Langbein Hermann. People in Auschwitz

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his penal institution because he would otherwise not be up to the excitement

of a hearing. When the prosecutor got there, Boger emphasized that the only

reason he was testifying was that the examiner was, like himself, a Swabian.

He began his testimony by saying, ‘‘I feel neither guilty nor punished. I have

to bear my fate.’’

When Oswald Kaduk had been sentenced and was taken to another trial

as a witness, he looked around the courtroom with triumphant pride as if he

wanted to say: ‘‘Look, it’s me, the famous Kaduk!’’

n The manifestation of guilt feelings was the exception rather than the rule.

Adam Rausch, a low-ranking ss man who was charged with killing inmates

in the satellite camp Lagischa and had the revealing nickname ‘‘the Shooter,’’

was supposed to have his ﬁrst hearing in November 1971. On the eve of that

hearing, he hanged himself without giving his family a reason for this act.

Until then Rausch, who was transferred to Auschwitz as a very young ethnic

German, had lived in Graz unmolested and without any manifestations of a

guilty conscience.

The reaction of people who were only marginally involved with what went

on in Auschwitz does not fundamentally diﬀer fromthe behavior of those who

were in the thick of it. Professor Günther Niethammer was given a very pecu-

liar assignment. As an ornithologist he was attached to the ss in Auschwitz in

order to watch the birds in the surrounding marshes. He did not deny that he

knew what was done to the inmates, but he later asserted that it was impos-

sible to do anything about it. He claimed that he gave the inmates bread and

tobacco whenever he had a chance to do so and that he shifted his lookout

to a spot from which no prisoners could be seen. In this way Professor Niet-

hammer solved his personal Auschwitz problem. After the end of the war, he

continued his scientiﬁc activities and did not concern himself with the Ausch-

witz episode any longer.

OnthewitnessstandMax Faust, a professional engineerwith theIG Works,

was asked whether he had escorted Himmler through the Buna Works on

his inspection tour of Auschwitz. Faust was oﬀended and gave the following

answer: ‘‘Yes, sir. But this came about only because the other managers of IG

Farben happened to be away.That I gave the so-called rfssa two-hour guided

tourof the construction site has been since 1952 the pretext forall newspapers

to print a photo that shows me with Himmler, often with the caption ‘Mur-

derers among us.’ I am being written about, and I can’t stop it. But I would

like to take this opportunity to protest against it. Surely I can’t be blamed for

giving Herr Himmler a two-hour tour of a construction site.’’

Willi Hilse, a railroad oﬃcial who managed the freight oﬃce in Auschwitz,

also reacted in an irritable manner. Inmates were declared as ‘‘freight,’’ and

514 n Afterward

it was Hilse’s job to supervise the cleaning and return of the cars that carried

this ‘‘freight’’ to Auschwitz. As a witness he gave a businesslike account of

the acceptance of these ‘‘transported goods’’ by means of a ‘‘big Wehrmacht

waybill.’’ One day a newspaper wrote this about his testimony: ‘‘To shunt the

human freight conscientiously to Auschwitz was the task of Willi Hilse, now

ﬁfty-eight and a senior inspector of the federal railroads.’’ Hilse felt oﬀended

in that he viewed himself as a proper oﬃcial who was not to blame for any-

thing.

Because of inadequate laws or an overly formal interpretation of the law,

Kurt Knittel remained unmolested by the German justice system even though

there is evidence that he shared the responsibility for the crimes of the guards

in Auschwitz.This pedagogue was in charge of their indoctrination. After the

end of the war, he managed to have an astonishingly rapid career in Baden-

Württemberg. In 1957 he was appointed a Rektor (school principal) and just

two years later was made a Regierungsschulrat (government education coun-

selor). In addition he became director of the Volksbühne (theater) in Karlsruhe

and ran for the position of city councillor as the candidate of the Free Demo-

cratic Party (Freie demokratische Partei, or fdp). After some interventionsthe

ministry of culture in Stuttgart canceled his appointment as Regierungsschulrat.

Knittel felt that he had been unjustly disciplined and brought suit against the

administration. Stefan Baretzki was called as a witness in the trial and testi-

ﬁed that when he and others asked why even Jewish women and children had

to die, Knittel answered, ‘‘Because they are an inferior race.’’ Baretzki con-

cluded his testimony with these words: ‘‘After all, we learned how to murder

from Herr Knittel’s lectures.’’

