Langbein Hermann. People in Auschwitz
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reactions of
human nature
nnn
Otto Moll advanced rapidly in the extermination camp. As the leader of the
penal company he did sowell in theeyes of his superiors thathewas appointed
chief of the four crematoriums. He was in charge of the Sonderkommandos
and had to see to it that the extermination of human beings proceeded quickly
and smoothly. For his success the top leadership of the ss rewarded him with
the highest decoration that members of the ss could achieve in Auschwitz,
the Distinguished Service Cross with Swords, which he received together with
Commandant Höß and medic Klehr.
Filip Müller, a survivor of the Sonderkommando, describes Moll as a pos-
sessed fanatic who neither smoked nor drank. ‘‘When there was a lot of work,
he helped us toss the corpses (into the burning pits); he rolled up his sleeves
and did the work of two men.’’ Müller reports an episode that was charac-
teristic of this man. ‘‘Moll, the chief of the crematoriums, once took a child
from its mother; I observed this at Crematorium IV. There were two big pits
in which corpses were burned. He threw the child into the boiling human fat
that had collected in the ditches around the pit and then said to his Kalfaktor
(handyman): ‘Now I shall eat my fill, now I have fulfilled my duty!’’’
The leadership also assigned Erich Muhsfeld to the center of extermina-
tion, the gas chambers and crematoriums where smaller groups also were
shot. Another survivor of the Sonderkommando, Milton Buki, testified about
him shortly after the liberation: ‘‘Once he ordered a man to sing a waltz tune
during the shootings and promised him to let him live in return, but he even-
tually shot him as well. The shootings did not always kill all of the victims,
but they all went into the ovens. Muhsfeld had a steel rod with which he beat
us and the victims.’’
Moll probably inspired in Muhsfeld a predilection for music while he
worked. Alter Fajnzylberg, who also survived the Sonderkommando, reports
that ‘‘Moll ordered a naked woman to sit on the corpses near a pit and jump
and sing while he was shooting the inmates and pushing them into the fiery
pit. She did this, of course, in hopes of possibly saving her life in that way.
After shooting everyone Moll shot the woman as well.’’
Mikos Nyiszli, an inmate physician in a crematorium, describes how Muhs-
feld once asked him for an examination, complaining of heart trouble and a
severe headache. Since Nyiszli had just observed Muhsfeld killing eighty men
by shooting them in the neck, he pointed out that this activity had probably
caused his complaints. Muhsfeld angrily denied this and asserted that it did
not matter to him whether he shot five people ora hundred. He said the reason
he did not feel well was that he had drunk too much.
The men who devised methods of torture in the Political Department—
and, like Boger or Lachmann, developed a real hunter’s passion—owed their
positions to their murderous initiatives, as did Moll or Muhsfeld. Anyone who
reads or hears about the actions of a Moll or a Boger, a Muhsfeld or a Lach-
mann, is inclined to dismiss the actors as monsters, devils, or deviants.
One should beware of such facile conclusions. Under different conditions
Moll, Boger, and all the others whose names are today mentioned with disgust
would hardly have stood out from the mass of the unknown. This also ap-
plies to the many people whose names have remained unknown to the public
even though their monstrous deeds did not differ too much from those who
became known through trials.
The inner nature of these people reacted to its permanent violation, even if
only in sleep. A seamstress who worked in the Höß villa once overheard Frau
Moll complain to the commandant’s wife that her husband frequently cried
out in his sleep.
Nyiszli has recorded the following incident involving Muhsfeld. When the
inmates on the Sonderkommandowere once again clearing the full gas cham-
ber, they found among the dead bodies a girl of about sixteen who was still
breathing. They sent for Dr. Nyiszli and he was able to restore the girl to full
consciousness. Meanwhile Muhsfeld had come on the scene, and Nyiszli, who
had a certain personal relationship with this ss technical sergeant, managed
to have a private conversation with Muhsfeld. He urged him to save this young
girl’s life. Since she could not remain in the crematorium, perhaps it would be
possible to smuggle her onto a female detail that was working in the vicinity.
Muhsfeld visibly mulled this proposal over, but he finally rejected it by saying
that this would be possible if the girl were older and more sensible. In the
case of a sixteen-year-old, there was a risk that she would talk about her ex-
periences in the gas chamber, and this would have unpleasant consequences.
That is why the girl had to die. However, departing from his custom he did
not shoot the girl himself but ordered a lower-ranking ss man to kill her with
the customary shot in the neck.
