Using “Kapo” as a word of insult
I’ve noticed the word “kapo” cropping up now and then in the comments section of this blog, to refer to someone Jewish who is seen as an underhanded betrayer of the Jewish people or Israel. Here’s a typical example, which was posted around the time of the Iran deal and referred to the vote for it:
Kapo:
Did Jerry Nadler Betray America, Israel and His Community?
Yes.Kapos were an essential component in the running of the German National Socialist concentration camps.
But Jerry Nadler (and all the others I’ve ever seen described by the word, except of course for the actual, real-life historical kapos) had no gun pointed at his head when he decided about the Iran deal. Nor was he facing a death camp or concentration camp. And therein lies a tale—about the actual kapos, who they were and what they faced.
Let’s first establish that, although the word is often used to refer to Jews, and although some were certainly Jewish, most kapos were not [emphasis mine]:
A kapo or prisoner functionary was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp who was assigned by the SS guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks in the camp…The system was designed to turn victim against victim, as the prisoner functionaries were pitted against their fellow prisoners in order to maintain the favor of their SS guards. If they were derelict, they would be returned to the status of ordinary prisoners and be subject to other kapos. Many prisoner functionaries were recruited from the ranks of violent criminal gangs rather than from the more numerous political, religious and racial prisoners; those were known for their brutality toward other prisoners.
The kapos were involuntary prisoners in a system that was known for its overwhelming brutality. By becoming kapos, they qualified for some moderate privileges that meant they might actually be able to survive their horrific captivity. Some kapos actually were relatively decent (mostly in secrecy) to the fellow-prisoners under their supervision. The camp administrators preferred kapos from the criminal population, because they were less hampered by conventional morality:
At Buchenwald, these tasks were originally assigned to criminal prisoners, but after 1939, political prisoners began to displace the criminal prisoners, though criminals were preferred by the SS. At Mauthausen, on the other hand, functionary positions remained dominated by criminal prisoners until just before liberation…
Identified by green triangles, the befristeten Vorbeugungshé¤ftling or “BV” [criminal] kapos, were called “professional criminals” by other prisoners and were known for their brutality and lack of scruples. Indeed, they were selected by the SS because of those qualities. According to former prisoners, the criminal functionaries were more apt to be helpful to the SS than political functionaries, who were more apt to be helpful to other prisoners.
More evidence that Jews were not preferred by the SS to be chosen as kapos:
The SS sometimes had racial criteria for the prisoner functionaries, sometimes one had to be racially “superior” to be a functionary.
And once a person was fingered to be a kapo, there was no turning back. Here’s Himmler on the subject:
The moment we become dissatisfied with him, he is no longer Kapo, he’s back to sleeping with his men. And he knows that he will be beaten to death by them the first night.
After the war, some particularly brutal kapos were tried and sentenced—German ones in Germany, Polish ones in Poland, and some Jewish ones in Israel. I have tried to get a good estimate of what percentage of kapos were Jews, since the word is usually used today in the context of accusing Jews of various offenses, and although I haven’t found an official estimate it’s clear that the Nazi preference was for them not to be Jews. This book of interviews with Jewish Sonderkommandos from Aushwitz contains one survivor’s estimate that 80% of the kapos were not Jewish, for example. Another memoir indicates that 10% of kapos were Jews. A historical novel QB VII by Leon Uris, presumably based on research, states that only a few out of every hundred were Jewish.
So it appears that the idea that kapos were predominantly Jewish is almost certainly false, and in fact Jews seem to have been significantly underrepresented among kapos in comparison to their numbers among regular camp prisoners. However, some kapos were indeed Jewish.
In addition, camp survivors usually say that the Jewish kapos tended to be better (see this) and German kapos were often (although not always) considered the worst (see this).
But the situation of the kapos in general, particularly those who had no previous criminal history, was so substantially different from that of virtually anyone in the US today, that I would say it is actually an abomination to compare the two, for the simple reason that kapos were concentration camp inmates under threat of torture and death. As kapos they received special privileges, and the most special one was life itself. In other words, their first motivation was to save their lives in a situation of evil so total and so horrific that in a very real way they were victims who were coerced into colluding with their oppressors.
Consider the case of Jacob Tannenbaum, a Jew and a former kapo who was alleged to have been violent and who was tried many years later in the US. This was his pre-kapo history:
…Tannenbaum [was] an observant Polish Jew who, before the war, had been active in Zionist activities. His wife, six-month-old daughter, parents and five siblings perished during the Holocaust.
Perhaps that would be enough to make a person go mad, even without more. But there was considerably more that Tannenbaum experienced before becoming a kapo:
After some time in a Polish camp in 1942, he was sent with other relatively healthy prisoners to the forced-labor camp in Galicia, where his Nazi captors blinded him in one eye and severely injured his back in a beating.
Finally, for eight months in 1944 and 1945, he served as a kapo in Gorlitz, supervising 1,000 prisoners who worked there in an armaments factory.
Tannenbaum was in camps for a total of three years. After the war he came to the US and became a citizen in 1955, a practicing Orthodox Jew who donated money to causes such as that of Weisenthal, the Nazi-tracker. Years later he was recognized and arrested, and the camp survivors testified that he had been especially brutal, beating them sometimes without even Germans being present, and in six cases causing the death of inmates (for example, by informing on them for infractions). But Tannenbaum said there had always been Germans present during the beatings and that he did what he did under threat of death. In the end there was a settlement, with Tannenbaum stripped of his citizenship but not deported for health reasons. He was 77 (or 79; I’ve read conflicting reports) at the time of the proceedings, suffered a stroke while testifying, and died a year later.
Some called Tannenbaum a tragic figure. In my opinion, he is surely that, but is he guilty? I would have to know more to make a decision, but I know that I have my doubts about his guilt in the moral sense. His case was exceptionally controversial, with many people thinking he should not have been charged, but I’m not bringing it up to decide his guilt or innocence. I’m bringing it up to point out the intensity of the pressures kapos were under, and the profundity of the moral decisions and dilemmas they faced.
I have already said that they did not volunteer for the camps, which is self-evident. What is less evident is that they did not volunteer for the job of kapo, either. They were selected [emphasis mine]:
…[T]he Tannenbaum case already has resurrected the history of the several hundred Jewish kapos, all selected by the Nazis to oversee and punish their own people, often with the hope of sparing themselves. Theirs was the conundrum within the catastrophe.
“I know that when the Tannenbaum case is heard, many of the allegations will be horrifying,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, which studies the Holocaust and human rights issues. “What needs to be said generally is that one must make a distinction between those who volunteered for the SS or the Gestapo and those who thought they would save their lives by cooperating. You can’t say Patty Hearst played the same role as her kidnappers. The same is true of any kapo.”
“It is important to retain a perspective,” said Henry Siegman, the executive director of the American Jewish Congress. “There is a critical difference between the Barbies of the world – the victimizers – and the Tannenbaums, as sad and tragic and despicable as they were. They were victims. They were people who succumbed to unbelievable stress.”
Tannenbaum alleged, among other things, that the beatings he administered were designed to save accused prisoners of worse at the hands of the Nazis themselves, who would just as soon have killed them instead. Who knows? Tannenbaum himself had been subject to psychological torment as well:
“He told us once that in one of the camps the Nazis played this ‘joke’ on him – a kind of psychological torture,” said Sonny Tannenbaum, a peace officer in the New York City court system. “They had him dig a grave and made him believe they were going to bury him alive in it. Then they all laughed and had him come out, and threw a dead German shepherd in the grave.”
Here’s the moral distinction the legal system was trying to make:
“Any inquiry like this, Jewish or German, comes down to whether someone took part in the persecution of innocent people willingly and voluntarily,” said Mr. Ryan, a former director of the Office of Special Investigations and now a lawyer for Harvard University. “It’s just that with the kapos you have to add the additional layer of what the SS was doing over their shoulders. Were the kapos beating the inmates only enough to keep the SS from beating them even more brutally? Or were they persecuting them as badly or even worse than the SS?”
How could one ever judge such a thing about a person who had been tortured as Tannenbaum had? There is little question in my mind that under anything remotely resembling ordinary circumstances he would not have done anything of the sort. Yes, he had choices, and he probably made some bad ones, but is he required to have been a hero and/or a saint, exhibiting a bravery and goodness that—to be honest—very few among us would be capable of under similar circumstances?
Someone using the word “kapo” to refer to anything less than that sort of pressure and that sort of horrific choice seems wrong to me, a trivialization of a profound human tragedy and a deep outrage.
Thanks for the essay – there is so much about the Holocaust that most of us can never begin to fathom.
I dislike the slurs made against anyone for partisan reasons, using comparisons that try to equate the relatively trivial acts of people today (despicable though some of them are) to the horrors of the Nazi regime.
However, anyone likening the ISIS murderers and their enablers to the Nazis has my full approval.
Coincidentally, I just read a rave review of “Son of Saul,” a new Hungarian film describing the personal crisis of a Jewish Sonderkommando during a rebellion at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but it’s on my watch list for the upcoming year.
If anyone’s interested, here’s a link to the review I liked:
http://www.libertasfilmmagazine.com/lfm-reviews-son-of-saul/
And the compulsively curious can find links to other reviews at “Rotten Tomatoes.”
Complicit:
“ADJECTIVE
involved with others in an illegal activity or wrongdoing:”
To horrifically abuse others so as to avoid horrific abuse is, if human and understandable, still immoral. Which makes it, however forgivable, an excuse.
Regardless of how much agony we might ‘save’ another from, by participating in it, we become complicit.
Mercy does not absolve responsibility.