The camp physician Bruno Kitt married Elfriede Maus, who was working

in the Auschwitz ss inﬁrmary as a laboratory assistant. Kitt was sentenced to

death by a British military court for atrocities committed after Auschwitz and

executed. For many years Frau Kitt-Maus fought for a posthumous rehabilita-

tion of her husband, which meant an orphan’s annuity for her son. She also

sought to establish contact with me because she wanted me to certify that her

husbanddid not participate in anycrimesin Auschwitz. During a conversation

with me, she tried to make me believe that she knew nothing of the extermi-

nation of human beings in Auschwitz even though she lived there for years.

She claimed that her husband did not tell her about anything connected with

the mass murders. When I pointed out that she ought to have smelled it, she

answered that she did notice a peculiar sweetish smell but was told it was the

smell of garlic from a sausage factory.

Adolf Prem, an Austrian, joined the nsdap before the occupation of his

homeland. As an ss sergeant in the ss storeroom in Auschwitz, he clashed

with the leadership to such an extent that on November 30, 1944, he was con-

ssMembers after the War n 515

victed of prolonged military insubordination and assigned to a probationary

unit. After the end of the war, he demanded to be recognized by the Austrian

authorities as a victim of Nazism because of this sentence; and when he was

turned down, he regarded it as an injustice. He did not consider the fact that

he was a guard in Auschwitz for years an obstacle to a recognition that would

have put him on a par with the surviving prisoners.

n Only a very small number of former ss men had a diﬀerent reaction to their

past. Sepp Spanner, who was from Lower Austria, saw the ideal picture of

Nazism that he had fashioned for himself sullied in Auschwitz, and he helped

inmates wherever he could. After the war he made a living as a construction

worker inVienna. In 1967 he assured me that he frequentlydreamt of episodes

in Auschwitz that he did not remember by day. ‘‘After Auschwitz I did not have

sexual intercourse with my wife for a year,’’ he said.

Richard Böck from Günzburg, who had declared his inability to drive vic-

tims to the gas chambers in his lkw [truck], was the only former ss man

who gave the Frankfurt court a straightforward description of the murder-

ous methods of the ss and expressed his revulsion at them. He also agreed to

speak on German television. When the question of extending the statute of

limitations in the case of Nazi crimes was discussed in Germany and a tele-

cast on the subject was being prepared, he appeared before the camera and

spoke in favor of such an extension. Later, to be sure, he refused to make

declarations on television again. Evidently the pressure to which he had been

subjected after his ﬁrst appearance had been too strong.

Wladimir Bilan has described how strong such a pressure can be. That

man, whose conduct as an ss sergeant in Auschwitz has been praised by many

former prisoners, told me that he was afraid the people in his new hometown,

also a small town in Bavaria, might ﬁnd out how he had helped inmates. If

this became known, he would have to expect adverse consequences. That is

why Bilan lived a very secluded life.

In the fall of 1963 I gave a lecture about Auschwitz in Munich. In the en-

suing discussion a young man tried to cast doubt on the truth of the content

of my remarks; he attempted to do so with the aid of quotations from neo-

Nazi writings. Before I had a chance to respond to him, another member of

the audience rose, identiﬁed himself as attorney Gerhard Wiebeck, turned to

the young man, and said: ‘‘I was in Auschwitz as a leading member of the ss

and can conﬁrm that conditions therewere much worse than what thelecturer

described.’’ Wiebeck had come to Auschwitz to investigate cases of corrup-

tion among the guards. He later told me that he had had a falling-out with

his former ss comrades because he was not prepared to keep quiet about the

crimes committed by the ss.

516 n Afterward

Spanner, Böck, Bilan, and Wiebeck kept away from the murderous doings

to the extent that was possible for them. An ss man who had blood on his

hands in Auschwitz cannot get over Auschwitz, either: Stefan Baretzki, who

has been cited repeatedly as an exception from the rule. When I spoke with

him in prison, he said that hewas thinking of Auschwitz all the time. Afteran-

swering my questions about details of the machinery of murder in Birkenau,

he exclaimed: ‘‘I hope this will never happen again!’’

ssMembers after the War n 517

conclusion and warning

nnn

For a long time the public balked at taking note of Auschwitz, and even those

survivors who kept pointing out what had happened there could not change

this situation. As warners, they remained the society’s outsiders, as their ex-

perience of Auschwitz had made them.

To eﬀect a change it took a new generation, young people who began to

resist their fathers’ tacit attempt to encumber them with such an oppressively

heavy heritage.The Eichmann trial in Jerusalem and the big Auschwitz trial in

Frankfurt provided the impetus for the public’s abandonment of its resistance

to learning the truth about Auschwitz.