Concerning Wilhelm Boger, Karl Lill, who as the inmate clerk of the ss
garrison physician was able to examine the health records of the ss guards,
wrote me as follows: ‘‘In the spring or summer of 1944 Boger, and around
the same time Lachmann as well, came to see the ss garrison physician and
told him that they were unable to sleep at night and had ‘apparitions.’ Both
Reactions of Human Nature n 415
were diagnosed with thyrotoxicosis [Graves’ disease], were given sedatives
and, if I remember correctly, leave.’’ In American captivity Boger testified in
July 1945: ‘‘In November 1943 I was ordered to attend the administrative offi-
cers’ training school in Arolsen even though my state of health had declined
considerably because of complete nervous exhaustion.’’ At that very time the
investigating commission of the ss had begun its work in Auschwitz that led
to the arrest of Boger’s boss Grabner and also directly affected Boger. His
wife Marianne testified that ‘‘at times his nerves were completely shot’’ and
that she had requested his transfer for that reason. Boger once received con-
valescent leave of several weeks, along with his family, because of his nervous
exhaustion. This happened before the critical period, the fall of 1943.
Numerous witnesses described to the court the tortures administered by
the Political Department. One of them reported that after a long period of
starvation he was forced to eat heavily salted fish. When he could not get it
down anymore, the fish was stuffed into his mouth, and when he threw up,
he had to eat the vomit off the floor.The prosecutor asked Boger, ‘‘Is it correct
that Kral (the witness) was forced to eat herring?’’ The response was, ‘‘Unfor-
tunately yes. I still get nauseated when I have to think of it. I have always had
an aversion to fish. Please spare me having to go into details.’’ He said that
this torture was ordered by his boss Grabner. The latter, for his part, stated
in Polish captivity that he had ‘‘suffered a complete nervous breakdown and a
mental disturbance’’ in Auschwitz.
As for Gerhard Lachmann, Boger’s zealous colleague, there is a medical
report dated June 18, 1943, that documents that Lachmann, who was twenty-
three at the time, complained of great nervousness, pain in the stomach area
that spread to the heart, insomnia, and a feeling of anxiety that often befell
him while he was speaking. Treatment in the ss military hospital at Bad Nau-
heim produced no improvement, and Lachmann lost weight (he weighed 59
kilograms). The physicians came to this conclusion: ‘‘The complaints indi-
cate a psychogenic cause.’’ This judgment is toned down by the handwritten
addition ‘‘in part.’’
For years Klaus Dylewski was also involved in interrogations, tortures, and
shootings in the Political Department. Later as a defendant he testified as fol-
lows: ‘‘Six weeks after my arrival in Auschwitz I received a mental shock from
which I have suffered to this day.’’ His first wife confirmed this: ‘‘He often
had attacks at night. Before this he had been in excellent health.’’ When she
was asked about the kind of attack, Ruth Dylewski said: ‘‘When he lay down,
he became completely immobile and had to be lifted up.’’ A physician con-
firmed that the circulatory instability from which Dylewski suffered probably
had psychological causes.
416 n the jailers
n When the formerAustrian governmentminister EduardBaarvonBaarenfels
was an inmate at Dachau, he met ss roll call leader Josef Remmele, who had
been trained in that model camp to be ‘‘hard.’’ In Monowitz he encountered
him again, this time as a released prisoner doing assigned civilian labor at the
IG Works. At Nuremberg in 1947 Baar von Baarenfels testified that Remmele
once told him: ‘‘It is terrible. This morning 7,000 Jews arrived, and 600 of
them are still alive.’’
Julia Skodova once observed Walter Quackernack, the chief of the registry
of vital statistics, standing by the window and muttering, ‘‘Diese Schweinerei’’
(This dirty shame). He had seen inmates being mistreated outside the bar-
racks. Skodova assesses him as ‘‘good’’ forother reasons as well; forexample,
he sometimes left his newspaper so that inmates working for him could read
it. However, many former prisoners remember both Remmele and Quacker-
nack only with fright and abhorrence.