Evil cunning sensed who among their prisoners would be susceptible to ‘persuasion’. Which is probably why the percentage of Jewish kapos was so low.
Societal judgement is inescapable but it is situations like this which make clear why, “judgement is mine, saith the Lord”.
Geoffrey Britain:
But what if you knew that taking the job might not only help you survive, but also that you would be less brutal than whoever would be appointed if you refused? And if you knew your refusal would also cause your death?
All I know is I hope to never face a choice anything like that. And I cannot condemn those who chose to do it, to save themselves and even perhaps be less brutal towards their charges than their replacement would be.
And I do not find them legally culpable, unless they went above and beyond what was strictly necessary.
These people were not special forces soldiers with instruction and training on how to resist the enemy. They were ordinary people caught in one of the most awful situations people have ever known, in which the moral way was hardly clear. At least, that’s how I see it.
It makes me extremely sad to read this article, Neo. More vilification of “the Jews”. It never ends.
Irene:
No, it never ends, and I doubt it ever will.
But I am sick and tired of seeing these “kapo” remarks flung around in the comments section. I have taken to removing some of the comments that use that line of attack here, but I wanted to set out the true story, because I’ve seen the accusations on other blogs as well. It’s become one of those stupid, ignorant, offensive cliches.
@GB
“Complicit:
“ADJECTIVE
involved with others in an illegal activity or wrongdoing:”
To horrifically abuse others so as to avoid horrific abuse is, if human and understandable, still immoral. Which makes it, however forgivable, an excuse.
Regardless of how much agony we might ‘save’ another from, by participating in it, we become complicit.”
GB, I agree with almost all your posts, but not here. Participation did not make these people complicit. A characterization like complicit presupposes legality and morality. The concentration camp universe allowed neither. I would label someone complicit who supported the Nazi ideology, but not concentration camp slaves starved and beaten to submission.
We’re way beyond Langer’s choiceless-choices here.
[Were black slaves in the South complicit with slavery because they had positions overseeing and even mistreating other black slaves (lower down the ranking)? (Not an exact parallel, but close enough).]
Correction: I should have written coercion not participation.
Tannenbaum alleged, among other things, that the beatings he administered were designed to save accused prisoners of worse…
If you accept that as true or even possibly true, then it creates another type of Jewish kapo, i.e., one who is administering pain to one of his own in an effort to help the situation. Nadler probably sees it that way, that he’s not hurting Israel as much as he’s helping the situation, or a rationalization along those lines.
G Jourbert:
There’s nothing especially Jewish about that reasoning. Kapos were not predominantly Jews. That reasoning was available to all kapos (although I doubt criminals would think that way): I’ll do it and save myself, plus I’ll be more humane than my replacement would probably be.
In fact, it’s not limited to kapos. It’s a sort of reasoning of anyone who finds him/herself in a cruel and powerless situation, at the mercy of others, and has to face tough choices.
I think it’s way too easy to sit here, in the US in 2015, and pretend we know what the right choice is, or what we would do if, heaven forbid, faced with something similar.
The same Kapo system existed in the Gulags; the Russians used criminals to run the camps with the guards in place to control them. I recently found a link to a book on Amazon.com that gave me the willies, even after years of studying both the Holocaust and the Stalinist Gulag. Not for the squeamish….
http://www.amazon.com/Danzig-Baldaev-Drawings-Damon-Murray/dp/0956356249
Neo,
I’d much rather die than survive by participating in your murder.
‘Saving’ others from a more horrible fate is a much tougher proposition. Nor can I say what I would do, I’m simply not going to pretend that being coerced would absolve me from some responsibility, which I suspect was the Nazi’s point.
I too pray that I never am forced to make that choice. Nor am I condemning those who participated, as ultimately only God can make that assessment.
But I cannot discount Victor Frankl, Auschwitz concentration camp inmate’s insight; that no matter how horrific our outer condition, we retain our last and most basic freedom: choice in how we choose to react to outward circumstance.
Irene,
I know my words seem harsh. Given the circumstances, describing the choices and morality involved is necessarily harsh.
Regarding your assertion that the concentration camp universe allowed neither legality and morality; certainly it was extralegal. However, if we accept Frankl’s real world insight, then morality certainly was involved.
@GB
Primo Levi had a very different assessment of concentration camps, probably due to the difference in their position in the camps. Many of the people I know from WWII who survived cc’s had experiences and outlooks closer to Levi than Frankl (who was a doctor and privileged compared to other prisoners). Studies I’ve seen, and which Levi corroborates, is that there are certain points beyond which a human is pushed and they are no longer capable – physically or mentally – to choose “how we choose to react to outward circumstance.” (It could be that Frankl didn’t experience the depth of deprivation for as long as other inmates did.)
What I don’t find convincing was holding a kapo in a situation like the one Neo cited responsible – especially legally responsible and after the fact.
The more paranoid, stemming from Craig Livingston and the 300 FBI files, and worse since, would suggest that there is possibly some serious pressure placed on Nadler.
Hell, nobody knows what might be “found” on his computer.
Cornflour, thanks for the comment about “Son of Saul”. I heard about this film on Fresh Air a few months ago and again on All Things Considered a few days ago. Here’s the link from imdb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3808342/?ref_=nv_sr_1
This is the first I’ve read of any kapos surviving camp liberation.
The only death camp that had a high percentage of Jewish kapos (Sobibor) proved just how dangerous that might prove.
They proved essential during that camp’s breakout.
Irene,
I accept that as a valid argument, though I’m not sure I find it entirely persuasive. Simply because it rests upon the proposition that someone has been driven beyond their ability to choose. If so, they would no longer retain their inner autnomy and have lost a vital part of their humanity. Just as with insanity, we cannot be held responsible if we haven’t the ability to choose. The proposition thus supports the argument that “I was just (robotically) following orders” and therefore bear no responsibility for my actions.
I can attest to the brutality of the kapos. This was told to me by my father very late in his life. After the Lodz ghetto was liquidated his mother, his first wife, and one of my aunts were shipped to Ravensbruck, a camp for women. His mother was a proud woman who came from an old and very distinguished family. One day a camp guard, who was a Gypsie, gave her an order. She refused saying that she didn’t take orders from scum (which is their reputation even today). He executed her on the spot. Under the Nuremburg laws, Gypsies occupied a position as low as if not lower than Jews. The guard could only have been a kapo. After my father told me this story I understood why my aunt, the only one of the three to survive, was a bitter and unhappy woman
Geoffrey Britain Says:
December 19th, 2015 at 7:51 pm
Neo,
I’d much rather die than survive by participating in your murder.
* * *
I hope this does not seem too frivolous, in the context, but this idea has entered popular fiction in the Harry Potter series. Sometime mid-way in the story, we learn that there was a man who was trusted to protect Harry’s family, but, under threats, eventually betrayed them to Voldemort. Another person tries to justify his actions because he was afraid of being killed, but a third one says, referring to the responsibility that he undertook voluntarily: “Then he should have died.”
That was one perception (among others) that impressed me in the books. I wonder how many readers have now internalized that lesson, or recognized that they already knew it?
Soros comes ti mind when I think of the term kapos. “How do you like me now?”
The people who are using the term kapo today are confusing it (whether intentionally or not) with collaborators or with members of the Judenrat, the Jewish organizations set up in the ghettos by the Nazis to help them keep the Final Solution running smoothly by supplying daily quotas of Jews for the transports. I would say that is a fair description for Jews who assisted in the Iran deal.
The members of the Judenraten always said, “If we didn’t cooperate with them, they would be much worse to us.” Which I understand is almost exactly what the High Priest is quoted in the New Testament as saying about going along with the execution of Jesus. Funny how human behavior doesn’t change very much, isn’t it?
Another good post by Neo.
Unfortunately, the Nazi behavior was not all that unusual. The shock is that an apparently civilized European county could descend to that level of moral depravity.
Forcing one political prisoner to torture and kill another is an especially dehumanizing ploy and the Nazis were masters at dehumanizing people. Idi Amin, a Muslim, used similar dehumanizing tactics on rival tribes in Uganda.
“In the prison cells of Mackindye, Naguru and Nakasero, prisoners were compelled to kill each other with 16 lb sledgehammers in the vain hope that they would be spared. Then the hammers were given to other prisoners, who were told the same, and so on, ad infinitum.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1439131/Idi-Amin.html
People, human beings, unwittingly caught up in a regime scale (quite beyond industrial scale) human death machine, designed to be swift and efficient to simply killing human beings and oriented to no other purpose whatsoever, imposing costs it could never recoup, not in terms of slave labor, not in any terms at all — for so we speak today of the hitherto unimagined bureaucratic apparatus built by the Nazi regime — had little basis or no basis, prior basis that is, to conceive what was to become of themselves. Perhaps stockyard workers or workers associated with large scale abattoirs might be capable to think it through in part, once or if they might discard thinking of the self-sustaining production of meat.
People do know generally speaking about machines, since machines are after all primarily human creations: they know machines function when in working order, and do not function when broken down into disorder. So it is of humans themselves, for we too are physical beings. We know, for instance, that someone with a lower limb snapped into a right angle to its normal condition will not be capable of walking. So also with our minds, our decision-making apparatus, our moral reasoning organ. Works when in order, doesn’t work when disordered — which is why we occasionally anticipate our mind’s disorder: we write our wills while in sound mind, as we say. So there is an aspect of timeliness to ordered and moral decision-making. Anticipation may be called for, or must be called for. But a super-human anticipation — anticipation of previously unimagined circumstances (for who would imagine and then for purposes of efficacy seriously think through creating a regime scale death machine who does not want one — the work of hundreds and thousands of people sometimes learning from trial and error as they go)? That’s a bit tricky. Circumstances can befall a person, such that the timeliness necessary to certain decision-making passes into a time when the mind’s disorder, an utterly unanticipated disorder, prevents the merest possibility to make an ordered decision.