A sober and objective position toward the Auschwitz phenomenon, how-

ever, is hardly possible in the lifetime of those who let themselves be induced

to eliminate all natural inhibitions there, to deaden their conscience, to com-

mit mass murder for years with the equanimity of exterminators of vermin,

and at most to complain about the disagreeable work they had to do in the

service of the nation. However, since this phenomenon challenges people to

take a stand, they have usually taken their positions as factions, so to speak.

Onefaction attempted to minimizewhat happened.This view is typiﬁedby the

shameful discussion about the possible inﬂation of the number of victims in

Auschwitz—as if the nature of the crimes would change if one million fewer

human beings had been dragged to the gas chambers. This faction also zeal-

ously sought parallels to mass crimes of other peoples in an eﬀort to conceal

the fact that the Auschwitz phenomenon permits no comparison. Such eﬀorts

were resisted by another faction, which formulated confessions of guilt and

accusations, though frequently in language that remained curiously abstract

and thus had little expressivity. Even though no occurrence of the recent past

constitutes a greater challenge to be analyzed, up to now no one has taken

the initiative in producing a sober analysis of human reactions in the extreme

situation of Auschwitz.This requires a generation who can look at Auschwitz

with the detachment with which we view events of the nineteenth century.

This study is intended to facilitate thework of this generation. If it can also

stimulate the younger people who have a personal relationship with Nazism

through their fathers, that will be all the better.

I have always been aware, and no reader will have overlooked, that despite

all my attempts at an objective viewpoint I have remained a partisan in this

study. I hope, however, that my attempts at objectivity will not be overlooked,

either. Some readers may even consider them exaggerated: for example, when

I give a more detailed account of the behavior of the inmates who could be in-

duced to tyrannize their fellow suﬀerers than of the conduct of the prisoners

who remained comradely even as functionaries, or when there is a detailed

examination of why members of the ss acted humanely toward the prisoners

while less attention is paid to the guards who carried out every command to

kill them. However, this is not onlya result of the quest for objectivityof a per-

son who was embroiled in the occurrences in Auschwitz. Exceptions always

pose a greater challenge to an observer than the rule; an analysis of them can

yield important insights into human reactions in an extreme situation. Added

to this is the fact that the crimes of Auschwitz have already been documented.

A recapitulation did not appear necessary.

n Anyone who learns about the scope of the murders committed in Ausch-

witz will search for the culprits. My study should be understood as a warning

against making a snap judgment.Innumerablepeoplewould not have behaved

any diﬀerently from the majority of the guards if they had been ordered to

go there, just as most of those who incurred guilt as cogs in the machinery

of destruction would surely never have thought of murder and manslaugh-

ter if they had not been placed in the atmosphere of Auschwitz. This may be

of only limited interest to jurists, for they must assess the actual guilt of an

individual. However, anyone who knows how often chance decided who was

assigned to participate in the mass crimes will not regard the standards of

the legal system as suﬃcient. A Baretzki or a Neubert happened to be posted

to Auschwitz. Dr. Wirths and Dr. Mengele would not have been transferred

there if they had stayed ﬁt for frontline service, and it was through a chain

of circumstances that people such as Hans Stark and Irma Grese came under

the discipline of the ss at a very early age. Anyone who learns this will know

that it would be far too facile to put the blame for the mass murders only on

those who committed them in the camp and on the handful of people who

gave the orders. Did a few thousand willing recipients of these orders build

in the strictest secrecy an organization of extermination that the population

claims not to have known about? It was not that simple. Every serious analy-

sis of the conduct of the murderers of Auschwitz goes beyond this group of

people.

The clearest indication of how great the responsibilityof the system for the

guilt of an individual can be comes from studying the behavior of those who

got blood on their hands while wearing the striped garb of the inmates. Who

bears the responsibility for the monstrous deeds of a morally defective per-

son—the habitual criminal whowas given unlimited powerover fellow human

beings or the camp administration that rewarded him for giving vent to his

Conclusion and Warning n 519

rage and threatened to deprive him of his privileges if he behaved in a com-

radely way? I must also emphatically warn against making a rash judgment of

those who had not come to the camp as criminals but could be turned into

lackeys by the camp administration. Only someone who as a capo, a block

elder, an inmate physician, or in a similar function experienced the pressure

to which every functionary was exposed and was able to withstand it—as in

the case of all temptations to make common cause with the masters (that is,

the exterminators)—is capable of passing judgment on them. Many a survivor

who did not abuse the power given him by the camp administration will hesi-

tate to make such a judgment—precisely because he knows the situation.