Klaus Dylewski had the following episode presented to the Frankfurt court
in his defense. His wife, who had in the meantime divorced him, testified:
One time my mother-in-law and my husband were in the kitchen (of their
apartmentin Upper Silesia, not farfromAuschwitz). I went intothe kitchen
and overheard a conversation. My mother-in-law said that a local barber
had been arrested and taken to Auschwitz. She asked: ‘‘Can’t you look after
him? He is a nice man.’’ My former husband replied: ‘‘If you ever hear that
someone has been taken to Auschwitz, just give me his name. If there is
anything I can do, I’ll do it.’’ My mother-in-law asked him whether that
was not risky for him, but he only made a dismissive gesture. Later he men-
tioned in passing that the man was now a barber in Auschwitz, was doing
well, and always cut his hair.
The relationship between Wilhelm Boger, the ss technical sergeant of the
Political Department, and Hermann Diamanski, a German political prisoner,
developed in a very peculiar way. This is what Diamanski said as a witness at
the Frankfurt trial: ‘‘I was detained in a communal cell in Berlin, in the Prinz
Albrecht-Straße (before his deportation to the kz).Therewas one other politi-
cal prisoner in the cell; the rest were ss people. On the bunk bed next to mine
was Boger, an ss officer (later demoted). He was the Gestapo leader in Ostro-
lenka and was called the ‘Hangman of Ostrolenka.’’’ Diamanski encountered
Boger again in Auschwitz, but this time in an entirely different situation. ‘‘At
first I was afraid of him when I saw him again in Auschwitz,’’ said Diamanski
in the courtroom, ‘‘but he never did anything to me, and I cannot say that he
acted badly toward me.’’ When he was asked whether Boger shared his parcels
in their joint captivity in Berlin, Diamanski replied: ‘‘Yes, our beds were next
Reactions of Human Nature n 417
to each other.’’ Diamanski incriminated Boger considerably. When the latter
was asked to respond to the accusations in Diamanski’s testimony, all he said
was this: ‘‘I know the witness very well from Berlin. I could point out many
misconceptions, but I would like to be as comradely as he used to be.’’
There were also other members of the Political Department who did not
react in their accustomed way when they encountered compatriots. One day
the German foreman Paul Scheidel was escorted from Birkenau to thePolitical
Department in the main camp because inmates had escaped from his detail.
In a conversation en route, it turned out that relatives of his escort, Wilhelm
Hoyer, an ss staff sergeant in the Political Department, had worked in a fac-
toryowned byScheidel.Evidentlyasa result of this conversation, Hoyer spared
Scheidel the tortures that were customary in interrogations dealing with es-
capes.
In the Indoctrination Section of Monowitz, where he was a camp elder,
Siegfried Halbreich encountered Gustav Wieczorek, the ss technical sergeant
in the Political Department.Wieczorek had been a journeymanbaker inTarno-
witz (Upper Silesia), where Halbreich had gone to school. Halbreich told the
ssman that he had bought something from that bakeryevery day. Eventuallya
relationship developed between the two men that Halbreich later described as
amicable. Wieczorek not only came to see the camp elder daily in order to eat
with him but also called his attention to measures being prepared by his de-
partment and informed him about general developments. Halbreich was not
sufficiently acquainted with these because only ‘‘Aryan’’ inmates in the main
camp, not prisoners in Monowitz, were allowed to subscribe to newspapers.
Once Heinrich Pyschny, an orderly of the chief of the Political Department,
was punished with two weeks’ detention because he had been observed shak-
inghands witha capo and givinghim cigarettes. Pyschny was fromMyslowitz,
a small town near Auschwitz, and the capo was an old friend of his.
Hans Pichler of the Political Department, was gefühlsbetont (emotional), as
a former prisoner of that department put it. For this reason his superiors did
not take him seriously and did not assign him to campaigns of murder. On
one occasion, when his colleagues had gone to Bedzin and Sosnowitz, Pichler
told the prisoners: ‘‘That’s a Scheißerei (shitty business). They’ve gone there to
liquidate the Jews.’’
Kazimierz Smolen has not forgotten how outraged ss Sergeant Otto Klaus
was when he saw his colleague Stark take a woman with two small children
to be shot. Klaus came from Laufen am Neckar and was also a member of the
Political Department.
n If memories of their hometowns were capable of momentarily suppressing
in members of the ss the ‘‘hardness’’ that had been drilled into them, human
418 n the jailers
points of contact had an even stronger effect on ss men who were not among
the elite within an elite. Renée Jellinek, a Jew who had been deported at age
twenty, was asked by an ss man in Auschwitz where she was from. When she
answered, ‘‘From Brno,’’ the ss man said ‘‘I’m from there, too.’’ He arranged
for Jellinek to be transferred to the nursing staff, which was tantamount to
saving her life. Jellinek never saw the man again and does not even know his
name. All she knows is that he was young, tall, and feared by everyone.
