bad, brutal, inferior, common creatures regard the prisoner as an unresisting object on which they can exercise their unrestrained and often perverted desires and whims and so find relief for their inferiority complexes. They do not know the meaning of pity or of any kind of warm fellow feeling. They seize every opportunity to terrorize the prisoners entrusted to their care, especially those against whom they have a personal grudge. The odious machinations of these creatures range over the whole scale from the smallest trickery to the most brutal ill-treatment, according to the individual’s temperament and talents. The spiritual anguish of their victims gives them particular satisfaction. No regulations, however strict, will restrain them in their evil ways. Only supervision can limit the torments they inflict. They spend their time thinking up new methods of physical and mental torture. Woe to the prisoners under their charge when these perverted creatures have as their superiors men who acquiesce in their evil propensities, or even share in their inclinations and encourage them!
The second category, comprising the overwhelming majority, consists of those who are uninterested or indifferent. They carry out their tasks stolidly and discharge their duties, so far as they must, in a competent or indolent fashion.
To them, too, the prisoners are mere objects that they have to supervise and guard. They scarcely regard them as human beings with lives of their own.
For convenience they keep to the regulations, which they obey to the letter. It is too much of a strain for them to attempt to interpret those regulations sensibly. They are in general men of limited abilities.