He or she is broken, we can say, and do say — and with good reason, for so it is with them: broken and they did not see it coming, nor knew nor could be expected to know what the complete implications of such a situation would be. So it’s a tough stretch to demand of such a one: you should have killed yourself a month ago when you had the chance and before you conceived falling into such a mental disrepair as you find yourself now. Did you not know you would be tortured and starved? Did you not know you would be sleep-deprived beyond any possible endurance? Couldn’t you think as the immoral monsters who torment you think? Yeah, this may be a bit much to ask on the basis of any universal grounding before the event, or, and perhaps especially, as an ex-post theoretical possibility.
Great post and comments. I don’t know what I would do under similar circumstances, and I hope I never have to find out.
I will note that in the Roman Empire, the early Christians were ordered to worship the Roman gods. Those who refused were sent to the Colosseum, where they suffered brutal and violent deaths for entertainment purposes.
Sometimes you just gotta say no.
Those who refused were sent to the Colosseum, where they suffered brutal and violent deaths for entertainment purposes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_Martyrs_of_Sebaste
The religion closest to the Christianity as taught by Jesus Christ, was in the Middle East. Before it got changed into something more decadent and power hungry in Rome and the West.
Back then, they didn’t have money or power. They just had guts and virtue. That was about it really, and why people found their faith awesome and something to be admired, because few people would face death for such a thing or even anything.
Compare this to Mohammed’s Islam. Then Jihad vs Crusade.
As for the Jews, I suppose lacking a nation, the word “traitor” wouldn’t necessarily fit. A Judas or judas goat might though.
I’m not sure if ‘self-hating Jew’ is proper either.
‘Western Culture loathing leftist pompous hypocrite living a soft ,easy and amoral life while causing the innocent to suffer’ might work.
Until one comes up with a better term many will continue to use kapo as a term for Jewish traitors.
You can choose other terms like feldhure or quisling but they don’t have the power of kapo.
Also some of the examples you cited are misleading. The Germans, being Germans set up many concentration camps, however there are only a few death camps. Except for Jews who are VIPs like Leon Bloom, Jews were almost universally sent it to the death camps. Kappa in death camps were different from kapos in concentration camps .
Perhaps in a concentration camp A Kapo was coerced but in the death camps being a kapowas a choice. By choosing to be a kapo one got a six month lease on life. And and death camps they knew what they would be doing for the six months.
Since the percentage of Jews in the death camps were much higher than in the concentration camps is logical that the percentage of Jewish capos in the death camps will be much higher. Of course that would include first and 2nd° Gentile mischlinge that the Germans considered to be Jews. And since they were Gentile, they would have less loyalty to other Jews.. However there were plenty of Jews who chose to served in the death camps.
There are three cardinal sin is that a Jew has to give his life for. One of them is murder. It is how are hopefully impermissible for one to survive by killing his fellow Jews. Now it’s hard to judge somebody to situation like that , however the Germans were smart enough to be aware that Jewish Jews were going to be less compliant than Soros ,Nadler, or Sanders types.
The term is still appropriate.
Avi:
Are you familiar with the concept of the link?
You may have noticed that when I discussed the low percentage of Jews among the kapos, and other facts of that nature, I used links to show where I got my information. When one makes statements of that sort, it is important to document what you are saying rather than just asserting it as though it’s some self-evident truth.
When you write things like “Perhaps in a concentration camp A Kapo was coerced but in the death camps being a kapo was a choice.” or “By choosing to be a kapo one got a six month lease on life,” you actually need to document those statements. If you can find any evidence for your assertions, please do so, but in the meantime I’ll provide some of the facts that are easily available.
You mention the death camps. In a pure death camp, what would a kapo be doing? Basically, nothing, because in a pure death camp there were no living working inmates to be kept in line, or punished, or worked. People were killed on arrival, and just a few others were kept around to help deal with disposal of the corpses. There were a number of pure death (extermination) camps, and some combination camps that were part death camp and part work camp, and then there were the work (labor) camps. But even there the distinction was sometimes blurred, as some of the labor camps were actually meant to cause death through labor, the so-called “annihilation through work.”
There were many Jews among the prisoner population in all of them. They constituted a particularly high proportion of the people sent to death camps—but, as already noted, most of those people were killed very shortly after arrival. For the most part the staff at death camps were not Jews, with the single exception of the Sonderkommandos who, contrary to what you have written, were NOT volunteers. They did not kill anyone:
As for the actual staff at death camps, they were not Jews:
The kapos were, therefore, in the labor camps or in the labor part of the mixed camps; their purpose was to supervise and maintain discipline among prisoners in those camps. Plenty of these labor camps contained a very large number of Jews; I have no idea where you got the idea that there were not a lot of Jews in labor camps (and, by the way, there was also a huge death toll among all the inmates in labor camps, particularly the “annihilation through labor” camps, but also most of the others).
About three million Jews died in concentration camps, but several millions more died by shooting at the hands of the Einsatzgruppen in Ukraine and Russia, and there were of course no kapos there.
You will note that, except in very rare instances, Jewish kapos were not murdering fellow Jews or fellow prisoners, so I’m not sure why you bring that up.
The situation of kapos is so completely different from any modern-day political analogy that, I repeat, it is an abomination to use it.
neo
Sobibor was a pure killing camp.
It still had kapos — who functioned more as ‘trustees’ would in a US prison system.
The SS had work details even at killing center that had virtually no production.
1) Sorting and counting the last assets of those murdered.
2) Maintaining the minefield — and a clear fire zone — as Sobibor had been erected inside a forest.
The creation of kapos // quasi-trustees was at the discretion of the local SS officer.
Consequently there was no doctrine — rules structure.
At Sobibor the kapos functioned more as finks.
Prisoners who crossed the line ( and it was easily crossed ) were rarely whipped. They were shot or gassed instead.
%%%
I once read a history of the 3SS and Eike and the latter’s theories about how to make the killing process even more brutal. It was penned as a PhD thesis document.
All manner of truly strange events were brought out, not seen elsewhere repeated.
In Eike’s mind, Adolf replaced God. So he massively indoctrinated the 3SS troopers to abandon Christianity. Out of thousands of inductees and volunteers — only ONE teenage boy did not convert to Hitlerism.
Every other soul abandoned God.
Only as a minor point he asserted that the Ukrainian guards were selected by the Nazis, profiled.
1) Young — typically teens.
2) Orphans — parents murdered during the Holomodor.
I’ve never read a Jewish account of the Ukrainian ‘guards’ [ enforcers, they weren’t protecting anybody ] that did not emphasize their youth, and unrelenting hostility.
The SS never allowed the Ukrainian tower crews to mingle with the victim population.
It proved extremely easy for the SS men to totally manipulate and control the Ukrainian teens.
These Ukrainian teens were not stationed outside the Soviet-Polish zone.
His other revelation was that the camps were often used to rehabilitate 3SS men that had come from the front. Such troopers were given soft jobs as an intermediate step. A few weeks inside the camp system — and they were raring to get back to the front… as very few could stand camp “conditions.”
This cycling of troopers back and forth led to Eike getting his killers folded into the Waffen SS — eventually.
Previously, they’d had differing uniforms and were deemed part of the “General SS.”
For those not aware of the term, ALL SS men were in the General SS until the Waffen SS was established — after Adolf gained the throne, IIRC.
Every organ of internal repression was inside the General SS.
Even after Eike got “his boys” new status as “fighting men” — and able to wear Waffen SS uniforms — administratively they were still inside the General SS.
It’s also notable that ALL of worst Waffen SS war crimes offenders had transited through Eike’s perverted world. This only becomes apparent when you sift through the personal records in great detail.
The atrocities of the camps spread to the battlefront.
Also, keep in mind that many of these fellows are addicted to meth. The Nazi armies chewed through meth tablets faster than Chicklets.
This ‘medicine’ was imported from Japan. At war’s end, both nations had to be detoxed.
Many of the, so-called, psychiatric cases at the end of that war were linked to such drug abuse — the Allies were big into ‘bennies.’
Needless to say, this connection was never admitted to by the authorities.
It does go a long way towards explaining many of the bizarre accounts from the war.
Meth, of course, is known for burning out the brain — and destroying empathy — while amping up paranoia.
Naturally then, its appeal to pimps and the SS is manifest.
from wiki
Extermination Camp Estimate of
number killed Ref
Auschwitz-Birkenau 1,000,000 [199][355]
Treblinka 870,000 [215]
Belzec 600,000 [202]
Majdanek 79,000—235,000 [209][356]
Chełmno 320,000 [204]
Sobibé³r 250,000 [213]
This gives a total of over 3.8 million; of these, 80—90% were estimated to be Jews. These seven camps thus accounted for half the total number of Jews killed in the entire Nazi Holocaust. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Poland died in these camps.[318]
In addition to those who died in the above extermination camps, at least half a million Jews died in other camps, including the major concentration camps in Germany. These were not extermination camps, but had large numbers of Jewish prisoners at various times, particularly in the last year of the war as the Nazis withdrew from Poland. About a million people died in these camps, and although the proportion of Jews is not known with certainty, it was estimated to be at least 50 percent.[citation needed] Another 800,000 to one million Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Soviet territories (an approximate figure, since the Einsatzgruppen killings were frequently undocumented).[357] Many more died through execution or of disease and malnutrition in the ghettos of Poland before they could be deported.
so the vast majority of Jews were killed in EXTERMINATION Camps. not labor camps and not concentration camps.
and far more than were killed by the Einzatsgruppen( not the millions more that you stated). also it states that the Jews who were in the concentration camps were there largely at the wars end ( from the death marches after the death camps were closed by Himmler at the end of ’44.
from the Yad Vashem site:http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205886.pdf
in Treblinka-These prisoners were not immediately executed upon arrival at the camp –
rather, they were selected carry out tasks such as cleaning the train cars,
preparing the victims for their execution, dealing with the possessions and
clothing of the victims and handling the dead. In the spring of 1943, the Nazis
used the Sonderkommando to cremate the bodies. Most of these Jews were
exterminated themselves after a few days or weeks of work, with newer
arrivals taking their places.