Dr. Otto Wolken’s life was saved in a similar fashion, as he testified at the
Frankfurt trial: ‘‘I was at the selection (of new arrivals), and a movement of
the ss physician’s thumb had already put me on the side of those who were
to be gassed immediately when an ss man came up to me. He had heard me
speak and now asked me, ‘Where are you from?’ ‘FromVienna,’ I said. ‘Soyou
are a fellow countryman. You see, I’m from Linz. What is your profession?’
‘Physician.’ The man promised to get me out, and he did.’’ Wolken, too, never
saw that ss man again and does not know his name.
The Frankfurt judges had to learn about many heinous deeds of the ethnic
German Stefan Baretzki, a flogger and murderer. However, a very special re-
lationship developed between him and Henryk Porebski, a camp-wise Pole,
who gave this testimony at the trial: ‘‘I know block leader Baretzki and fre-
quently spoke with him. His Polish is fluent. He asked me where I was born
and whether I was from Bukovina (Baretzki’s homeland). I had many subse-
quent conversations with him. He always treated me properly.’’ When the pre-
siding judge asked him whether Porebski ever saw Baretzki mistreat inmates,
this was his revealing reply: ‘‘He did not do so in my presence. I believe he felt
embarrassed in front of me.’’ The following dialogue developed between Po-
rebski and the defendant, who usually attacked witnesses. Baretzki: ‘‘I know
this witness. You came to see us at four o’clock every day, didn’t you?’’ (As an
electrician Porebski had to make regularexaminations of theelectrified fences
and on his way enter the room of the block leader.) Porebski: ‘‘Yes, I remem-
ber. We spoke Polish with each other. One time, when I brought forbidden
items into the camp, you checked me. You took me behind the kitchen and
then permitted me to bring those things in. Don’t you remember our conver-
sation on that day? I brought a lot of medicines into the camp, and we often
spoke.’’
In some cases a shared homeland produced a lasting bond with a pris-
oner. In their report SimonLaksand René Coudy mention ssSergeantJoachim
Wolff, who often attended the rehearsals of the Birkenau band. When Wolff
learned that the Jewish musician Heinz Lewin was, like him, fromHalle an der
Saale, a real friendship developed between Lewin and this proper ss man who
had a friendly manner about him. When Wolff returned from a leave, Heinz
always asked him for news from their hometown. Wolff gave his report as if
Reactions of Human Nature n 419
hewere talking to a family member and also described the effect of the bomb-
ings, mentioning streets and buildings that had been particularly affected.
Wolff had a good reputation. He is surely identical to the ss roll call leader
whose name was spelled with one ‘‘f’’ by Józef Mikusz, a Pole employed by
the Labor Assignment Office in Birkenau. He remembers that his first name
was Joachim and says that ‘‘he was never at the ramp and never beat inmates.
Of course, he came to Auschwitz as an ss sergeant and left the camp with the
same rank.’’ Alex Rosenstock, who worked in the dental clinic of the Birkenau
men’s camp and also got to know Wolff, remembers that he once told him
this: ‘‘If you’re smart, you’ll be on the lam. No one will get out of here—you
won’t and I won’t.’’
On the Accommodations Commando, Katarina Princz met Nagel, an ss
man who was, like her, from Bratislava and conversed with her and her com-
radesinHungarian.This netted himthe nickname ‘‘Nagel-Bacsi’’ (bacsi is Hun-
garian for ‘‘uncle’’). Once, when Nagel was about to go on leave, he offered to
take letters from Princz with him. She trusted him, and so she accepted his
offer. He gave her some fabric from which she made a shirt, and she sewed in
its collar a letter in which she described the goings-on in the extermination
camp. Nagel brought back an answer to this letter, and subsequently Katarina
received cards and even parcels through him. Katarina’s future husband met
the ss man in the leather factory where Nagel lived and Princz had to clean his
room. Nagel frequently left some food for him and discreetly enabled Princz
to listen to bbc broadcasts from London on his radio. Both Princz and her
future husband have described Nagel as a man of fifty or fifty-five. His son,
who had also been a member of the ss, died in thewar.The two do not believe
that the only reason Nagel helped them was that the inmates ‘‘organized’’ for
him in return.