The responsibility forthe fact that there could be an Auschwitz in the twen-

tieth century in a country with aproudcultural tradition must be borne by Ger-

man Nazism as well as by those who helped make it possible for this regime

to wield unlimited power. Only a totalitarian regime that attempted to bring

all people into line could create in an alarmingly short time the prerequisites

for a well-organized, undisguised genocide. Less than ten years after Hitler’s

accession to power in Germany, it had already become a daily routine to cram

human beings into the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Only if democratic insti-

tutions are disparaged, the infallibility of the Führer is proclaimed, all critical

voices are eliminated, and terror is installed can the ambition of types such as

Höß and Mengele be channeled to such devastating eﬀect. Only then can the

command of an infallible Führer or an omniscient party deaden any normal

sense of responsibility and create the conditions under which an Auschwitz

can become reality.

And onlya totalitarian system with its contempt for human beings includes

genocide in its political plans with cool calculation. Hitler never denied this,

and no one who voted for him could have anydoubt about it. Auschwitz meant

the realization of his slogan,which was screamed out numberless times:‘‘Juda

verrecke!’’ (Perish Juda/death to the Jews!).

Anyone who has seen how quickly a totalitarian regime can gain unlimited

power over people under its domination will learn to appreciate the value of

a democratic system, even if one is not prepared to overlook obvious weak-

nesses. Democratically organized communities have certainly also committed

crimes. But many examples prove that if an injustice is committed, the voice

of conscience cannot be permanently stiﬂed. In a democracy an Auschwitz is

inconceivable. Yet one can also draw on examples that show how every totali-

tarian system develops tendencies that point in the direction of Auschwitz.

The German people will for a long time have to bear the burden of what

their government perpetrated in their name in the places of extermination.

There is no doubt that there were typically German elements in the perfect

organization of the machinery of murder. One can be certain that the military

520 n Afterward

ideals of command and blind obedience, of the power of the uniform and the

desire to roar a snappy ‘‘Jawohl!’’—ideals that were more alive among the Ger-

man people than among many others—aided the organizers of the genocide.

Nevertheless,one should be cautioned against the assumption that a totali-

tarian system could in no othercountryclear theway to a similar development;

the recent past has too often proved how erroneous such a belief would be. It

is not the details that are characteristic of Auschwitz but rather the principle

that was put into eﬀect there. Extreme contempt for people, thinking in terms

of friends and foes, and absolute subordination to the will of a Führer—these

elements are encountered in every totalitarian system. They led to the con-

struction of the machinery of destruction for which the name Auschwitz has

become a symbol.

A rather surreal vision that once ﬂashed through my mind in Auschwitz

has stuck in my memory. One day we were sitting in our inmate oﬃce in the

ss hospital. We did not have much to do, and I leisurely clattered away on my

typewriter. In the adjoining oﬃce of the ss, which was separated from ours

only by a thin wall of boards, ss men were having a relaxed conversation about

furlough problems and family matters. At that point I imagined that if every-

one did not wear a uniform and were naked, no one would be able to distin-

guish the ss men from the inmates—that is, the masters from those doomed

to die. That was not correct, of course. Not just the tattooed inmate numbers

and the shaved heads or the haircuts would have distinguished the naked men

from one another; the nutritional state of virtually all of them would have led

to a clear conclusion as to which group any one person belonged. But that is

not what my vision was about.The omnipotence and the total impotence that

were connected with a uniform and that separated these people to such an

extent that the whim of one who wore an ss uniform could mean the death

of another who had to wear a prisoner’s garb indicate the power of a system

that turned human beings into wearers of uniforms in the most consequential

way.

It is this system that we Auschwitzers got to know with greater clarity than

anyone else. From the case of Dr. Eduard Wirths, the ss garrison physician,

one can learn how easily a person could become a tool of Nazism. A bit of

opportunism and the enjoyment of a ﬁne uniform suﬃced to put someone on

a path on which every step made it harder to turn back and that eventually led

to Auschwitz. From this and otherexamples one can learn howdangerous it is

to devote oneself uncritically to an organization and what the consequences

may be if one lets oneself be induced to make sweeping judgments of human

groups.Then there will be a great temptation to condemn them, and everyone

should always beware of doing this.

This is the lesson of Auschwitz: The very ﬁrst step, the acceptance of a so-

Conclusion and Warning n 521

cial system that aims at total control of human beings, is the most dangerous

one. Once such a regime has conceived a plan to eradicate ‘‘subhumans’’ (they

need not be Jews or Gypsies) and a person wears its uniform (which can be

adorned with symbols other than the runes of the ss and the death’s head),

he has become a tool.

Like so many others, I dreamed in Auschwitz that mankind was going to

draw its lessons from what became reality there, even though earlier everyone

would have called that reality inconceivable and impossible.Will it learn these

lessons?

522 n Afterward

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nnn

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