Belzec
http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205981.pdf
:Not all Jews were immediately killed upon arrival: during the camp’s first few weeks, some of the strong young men were selected for forced labor. As time went on, 700–1,000 people were kept alive for longer periods so that they could work. One group worked on the trains: they cleaned the freight cars, assisted those Jews who could not disembark on their own, and removed the bodies of Jews who had not survived the journey. Another group worked on the victims’ confiscated property, making it usable for the Germans. This included processing women’s hair. Another group of several hundred Jews removed the corpses from the gas chambers and buried them in pits. A group of “dentists” were responsible for the removal of gold teeth from the corpses’ mouths. These laborers were also subjected to brutality and selections from time to time (see also selection).
Sobibor: http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206030.pdf
The strongest Jews who arrived in Sobibor were appointed to Jewish work teams. Their job was to serve the camp staff and carry out duties related to the processing of new arrivals. Eventually, about 1,000 prisoners worked in these teams.
sounds like the work of Jewish kapos to me.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31lem5/were_any_jewish_kapos_tried_for_war_crimes/
Israel did conduct a series of trials of between 38 prosecutions of Jewish Kapos between 1951-1964. However, details on these trials are very sketchy as the Israeli courts have sealed their records for 70 years. Even though the Israeli law these individuals were prosecuted under, the Nazi and Nazi Collaborators Punishment Law (1950), could have resulted in a death sentence, the sentences for the 15 defendants convicted was relatively mild. Else Tarnek, a female Kapo and block commander at Auschwitz-Birkenau, received a two year sentence in 1951 but since it had been two years since her arrest, she was released the same day. The Israeli judge said of Tarek:
here is a book on a very well connected Jewish capo
http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Kapo-Auschwitz-Politics-Schusterman/dp/1611685877
avi:
You misinterpreted what I wrote here:
“About three million Jews died in concentration camps, but several millions more died by shooting at the hands of the Einsatzgruppen in Ukraine and Russia.”
I was not saying that more Jews were killed outside of concentration camps than in them. 3 million were killed in camps, plus several millions more (in other words, in addition to that) were killed in Russia and Ukraine at the hands of the Einsatzgruppen.
I also refer in my post to one trial of a Jewish kapo, and there were other such trials as well, as I mention in my post (“After the war, some particularly brutal kapos were tried and sentenced–German ones in Germany, Polish ones in Poland, and some Jewish ones in Israel”). So I don’t know what point you’re making when you discuss that.
You have offered no evidence to back up the claims you made in your first comment, of Jewish kapos being volunteers. As I wrote, they were not. Nor was part of the Jewish kapos’ job to murder other Jews, as you had implied in your first comment, and you have offered no evidence to back that claim up.
Avi…
Here’s a tidbit that is — as usual — missing from wiki:
The 1ss (L’AH) was at brigade strength for Barbarossa.
All were “True Believer” volunteers.
It had participated in the Greco-Balkans campaign.
It entered Barbarossa — with 11th Army — wiki is wrong — again.
It was ultimately to join up with 1st Panzer Army PDQ but actually entered the campaign a month late — at the Romanian frontier.
This unit is commonly thought of — being Waffen SS — as not being involved with the Holocaust… of not being Einsatzgruppen.
However, personal testimonies from the pitiful few surviving SS men of that formation tell a starkly different picture.
1) Off the records — and on a persistent basis — this brigade was detailing ENTIRE companies to exterminate Jewish settlements across the Pale of Settlement.
Einsatzgruppen:
“The perpetrators included a company of Waffen-SS attached to Einsatzgruppe C under Rasch, members of Sonderkommando 4a under SS-Obergruppenfé¼hrer Friedrich Jeckeln, and some Ukrainian auxiliary police.[70] ” wiki
2) The murderers were so overwhelmed with ‘opportunities’ that to an amazing degree, this brigade was its own Einstzgruppen — times ten or twenty.
Being composed solely of “True Believers” who worshipped Adolf, not God, they were the perfect execution detail.
Later estimates now put Barbarossa fatalities ABOVE those of the camps. (*!!!*)
Previous assumptions about Jews fleeing to the east have proven to be false. Under the Soviet system, one simply could not pick up and leave. The NKVD would shoot you — and this was commonly done.
The Nazi motorized formations raced down the rails faster than any man could walk. So train travel was out of the question.
Stalin had stripped Ukraine BARE of food. So it’s not as if you had a string of Motel 6s and Pilot gas stations to feed the wife and kids on the way east.
The presumption that Jews were able to effectively flee the Nazis has been shattered.
Russian records make it crystal clear: Stalin did not want or accept war refugees fleeing into the interior.
You will find that all along the front — in campaign after campaign, the Soviets never permitted mass evacuations.
The Soviet records do not record ANY refugee camps for civilians displaced by the fighting.
Stalin looked upon all those fleeing as ‘expendables.’
If you can find any sources that contradict these Russian accounts…
Please correct me.
As a hint of how Stalin operated: he largely refused to let refugees flee Leningrad — a 900 day siege.
This policy also showed up at Stalingrad and Odessa.
Hence, it is largely accepted that there simply was no mass flight.
Menachem Begin spent time, 41-42 trying to get Jews to flee, in time.
With tears in his eyes, barely able to speak, he related that it was common for Jewish wives to denounce his teenaged boys when they were sent in to tell the locals to flee while they had a chance.
The brutal reality of the Nazi state was simply rejected.
The mind recoiled.
&&&&
We see the same phenomena WRT Barry’s Muslim identity.
It matters not that Barry uses the same gang sign as ISIS at an African confab ( it’s the upraised digit ) nor his endless Freudian slips — nor his appointments to Homeland Security — the proposition is simply rejected.
That’s why the prior fleeing assumption is now discarded.
If they HAD fled — where are their tales ?
“You have offered no evidence to back up the claims you made in your first comment, of Jewish kapos being volunteers. As I wrote, they were not. Nor was part of the Jewish kapos’ job to murder other Jews, as you had implied in your first comment, and you have offered no evidence to back that claim up.”
you are still blurring the difference between concentration camps and extermination camps.
The vast number of Jews were sent to the latter and only when the extermination camps were closed did survivors go to the concentration camps.
Kapos in the extermination camps CHOSE their position to survive 6 months instead of immediate gassing.
“no evidence”- you didn’t read the citations from Yad Vashem?
“Later estimates now put Barbarossa fatalities ABOVE those of the camps. (*!!!*)”
from Jewish Virtual library:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/einsatz_intro.html
According to historian, Raul Hilberg, the mobile killing units murdered 1.4 million Jews between 1941 and the end of the war in 1945.
Rafael Medoff of the Wyman Institute:
http://www.wymaninstitute.org/articles/2011-6-world-ignores-genocide.php
In June 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union, accompanied by mobile death squads known as Einsatzgruppen. In town after town, they rounded up thousands of Jews, forced them to dig huge pits, and then machine-gunned them into the mass graves. In a short time, more than one million Jews were slaughtered. The Holocaust was underway.
According to Yad Vashem:
http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206240.pdf
By the spring of 1943, the Einsatzgruppen had exterminated 1.25 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Soviets, including prisoners of war.
I don’t understand what is being asserted here.
avi:
Those excerpts you offered say they “were selected” and “were appointed.”
I don’t see a single word about volunteering.
Avi…
Those records were pulled from Nazi archives.
The monsters kept track — largely — from the start.
The one outfit that did not keep track was LAH. It was outside their ‘system.’
It had far more men, and far less record keeping.
As a front line combat unit, it scarcely counted enemy combatants, either.
Until SS survivors admitted to its activities — it was generally assumed — from German records — that the 1SS was always at the front.
Now it turns out that all during the campaign it was sending off companies thither and yon to murder civilians… not a few of which were Gypsies.
It’s notable that most of the murdered Gypsies in western Ukraine… the very area that LAH detailed so many independent company actions.
The survivor’s accounts indicated that they were gunning down civilians — with machine guns — not volley fire — which is what is usually seen in film — without any Einsatzgruppen involved at all.
It was the latter that was fixated upon body counts, and which kept records. It’s those records upon which most of our knowledge — statistics wise — is based.
That the SS had a free ranging murder brigade whipping all over Ukraine — not keeping any records — not inside the RSHA IS news.
As a front line combat unit, LAH didn’t even have to go through ‘special channels’ to get the immense amounts of small arms ammunition it was expending.
The wiki accounting — and many others — posit that those in the know fled east.
But Stalin prevented such flight. He had special details the O. O.s ( The fictive 007 got its double 00s from this organization within the NKVD. They, the O,O, were charged with gunning down undocumented males fleeing to the east. Stalin’s presumption was that they were deserters. )
The opportunity to flee to the east didn’t actually pan out. It didn’t happen.
The LAH — and its flurry of liquidation expeditions behind the front — answer the question: where did all the lost souls go?
There is no record of Stalin ever permitting mass evacuations out of the Ukraine into mother Russia.