It became known that two Austrian ss men continually, though not self-
lessly, helped their compatriots.They were Sepp Spanner, an ss corporal from
Lower Austria, and Karl Hölblinger, a Viennese employed at the motor pool
with the same rank. Spanner told me later that whenever he heard inmates
speak in an Austrian dialect, he spoke to them and helped them.This has been
confirmed by two other Austrians. Hölblinger maintained such a close con-
tact with theViennese Rudi Friemel, an inmate who worked in the motor pool,
that he not only smuggled mail and parcels for him but also visited Friemel’s
father in Vienna during a leave.
Hölblinger had no hesitation about takingselected victimsto thegas cham-
bers in his lkw (Lastkraftwagen, truck) and unloading them there if thesewere
his orders. Before the Anschluß in March 1938, when the nsdapwas still for-
bidden, he was an illegal member of it. At a later date he assured me that he
was an idealist who was proud of his Germanness. He explained to me: ‘‘I
420 n the jailers
used to be so indoctrinated that I said all Jews should have their heads cut
off.’’ In the face of the gas chambers, however, he condemned the extermi-
nation of the Jews. In August 1944 he was arrested for favoring inmates, and
only luck spared him severe punishment. At that time there were in his locker
ten letters from prisoners that he had promised to transmit as well as eight
bottles of schnapps and 3,000 cigarettes that the letter writers had evidently
given him as a reward. It was only because a friend, who was in on the secret,
had removed the incriminating contents of this locker before a search was
carried out that Spanner succeeded in denying everything. Franz Kejmar, one
of themost successful ‘‘organizers’’ in Auschwitz, has confirmed that Spanner
visited his father in Vienna and told him about the extermination of human
beings. Even though Spanner gladly accepted payment for his help, everyone
hehelped at that timeand whom I questioned afterthewar had theimpression
that this was not the only reason for his assistance.
n The feelings in which the organizer of the human extermination, Adolf
Eichmann, indulged constitute a grotesquecounterpoint to thesetraits. I shall
here reproduce verbatim what Eichmann recorded on tape during the pre-
liminary investigation in Israel and what he verified on the transcript. When
Eichmann was organizing the resettlement of the Jews after the German an-
nexation of Austria, he met Berthold Storfer, a Jewish businessman whom the
government had honored with the title counselor of commerce (Kommerzial-
rat). He said this about himself and that man:
. . . then I had again found in Berlin a telex from Höß that said that Storfer
had urgently asked to speak with me. I told myself: All right, the man has
always been decent; afterall, each ofus pulled somestringsovertheyears—
he by himself and I in my Central Office. This is worthwhile for me, and I
shall go there to see what’s going on. I went to see Gregor Ebner (the head
of the Gestapo in Vienna). I remember it only dimly, but he said to me:
Well, if only he hadn’t behaved so imprudently, he hid out there and wanted
to flee, and something happened there. The officials acted and locked him
up, sent him to a concentration camp on orders from the rfss [Himmler];
anyone who was in there was not permitted to get out. No one could do
anything about it, neitherDr. Ebner nor I noranyone else. Couldn’t get out.
I went to Auschwitz, called on Höß, and said to him, ‘‘Storfer is impris-
oned here.’’ ‘‘Oh yes, he was assigned to a labor block.’’ Then Storfer was
sent for; it was a normal human encounter. He told me about his troubles,
and I said, ‘‘My dear Storfer, what bad luck we’ve had! Look, I really can’t
help you. On orders of the rfss, no one can get you out. I can’t get you
out. Dr. Ebner can’t get you out. I heard that you’ve done a stupid thing
Reactions of Human Nature n 421
here, that you hid out or wanted to flee, which really wasn’t necessary.’’
Then I asked him how he was and he said he would request to be exempted
from work because it was hard labor. Whereupon I said to Höß, ‘‘Storfer
doesn’t need towork.’’ Höß replied, ‘‘But everybody has to work here.’’ ‘‘All
right,’’ I said, ‘‘I shall put a note in the files saying that Storfer is keeping
the gravel paths in order with a broom here (in front of the commandant’s
office there were green gardens). There are small gravel paths, and he has
the right to rest on one of the benches with his broom at any time. Is that
all right, Herr Storfer? Does that suit you?’’ He was very pleased, we shook
hands, and then he got a broom and sat down on a bench. It was a great
inner joy for me that I at least saw the man with whom for such long years
...whomIatleastsawinallthoseyears—andwespoke.Withnoword
did this man, let us say, betray Judaism. Storfer didn’t do that. In World
War I Storfer was a major in the Austro-Hungarian army, though he served
in the financial office—the administration, I would say, and unfortunately,
the way things go, I wasn’t the commandant of the Auschwitz camp.When
I got back from Hungary one day, I heard that Storfer had been shot.
