the barracks were seriously overcrowded. As a result, after the outbreak of
war the death-rate increased sharply.
77
Soon, however, German inmates
came to represent only a minority among the numerous prisoners whom the
Gestapo had arrested in the occupied territories, particularly in the east.
78
The number of KZ prisoners quadrupled from around 21,000 in August
1939 to around 70, 000 in spring 1942.
79
In January 1941 Heydrich ordered a ‘division of the concentration camps
into distinct levels reflecting the personality of the prisoners and the degree
of threat they pose to the state’. Accordingly, the prisoners were divided
into three categories, for each of which particular concentration camps were
responsible: ‘the less incriminated prisoners in protective custody who are
definitely capable of rehabilitation’ were sent to Dachau, Sachsenhausen,
and Auschwitz; those more seriously incriminated but nevertheless capable
of being rehabilitated were assigned to ‘Level II’, namely Buchenwald,
Flossenbu
¨
rg, Neuengamme, as well as to Auschwitz II, which was still to
be built; the ‘seriously incriminated’ prisoners who were ‘unlikely to be
capable of rehabilitation’ were to be sent to Mauthausen, which at this stage
was the only KZ in ‘Level III’. And it was, in fact, there that the most
dreadful conditions and the highest death-rate were to be found.
80
As we have seen, the exploitation of prisoners’ labour played a major role
in the establishment of the four new concentration camps, as indeed had
been the case with the Mauthausen and Flossenbu
¨
rg camps established in
1938. It was to be utilized both for the SS’s own building-materials business
as well as—as in the case of Auschwitz—for building projects. Thus, in
addition to the German Earth and Stone Works (Deutsche Erd- und
Steinwerke), founded in 1938 and responsible for stone-quarrying by
KZ prisoners, a further 199 holding companies were established for KZ
businesses.
The Deutsche Ausru
¨
stungswerke GmbH (German Equipment Works
Ltd.), founded in May 1939, gradually took over the workshops in the
camps in order, in the first instance, to provide equipment for armed units of
the SS and for concentration camps. In 1940–1 the number of objects
produced was reduced; the main focus was now on furniture for the KZ
and SS forces, but also for ethnic Germans who were being resettled. At the
end of 1941 the Deutsche Ausru
¨
stungswerke had plants in Dachau, Sach-
senhausen, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Lublin, and Lemberg (Lvov), and a
total of 4,800 workers, overwhelmingly KZ prisoners and Jewish forced
labourers.
81
Similarly, the Gesellschaft fu
¨
r Textil und Lederverwertung
482 repression in the reich