As far as Stalin was concerned, Adolf was doing the proper thing.
Nikita describe Stalin as anti-Semitic of “the first water.”
Rather than making it possible for Jews and Ukrainians to flee the Nazis… Stalin was, de facto, upping the killing.
For Stalin hated just about everybody that breathed air, and was even bloodier than Adolf — which is passing strange right there.
&&&
I assert that the death toll is LOW.
The latest stats are coming by way of Moscow.
They are overturning a lot of the accepted history.
And, as you might expect, they are extremely damning of Stalin.
&&&
Lastly, even though Stalin had overwhelming evidence that Adolf was massacring by the thousand — you’ll strain to find any Communist propaganda informing the wider public of their peril.
Stalin’s policy was that all civilians were to stay put.
And that the Red Army is to simply stop retreating.
Like late-war Hitler, he had no acceptance of retreat, and was a stand fast kind of guy.
It’s also of note that when the Red Army approached Eastern Prussia, the Nazis forbade German civilians from clogging the roads to retreat in front of the Red Army.
By late 1944 their roles had entirely reversed — and now the Nazis refused to let frau and kinder flee from the very Hell that they’d set loose.
Prussia was not made German free until 1950. Stalin made sure to drive the Prussians to the west — but only in the dead of winter — and no notice.
This atrocity was payment in kind.
For the Nazis had done exactly so — in 1941.
Your figures are dated — and they are LOW.
Civilians were treated like hamburger — by both armies — by both tyrants.
At wars end, the Nazis proclaimed instant death to even retreating civilians. — As they were clogging the roads to such a degree that the German military could not move.
When the skies cleared, all and every were shot to pieces by the Red Air Force.
Stalin had the identical policies all during the Soviet retreats. The notion that Jews, Gypsies and Ukrainians were able to flee is FALSE.
Neither tyrant, neither army wanted to see that happen.
Do you prefer ‘Judenrat’? I firmly believe that as goes Israel, so goes the world, and if Israel is allowed to go down, the world will burn. The truth of the statement – ‘If the Palestinians would disarm, there would be peace; if the Israelis were to disarm there would be genocide.’ cannot be argued. As long as vile creatures such as Max Blumethal and Susan Rivlin [I will not mention Rabbi in conjunction with her name] Judenrat is an appropriate term. Hamas and Hezbollah will not be responsible for the fall of Israel, liberal American Jews will be.
CJ:
Interesting approach—in the guise of Israel-sympathy, blame the Jews rather than Hamas and Hezbollah.
Oh, and the Judenrat situation, much like the kapo situation, is far more complex than you indicate. Thank your lucky stars that life did not present you with dilemmas of that magnitude.
See this:
One famously surviving Jewish community — just west of Moscow — survived in spite of BOTH armies.
As detailed above, the Red Army refused to let them flee east, refused them rations, refused them arms and ammunition.
They survived by living like hobbits — in the dense woods north of their previous homes.
At one point an entire infantry corps was deployed to wipe them out. It, the attempt, was terminated when the front — so near by — erupted with a Red offensive.
Ray Mears (BBC survivalist) dedicated an episode to the survivors. Dang, I can’t find it.
The key take-away:
1) Stalin kept the victim populations in the dark… even as the Nazis rolled up.
2) He never permitted civilian retreats. Even getting permission to flee Leningrad a 900 day siege — was restricted to children and such.
3) The occasional soul who escaped the Nazi invasion was a rarity.
4) Wandering alone — headed east — was a death sentence when the NKVD found you. Such souls were usually destroyed in Red Army ‘penal battalions.’ [ suicide formations ]
Between no-notice, no retreat, no nothing — how did the extra millions of Jews in Ukraine get out ?
The grim answer is that they didn’t. No small fraction were murdered by the NKVD — as if they were deserters.
Solzhenitzyn bitterly railed about both the policy and the penal battalions in his works.
The extermination camps were merely replicating the mass murder that was fulsomely under way in the east… with much more attention to record keeping.
Barbarossa record keeping was actually quite slipshod… which is what you’d expect in a chaotic battle zone.
As PM Begin related, even when the way was clear, Jews failed to accept the extreme gravity — the peril that they were in.
Instead, rather like you, they began to debate how bad, bad could be.
We now know — it was worse than any sane person could imagine.
In simple English, during the campaign many more were murdered than were ever recorded. Escape to the east was NOT permitted.
“DNW Says:
December 21st, 2015 at 11:08 am
“There are three cardinal sin is that a Jew has to give his life for. One of them is murder. It is how are hopefully impermissible for one to survive by killing his fellow Jews.”
I don’t understand what is being asserted here.”
Simple. It is halachically impermissible to participate in the killing of others in order to save your own life.
the Germans rarely placed preexisting communal and religious leaders on the Judenraat. they chose collaborators like Rumkowski aka “The King of the Jews”
http://www.amazon.com/King-Jews-Leslie-Epstein/dp/1590510798.
Rumkowski was killed by other jews for collaborating .
neo-neocon Says:
December 21st, 2015 at 12:29 pm
avi:
Those excerpts you offered say they “were selected” and “were appointed.”
I don’t see a single word about volunteering.
they should have refused.
avi:
As usual, you fail to document your assertion “the Germans rarely placed preexisting communal and religious leaders on the Judenraat.”
Here’s more refutation of your assertion:
You always have to realize that the Judenrat were established in the ghettoes BEFORE the Final Solution began to be implemented with deportations. The Judenrat did not start out having to make lists for deportation as one of their tasks; that came later. So the people already on the Judenrat, many of whom thought they were helping Jews, ended up with a sharp dilemma they had not necessarily anticipated:
The Nazis did not choose collaborators. They made some into collaborators in the sense of people trying to choose the least evil choice in a totally evil system, and the Nazis killed those who would not make that choice (and there were plenty of the latter).
In addition, even the story of Rumkowski (who you cite, and who is probably the most reviled Judenrat member) is not as simple as you paint it, as more information emerges over time. See this (note, by the way, that he was appointed to the Judenrat in 1939, long before the Final Solution of the death camps was implemented):
But even that account of his death has been disputed.
avi:
Perhaps English is not your first language.
“Volunteer” has a meaning, and it’s not the same as to be “appointed” or “selected.” They were not volunteers.
And as to your statement “they should have refused,” isn’t it nice for you to sit on your high and mighty perch making that easy judgment. Just be thankful you don’t face such a decision.
And—as I noted in my comment above this, they did not know when they accepted the position that the Final Solution would be implemented and that they would be asked to make lists for it.
Ok. “Others”, however seems somewhat more categorical than what was actually written earlier. Perhaps it’s a matter of context.
Well, Israelis are armed; and seem to have elected leaders with more integrity and fortitude than our own.
The more I think about it the more I am convinced of the futility of trying to reason with people who have fundamentally different life-aims, values, and ways.
The left, abandoned any pretense of doing so long ago; and takes it as an article of faith that reasoning merely advances desires in the manner of instrumental reasoning; and that the arbitration of subjective aims in the form of aligning them with objective principles of right reason, is an illusion.
Just appetites battling appetites. Negotiate, or plead when weak; demand when strong. The beginning and end of the progressive “reasoning” project.
Kind of clarifying in a way, if you can be brought to accept it.
Bill Whittle has an incredibly illuminating presentation that goes a LONG, LONG way towards explaining what is happening at a macro and micro level in human relations.
On the Brink of War and Economic Collapse
Jump to 2 minutes in to get straight to Bill’s argument.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY-ueR0OLlQ
DNW:
There is a big difference between murdering someone and having some role in the vast apparatus of murder run by others. In the post and the comments, I have offered lengthy excerpts from sources describing some of the details of that latter role, and some of the horrific choices the people involved were forced to make.
And even rabbis (as I’ve also indicated, with quotes) were overwhelmed by the horror of the choices, and different rabbis gave different answers as to the extent of “participation” allowed, particularly since non-participation was felt to be likely to result in an even greater number of deaths.
I am always astounded, not only at how quick people are to see choices as black and white in situations that are so dramatically worse than any they themselves have ever faced (or probably, and hopefully, ever will face), but also at how many people use 20/20 hindsight to make their judgments. At the beginning of the war things were bad, but it was not clear that the Final Solution was going to occur and that it would swallow so very many. It was a slowly dawning realization, step by step, and quite a few people never realized the extent of it due to the fact that the Nazis tried their best to hide it, and of course the very human element of people finding it so unconscionable that it was hard to credit. In addition, the only alternative for many people was suicide (an alternative which quite a few people took, by the way). Now, we know the extent of the Holocaust, and so people say “Of course, they shouldn’t have compromised in order to try to save part of the population; they should have known that wouldn’t happen.” But at the time, step by fateful step, they did not know that they couldn’t save some portion of the people. Members of the Judenrat were not necessarily just out to save themselves; many really thought they could save others this way, and that if they didn’t cooperate all would be killed.
So many people think of themselves as heroes, who have never been tested in any way even remotely resembling the situation these people faced.
Spend some time listening to Abraham Bomba who escaped from Treblinka and find out that while the killings were going on he couldn’t convince people that they were going on — people simply didn’t believe him.
[Warning about that youtube recording: there’s a loud tone to begin the taping so turn down your volume for a few seconds.]
sdferr:
Please see this and this.
neo-neocon Says:
December 21st, 2015 at 3:49 pm
avi:
Perhaps English is not your first language.
“Volunteer” has a meaning, and it’s not the same as to be “appointed” or “selected.” They were not volunteers.
And as to your statement “they should have refused,” isn’t it nice for you to sit on your high and mighty perch making that easy judgment. Just be thankful you don’t face such a decision.