Thatwas a verbatimtranscription ofthe tape.Dr. AlbertWengerrecalls that
in October 1944 Berthold Storfer was taken to Block 11 and never came back.
WhenWenger later inquired about Storfer in the office, his file card contained
adateofdeath.
That explanation is typical of Eichmann. It demonstrates that lower-
ranking ss officers like Spanner could help their protégés more effectively
than the all-powerful ss lieutenant colonel, for to them orders to exterminate
prisoners were not as sacred as they were to Eichmann; they did not confine
themselves to putting notes in the files of theiracquaintances fortheir benefit.
n Among theguardstherewere some individuals who sufferednervousbreak-
downs in the face of the mass murders. Jan Pilecki heard about an ss man who
was evidently rendered insane by a campaign in which primarily Jewish chil-
dren were gassed. He is said to have been gassed together with the children
when he began to rave. A guard told Thomas Geve that many ss men became
mad, and Edward Pys once read a news item about the suicide of an ss man
by hanging, though no reason was given.
At the time of the Hungarian campaign Alfred Woycicki,who worked in the
Identification Service, observed a block leader who came to the office. He was
inebriated and had suffered a nervous breakdown. He told the inmates what
he had had to witness. (In those days human beings were thrown alive into
the fire that had been built next to the crematoriums because their capacity
was insufficient.) Woycicki writes that this man suffered ‘‘a kind of hysterical
422 n the jailers
attack, and so we had to use various means of calming him down, for we could
not let him go to the ss men in that condition.’’ The block leader said that
most of the ss men were incapable of participating in these campaigns with-
out schnapps or rum.Woycicki continues: ‘‘When he had regained his balance
somewhat, we asked him why he did not try to get out of this function and
whether these special rations (of alcohol) were really so valuable for him. He
replied that here they were protected from serving at the front.’’
Riegenhagen, an ss medic trained as a ‘‘disinfector,’’ also suffered a ner-
vous breakdown during a gassing campaign. Edward Pys reports that he was
thereafter not ordered to participate in such campaigns. Nurse Maria learned
that Riegenhagen complained to Mandel, the ss camp leader, about a par-
ticularly cruel selection in the women’s camp, using the argument that came
closest to justifying such a step in the eyes of the ss leadership—namely, that
this meant sabotaging the workforce. Nurse Maria describes Riegenhagen, a
physical education teacher by profession, as an intelligent man. I remember
him as an accessible ss man who liked to ‘‘organize.’’ He was later relieved
of his duties as a medic and transferred to a guard company. Pys remembers
another sdg named Josef Schmucker, who had already served in World War
I and who, in front of Pys and other inmates, once cursed the Hitler regime
and his fate.
Tadeusz Szewczyk has vivid memories of Boleslaw Frymark, a noncommis-
sioned officer and one of the men unfit for frontline service who were inte-
grated into the Auschwitz ss in 1944. He was assigned to the ss pharmacy,
which is where Szewczyk met him. ‘‘He spoke Polish with us. It was in the
summer of 1944 that Frymark told us he had been assigned ramp duty as a
replacement for another ss man. He left with his helmet and pistol in the
morning and returned at noon. He had a nervous breakdown in our room and
said, ‘Let them do with me what they want, let them send me to the front, but
I will not go to the ramp again.’ In point of fact, Frymark was never assigned
ramp duty again.’’
One time Simon, of the ss dental clinic, returned from ramp duty in an agi-
tated state and said to a prisoner who had worked for him fora long time, ‘‘My
God, what goes on there! They aren’t ss men any longer—they are bandits,
they are murderers!’’ Like his colleague Franz Mang, he was able to get out of
further service at the ramp. I have another memory of Simon: His family must
have lived in the Munich area because I noticed that he made particularly fre-
quent trips to the kz Dachau on official business. At my request he took some
information to a friend of mine who was an inmate working in the Dachau
dental clinic, and he also conveyed my friend’s reply to me. I did not have to
‘‘pay’’ Simon for this.
Alois Lorenczyk, like Frymark an ethnic German of an advanced age, had a
Reactions of Human Nature n 423