And–as I noted in my comment above this, they did not know when they accepted the position that the Final Solution would be implemented and that they would be asked to make lists for it.
Although I am European born, English is my first language. Is it yours? You still seem incapable of distinguishing extermination camp from concentration camp and the status of kapos in each.
G-d forbid , but I should burn in hell if I am ever in a position where I push little orthodox children into gas chambers. Many have wondered why Chassidim sang niggunim in the showers, because they’d rather go down Kiddush Hashem than collaborate. We expect that of the goyim not Jews.
It’s no different from shooting fellow Jews on the Tel Aviv beach in cold blood and those who did had to account for their actions.
And the American Jewish community which was deafeningly silent were just as bad.
My grandparents are memorialized at Yeshiva Net Yistoel because they were involved with rescuing people while the vast majority wer dancing the hora to o FDRyms and having gentile grandchildren.
Coincidentally (unrelated that is) I happened to have listened to another portion of this Karski interview by Lanzmann yesterday, wherein K. described his trip into the Warsaw ghetto after it had been 2/3s emptied.
Abe Bomba tells how he escaped back to his home in Czestochowa, from whence he and many tens of thousands of victims had gone to Treblinka, and it was the remaining Jews there who disbelieved him despite living under the Nazi gun in the so-called “small ghetto” themselves. How much stranger then, more readily dismissable — I suppose — for the Americans so far away and without any experience of that close contact with Nazis the native Polish Jews had seen?
Then on the other hand, we watch Syria today — systematically cleansed on this hand and that, with hardly a peep.
sdferr:
According to, I believe, camp survivor Primo Levi (and others I’ve read), one of the many many ways the Nazis would psychologically torment the inmates was to say that they would never get to tell their tale, but even if they did somehow survive to do so, the world would never believe them. The Nazis were well aware of the problem inherent in comprehending the depth of their evil, and wanted to exploit that (it’s also why they kept things as secret as they could).
When the Allies liberated the camps, Eisenhower was intent on documenting what they saw, because they also realized it would be hard for people to believe otherwise, and even hard to believe with the evidence in front of them. That’s why they made those films and showed those films.
avi:
You seem incapable of reading and comprehending.
I made the distinction between death camps, concentration camps, and labor camps in my original post and in my comments as well.
And you are once again making accusations that are unsourced, such as that Jews “push[ed] little orthodox children into gas chambers.” That’s quite an amazing charge, one I have never read. You don’t offer any link for that charge, but if you have one you really ought to give the link.
Kapos have never been alleged to do such a thing.
And all the sources I have ever read about Sonderkommandos mention that the vast majority of the Sonderkommandos only encountered the victims after death (see this, for example). Others mention that a small percentage of Sonderkommandos had an additional task that involved encountering victims prior to death, as described towards the beginning of this paragraph:
That’s bad enough and terrible. But it does not involve “push[ing] little orthodox children into gas chambers.”
avi:
You seem incapable of reading and comprehending.
be careful. you don’t want to compare credentials, level of education or Mensa status.
but maybe this will edify you
http://www.deathcamps.org/reinhard/work_commandos.html
ARC Main Page Aktion Reinhard
Jewish Work Commandos in the Death Camps
Last Update 1 May 2006
Jewish Working Command at Belzec The Nazis realised at an early stage that there was a need for permanent and experienced working groups of prisoners to ensure that the death camp operations ran smoothly. Jewish specialists were able to work at their individual skills, as long as they were fit and served a purpose; arbitrary executions became a rarity. However the execution of those who fell ill continued.
At Belzec, the first operational death camp within the Aktion Reinhard sphere, camp commandant Christian Wirth developed guidelines for the extermination of the Jews and for the supervision of the Jewish work brigades. Those unable to work were exterminated. Moshe Bahir, who arrived in Sobibor in May/June 1942 with a transport of Jews from Zamosc, wrote:
“To my great good fortune I was part of the second transport, some of whose members were selected as permanent workers. Before that, they would take out 200 men from each transport to load the belongings. As soon as the work was finished, they shot them. I however, was privileged to be counted among the permanent workers of the camp.”
In charge of each working group was a Kapo, chosen from among the prisoners. The Kapo was responsible for the work the prisoners performed, and the prisoners had to obey his orders. He wore a yellow armband bearing the black letters “KAPO”, and was armed with a club or a whip. Larger work teams were sub-divided, and each sub-group was headed by a foreman (Vorarbeiter), whose black armband bore his title. An SS man from among the German staff of the camp was in charge of each prisoner work group. In some cases one SS man supervised two or three of the work groups.
Platform workers (Bahnhofskommando)
Station Command This group of 40 – 50 prisoners worked at the train platform. The team’s job was to open the freight car doors and transmit to the passengers the orders of the SS men who received the transports to disembark from the train. After the deportees disembarked, the team’s workers removed the bodies of those that had died en route and in Treblinka transferred them to the “Lazarett”, or into metal carts that ran on rails into the extermination area. At Belzec, a Jewish work brigade carried on stretchers the bodies of those that had died to a special grave close to the eastern boundary of the camp. In all of the camps, two or three prisoners would clean each freight car, and within 10 – 15 minutes the entire train had been cleaned. In Treblinka the platform workers team wore blue armbands and were known as “the blues.” Oscar Strawczynski wrote about his arrival at Treblinka:
“We run out as fast as we can to avoid the whips lashing overhead, and find ourselves on a long, narrow platform, crowded to capacity. All familiar faces – neighbours and acquaintances. The dust is so tremendous, it obscures the sunlight. A smell of charred flesh stifles the breath. Unwittingly, I catch a glimpse of the mountains of clothing, shoes, bedding and all kinds of wares that can be seen over the fence. But there is no time to think… The dense mass of people is pushed towards and jammed through a gate. At this time I just have one thought – not to lose my dearest ones in all this chaos. I succeed in keeping together my wife, two beautiful children, mother and father. Little do I know that these are our last minutes together, that behind that gate we would be torn apart and we would never see each other again…
In that great tumult I do not notice that the work on the platform, such as clearing the people and leftover luggage from the trains, and herding and pushing the crowd toward the gate, is performed by a detachment of around thirty Jewish men wearing blue armbands. This is the detachment of “Blues”, commanded by Kapo Mayer. On the platform there are also SS men, the Ukrainian Wachmé¤nner (watchmen) of Treblinka.”
Thomas Blatt wrote this about his reception by the Sobibor Bahnhofskommando:
“I heard people singing, and I jumped down and went outside. The gate opened wide, and in marched a group of about twenty robust youths. They wore dark blue overalls and fancy caps, with the letter ‘B’ embroidered within a yellow triangle. The leader held a whip and issued a sharp command in German: ‘Abteilung! – Halt!’ A few steps forward and the group halted; with the next command, everyone dispersed.
If I had not heard them speak Yiddish after they broke ranks, I would have mistaken them for German soldiers. Though I had seen them with my own eyes, I still couldn’t believe they were really Jews. I found out later that the ‘B’ stood for Bahnhofskommando, the train brigade.”
Transport Square Workers (Transportkommando)
Transport Square This group of about 40 prisoners was engaged in the activities carried out on the square where the victims undressed. They directed the victims, relayed the German’s orders to undress, and distributed string for tying shoes together, so that the shoes could easily be re-used without having to sort through thousands of pairs.
The team workers aided in the undressing of small children and in taking the clothes and baggage left by the victims to the sorting areas or stores. They also carried deportees who were ill or too weak to make their own way to the gas chambers to the “Lazarett”, where the victims were executed by a shot in the back of the head. In Treblinka the “Lazarett” was located in the reception area, in Sobibor in a former chapel inside the extermination area, and in Belzec in the extermination area, by the eastern boundary.
Oscar Strawczynski wrote about the Transportkommando at Treblinka:
“But there, on that sorrowful transport square, there is no time for tears or feelings. I scarcely have time to hand my wife the carefully hidden blanket for the children. A brutal hand grips my shoulder and I am hurled to the other side of the square. I manage to stay with my gentle father. The place is packed with people. On one side are women with small children, on the opposite side, men, forced to kneel. In the middle there are SS men, Ukrainians with weapons in their hands as well as a group of about 40 men with red armbands. These are Jews – the detachment of “Reds”. In Treblinka slang they are called “Chevra Kedusha” (Society for Last Rites).
Kapo Yurek was their leader, a Warsaw rickshaw driver, so corrupt and debauched, no deed was too foul for him. This brute would not hesitate to take aside a girl, already naked, on her march to the “bath”. Promising to save her, he would do the worst, then push her back into the line. He is dressed elegantly, as that type of person could easily afford to be in Treblinka. He works his whip frequently and with gusto on Jewish heads. As foul and corrupt as he was, his language was even worse. The vernacular of the Warsaw underworld was nothing new in Treblinka.
There were great artists in that field, but no one could surpass Yurek. In short, he was quite a notable of Treblinka’s aristocracy. Most of the “Reds” were recruited from the Warsaw underworld, and did not fall far short of their Kapo.”
The Gold Jews (Goldjuden)
Barrack for collecting the valuables This group comprised approximately 20 people, most of them former jewellers, watchmakers, and bank clerks. Their task was to receive and sort the money, gold, valuables, foreign currency, and bonds taken from the deported Jews. Some of this group worked at the undressing area, receiving money and valuables from the victims on their way to the gas chambers. Members of this group had to carry out body searches on women after the latter had stripped and before they were taken to the gas chambers. The women had to lie on a special table, where they would be thoroughly searched, including their genitalia.
One section of this group worked at the square and stores where the belongings left by the victims were sorted and checked. They received the money and valuables and prepared them for shipment from the camp. These “Gold Jews” were considered extremely privileged, because they could secretly siphon off money and valuables of considerable worth, even in the camp. For their part, the SS personnel needed them to secure their own share of the wealth that passed through the camp. Samuel Willenberg wrote about the Goldjuden at Treblinka:
“The prisoners responsible for collecting and sorting the gold, jewellery, money and other valuables which had reached the transport square were known as Goldjuden, and wore yellow shoulder bands to distinguish them. At any one time, several of them would wander about the sorting-yard collecting any valuables we had found in the clothing. Goldjuden were considered the elite of the prisoners; their work was relatively tranquil, they sat in a closed, warm hut under the supervision of SS man Franz Suchomel, a German from the Sudetenland, who spoke good Czech. Suchomel usually assigned Czech Jews who came from Terezin (Theresienstadt) to this Kommando.
Ordinary prisoners were not admitted to the hut where the Goldjuden did their work. The Goldjuden were better dressed than the other prisoners, going about in elegant coats, colourful scarves and leather gloves. They looked more like bankers than prisoners, especially when carrying the briefcases in which they stored the valuables found in the clothing of people who had just been murdered.”
The Hair Cutters (Friseure)
This group comprised those prisoners who cut the hair of the women victims before they entered the gas chambers. They numbered about twenty men, mostly professional barbers. In Sobibor the barbers’ shop was located in a special barrack in the middle of the “tube”, and in Belzec was in a barrack close to the gas chambers. At Treblinka, in the initial stages of the camp’s existence, the hair cutting was carried out in the gas chambers. Subsequently the barbers worked in the barracks near to the entrance gates to the “tube” where the women undressed. The hair-cutting was carried out at the end of the barrack, separated from the other section by a partition wall.
Abraham Bomba wrote about the barbers’ Kommando at Treblinka:
“This was about four weeks after I was in Treblinka. It was in the morning around ten o’clock, when a transport came to Treblinka and the women went into the gas chambers. They chose some people from the working people over there, and they asked who was a barber, who was not a barber. I was a barber for quite a number of years, and some of them knew me — people from Czestochowa and other places. So naturally, they chose me and I selected some more barbers who I knew, and we got together.
We worked inside the gas chamber for about a week or ten days. After that they decided that we will cut their hair in the undressing barrack. It was not a big room around 12 feet square; we waited there until the transport came in. Women with children pushed into that place. We, the barbers, started to cut their hair, and I would say all of them already knew what was going to happen to them. We tried to do the best we could — to be the most human we could.
We cut the hair with scissors and comb, without any clippers. Just like a man’s haircut, I would say. There were no mirrors, there were just benches – no chairs, just benches — where we worked, about sixteen or seventeen barbers, and we had a lot of women in. Every haircut took about two minutes, no more than that, because there were a lot of women to come in and have their hair cut. We were quite a number of us professional barbers, and the way we did it, was with big movements, because we did not want to waste any time.”
Thomas Blatt wrote about the barbers’ Kommando at Sobibor:
“Our job in this section done, SS-Oberscharfé¼hrer Karl Frenzel randomly chose four prisoners, myself included, and led us to the hair-cutting barrack, less than twenty feet from the gas chambers. Inside were simple wooden chairs. Josef Wolf, a short dark, middle-aged SS man, stood in the centre of the room. I was given large shears and told to wait. The women began to enter. I didn’t know what to do.
‘Just snip quickly in bunches,’ a comrade told me, ‘it does not need to be close to the head.’ I was terribly shy. I had never seen a nude woman before. Like all fifteen year- olds, I wanted to, but I felt embarrassed for the naked and humiliated women. I tried not to look directly at them, and they looked down and tried to cover themselves.
Not all the women reacted the same way. One woman resisted, refusing to move. When a Nazi hit her with a whip, she attacked him with her fists and nails, but the German bullet was faster and killed her instantly. Now most were resigned and passive. A teenager wept at the loss of her lovely locks, asking not to have it cut too short. They were going to die in only a few minutes and there was nothing we could do. After the women left, we packed the hair into potato sacks, which were then taken to a nearby storeroom.”
The Sorting Team for Clothing and Belongings (Lumpenkommando)
Work at the Sorting Place This was the largest labour team, numbering some 80 – 120 people (Treblinka), and was subdivided into several smaller groups. The team worked in the square where the victims’ belongings were piled, and in the storage sheds. Their main job was to collect the victims’ clothing and belongings, examine them, sort them by categories, tie them in bundles of 10 – 25 units for each category, prepare them for shipment, and load them onto freight cars. The team workers were given a personal number, which they wore on their collars, and which they had to list on each bundle they prepared. The clothing was first examined for documents, photographs, hidden money, and valuables, as well as the yellow star or any other mark which could identify the clothing and other items as having belonged to Jews. All these were to be removed; any sloppiness in not removing all traces of the Jewish markings would result in the person responsible paying for his mistake with his life.
Illustrations from Samuel Willenberg and Richard Glazar demonstrate the work of the sorting Kommando in Treblinka:
“Like peddlers in a Persian market who trumpet praise of their wares, the foreman Kapos shouted `Work, work faster!’ Their roaring reverberated across the vast yard. Like everyone else, I worked at breakneck speed. Anything I touched had to be sorted not only by type of cloth but even by quality. Worthless rags were thrown onto special white sheets, tied into bundles and lugged to open storage areas in the middle of the yard. These white bundles stretched in piles for hundreds of meters, creating eerie avenues of coats, jackets, dresses and other garments.
At a murderous pace, accompanied by the mad cries of the foreman, we worked and sorted all these personal effects. Now and then we found various documents — birth certificates, passports, money, family photos, letters from relatives, diplomas, university degrees, professional certificates, doctors’ licences. I sorted glasses, knives, spoons, pots, and scissors, stuffing them like everyone else into suitcases at my side. Bent double, we worked like madmen. Suddenly, as if by order, the foremen began to scream `Koirem! Koirem!’ – a vulgarization of the term from the Hebrew liturgy meaning bend – and everyone began working even more frantically. We tossed the belongings of murdered Jews into the air, creating an impression of rapid progress.’
`Late in the afternoon Ké¼ttner bursts into Barrack `A’ like some enormous piece of hot iron slag and has all the sorted bundles counted, thus ascertaining that there are a total of 132 bundles of men shirts, instead of the reported 205. Missing are 73 bundles of men’s shirts, packed ten to a bundle. There is a small pile of approximately 20 items yet to be sorted. Apart from these there are no shirts in Treblinka, or sports jackets either. With a final clicking of his heels, First Sergeant Ké¼ttner looks up from his journal. ‘The two supervisors from Barracks `A’, forward. As a punishment they will be sent to Camp 2 as common labourers.’
To the second camp — to the death camp. They’ll be dead to us.”
The Forest Team (Waldkommando) and the Camouflage Team (Tarnungskommando)
A special group known as the Waldkommando, which numbered a few dozen prisoners, was set up to cut wood for heating and cooking in the camp. It was put to work in the dense forests that were near the camp. When the cremation of corpses started, the team was enlarged, for it had to supply the wood for the pyres on which the corpses were burned.
In Treblinka a second prisoners’ group worked outside the camp. It was called the camouflage Kommando and numbered approximately 25 members. Its task was to camouflage with branches the camp’s outer and inner fences, especially the fences around the extermination area and the “tube”. The team workers would cut branches in the forests and weave them into the barbed-wire fences. Since it was constantly necessary to replace dried-out branches with fresh ones, the camouflage work was continuous.
These groups of prisoners left the camp confines under a strong guard of Germans and Ukrainians.
Thomas Blatt described the Sobibor Waldkommando:
“I decided to try the Waldkommando next. The work performed there also took place outside the barbed wire of the camp. This particular group supplied wood for the crematorium by cutting down trees and digging out the stumps. Although this area was heavily guarded, we were out of view of the guards in the towers. Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance to escape. I had been looking for an opportunity to merge into the Waldkommando to check the possibilities there.
One morning I asked Foreman Podchlebnik to permit me to join his group. I was accepted. The group was composed of 20 Polish Jews and 20 Dutch Jews. Each morning we went to the forest about three miles outside the camp. It turned out that we were in fact heavily guarded, one guard for every two prisoners. True we had weapons — axes and saws to cut down trees — but the Ukrainians had a special strategy in guarding us. They stood at a greater distance from the prisoners than usual, their weapons ready at all times.”
The work was tortuous, supervised by the SS men Hubert Gomerski and Werner Dubois. Gomerski in particular was known for his cruelty. On 20 July 1943, there was an attempted escape from the Sobibor Waldkommando, as described by Thomas Blatt:
“Finally, we were ordered to stop and form a semi-circle in the centre of the meadow between Lager II and Lager III. Now I noticed a group of people sitting on the grass with their hands behind their heads. SS-Untersturmfé¼hrer Johann Niemann made a speech:
`Some prisoners in the Waldkommando tried to escape. Only the Dutch Jews showed their integrity by not trying to run away. As a reward for this, they will be allowed back to work and they will not be punished. In a moment, the recaptured Polish Jews of the Waldkommando will be executed and this will be the destiny of anyone who even dreams of running away.’
A few yards from the condemned stood two Ukrainian assistants who carried out the executions. Two at a time, the prisoners were motioned forward. Apathetically they moved to the appointed place. All spent their last seconds of life looking straight ahead at the pointed rifles. Of all those sacrificed, only one protested – Podchlebnik, the foreman of the Waldkommando. A second before he was executed, he spat towards the Germans and yelled `Remember, there will come a time when we will be avenged!’”
Other Commands:
Groups of prisoners were engaged in the construction of barracks, in stringing barbed wire fences, and in paving roads inside the camps.
In the autumn and winter a special potato Kommando was established, at least in Treblinka. To prevent the potatoes from spoiling, special cellars were built. Some prisoners worked in the vegetable garden, or in the pigsty, chicken coop, or cowshed. A few prisoners were employed in cleaning and disinfecting the huts and toilets.
There were also prisoners who supplied direct personal services to the SS and Ukrainians. They included doctors, dentists and several barbers. A small group of boys was employed to polish and clean the shoes and uniforms of the SS personnel. These boys worked in and around the SS barracks.
In addition there were groups of skilled workers, such as tailors, shoemakers, smiths, mechanics, carpenters, and others, collectively known as the “Court Jews” (Treblinka).
Work Commands in the Death Camp Area
The Gas Chamber Body Disposal Team
Work at the Sorting Place This group of several dozen men (Treblinka) had the job of removing the bodies from the gas chambers and taking them through the rear doors to the concrete ramps built alongside the chambers. There they laid out the bodies for removal by the body transport team. The body disposal team’s work was the hardest, both physically and emotionally. After gassing, the hundreds of people packed standing up in the gas chambers became a solid block of bodies. Separating and removing them was extremely difficult. At times the workers who entered the chambers immediately after they were opened were themselves poisoned by the residue of gas remaining there.
The Body Transport Team (Leichenkommando)
This was the largest prisoner work team in the extermination area, comprising some one hundred men (Treblinka). Its task was to carry the bodies from the ramps/ platforms of the gas chambers to the mass burial ditches.
After experimenting with various ideas for conveying the bodies, the Germans fixed upon using stretchers as the quickest method (Treblinka). Two men carried the stretcher, which looked like a ladder with leather carrying straps attached. The bodies were placed on the stretchers face up to facilitate the work of the “dentists”. Elihau Rosenberg testified at the trial of John Demjanjuk (allegedly “Ivan the Terrible”):
“I managed to make a friend of one of the “dentists”, who has since died, by the name of Lindwasser. Now when I came to Lindwasser, this “dentist”, he too, was scared to death. I said, `Avraham, be a little slower in looking for the gold teeth,’ because that was the one second when I could rest. Somehow I rested the stretcher on my knees, because I was crouching as it were. For me this one second made all the difference. It did give me this tiny bit of respite.
Later he (Lindwasser) became one of the Bademeisters, the shower cleaners, who washed the chambers and cleaned the ramp between gassings. Sitting there on the ramp, he saw Ivan and Nikolai perform their tasks and heard death come to those inside the chambers.”
The Gas Chamber and Tube Cleaners
This group cleaned the blood and excrement off of the floor and walls of the gas chambers, since the chambers had to be clean before a new group of victims was admitted. They also cleaned the “tube” and scattered fresh sand onto the ground there.
The Dentists (Zahné¤rzte)
The prisoners’ work team known as the Dentisten was located between the gas chambers and the burial ditches. It numbered about twenty to thirty men whose job it was to extract with pliers the gold, platinum, and false teeth from the corpses. The dentists also examined the bodies, especially those of women, for valuables hidden in the body’s orifices. Part of the team worked at cleaning and sorting the extracted teeth and preparing them for shipment.
The Burial Detail (Beerdigungskommando)
This group of several dozen men worked at the burial ditches. After the victims’ bodies were thrown into the pit by the body transport workers, the corpses were arranged in rows by the burial detail. To save space, the bodies were arranged head to foot; each head lying between the feet of two other corpses, and each pair of feet between two heads. Sand or chlorine was scattered between the layers of bodies. Approximately one half the team worked inside the ditches arranging the corpses; simultaneously the other half of the team covered a layer of bodies with sand. When a ditch was filled, it was topped off with earth and a new ditch was opened.
During the spring of 1943, the Germans started to burn the corpses in Treblinka, as Samuel Willenberg recalled:
“Now the SS men procured a tank full of crude oil and lugged it into the Todeslager. A few days later we saw black smoke billowing from the area behind the towering bank between the sorting yard and the death camp. The smoke rose hundreds of metres into the air. Germans were continually racing up to the Todeslager [in order to ensure that the bodies were really burning], and a larger number of Ukrainians than usual guarded us. Galewski, the camp elder knew what was happening:
`The Germans, the bastards, are opening the graves, pouring crude oil on the corpses and burning them, but it’s not working.’”
Work at the Burial Ditches After various methods of cremation had been tested, large grills were erected, known as “roasts.” Jankiel Wiernik (Treblinka) wrote:
“Then one day an SS-Oberscharfé¼hrer, Herbert Floss, arrived at the camp and introduced a veritable inferno; he put into operation an excavator which could dig up 3,000 corpses at one time. A fire grate made of railroad tracks 100 to 150 metres in length was placed on concrete block foundations. The workers piled the corpses on the grate and set them on fire.”
The Kommando at the roasts were known as the burning group (Feuerkolonne). They would remove corpses from the stretchers and arrange them in layers on the roast to a height of 2 metres. Another special Kommando, known as the ash group (Aschenkolonne), had the task of collecting the ash and removing the remnants of the charred bones from the grill and placing them on tin sheets. Round wooden sticks were then used to break the bones into small fragments. These were then run through a tightly woven screen made of metal wire in order to prevent any possible identification. Any bones not passing through the screen were returned for further shattering.
The Kitchen and Service Workers (Treblinka)
A kitchen and a laundry for the prisoners were established in the extermination area, in order to prevent any contact between the prisoners in the two sections of the camp. A group of craftsmen was also organised in the extermination area for building and maintenance tasks. A total of 200 – 300 Jewish prisoners worked in the Totenlager of Treblinka.
© ARC 2006
Sure. I don’t believe that I have said anything or made any value judgements that would put me at odds – this once anyway – with your position.
At most there seems to be some inside baseball going on here that I am taking a stab at understanding better.
Puts a few things in perspective, doesn’t it.
At the time there were probably any number of people who were pretty much indifferent to – no, that is too weak a word, since indifference would be more benign – or rather were not so subtly approving of the destruction of the Jews.
Just as we now see that a large portion of the left is objectively indifferent or worse to the destruction of the Assyrians and Chaldeans, and even the Yazidis.
And though they may not “officially” align themselves with the Islamists, we all have come to recognize that the left are psychologically simpatico with them in terms of anti-western, anti-Christian and Jewish, and a basically totalitarian sociological stance.
I intended somewhat more too, DNW, since we see not only distinctly minority populations being scrubbed from the earth in Syria (although not so much to include the Alawites as yet, we have to say — because they too know their time is coming, which is perhaps why they continue the fight now in order or in hopes of putting that time off), but primarily the Assad regime attacks on the majority population of Sunni Syrians. For the Assad regime and their bosses the Iranians and allies Hezbollah and Russia have killed 25 times the number of civilians in Syria than all the other warring parties put together, to say nothing of the multiple millions of Syrians put to flight.
Avi has the better and more clearly decisive argument over Neo’s. It’s not even close.
Thanks Avi for the instruction.
I’m pretty sure that there are religious prohibitions against a person’s killing or injuring another human even if doing so would save the life of that person or members of that person’s family. (Obviously, self-dense, where the other human is a perpetrator, is a different story.)
Ira:
I’m not sure what the relevance of your comment might be. Jewish Kapos ordinarily were not required to kill other Jews, nor did they do so, for the most part (and if some of them did, they would probably be guilty of a crime, depending on the exact circumstances, but those people were rare). Many were not especially cruel to those under them, and some were even kind, and certainly kinder than their replacements would have been.
As far as the Judenrat members went, as I’ve written in comments above, the rabbinical teachings were unclear and rabbis were often unable to come to a consensus on what was the proper course of action. See this for a discussion of one situation of that type.
Hi Neo-Neocon,
You query,
Before I respond to that, I am pleased to tell you that your articles are often the beginning of conversations I start with members of my daily Breakfast Club (from which I sometimes depart too early so as to get to work).
This morning, after reading your response to my comment, I mentioned your article about Jacob Tannenbaum to a member of the Breakfast Club, and he said, “Hey, my friend’s Dad either testified at a court proceeding about that guy or was going to.” We called his friend, and he confirmed that Jacob Tannenbaum was “that guy,” and, according to his father, Tannenbaum was a murderer-by his own hand (i.e., not just informing on someone, Tannenbaum is reported to have actually killed at least one person with his own hands).
But that doesn’t matter for the point I was making.
Here is what you wrote in your article:
Well, the answer to the question you posed in the article is clearly, “YES.” Just based on the limited information in your article (e.g., “Tannenbaum said there had always been Germans present during the beatings and that he did what he did under threat of death”), Tannenbaum stepped over the line separating humans we can trust and who deserve to live among us from those we cannot trust and should not live among us. As I indicated in my earlier comment, no threat, no matter how heinous, justifies harming an innocent person. (Obviously, that is a simple way of stating the principle, and does not take into account collateral damage inflicted in events such as war.)
So, the relevance of my comment is that Tannenbaum faced a moral choice, and there is NO EXCUSE for his making the wrong one. Not only did he immorally harm others, he helped the original perpetrators (i.e., the camp operators) rationalize their own behavior-“Look, even the Jew beats his fellow Jews.”
Sure, we can have sympathy for Tannenbaum’s plight, but that sympathy must, in my opinion, be narrowly circumscribed. In my opinion, the most merciful treatment that should have been accorded to him is completely and utter shunning, by everybody.
By the way, while it does not matter to what I’ve written above, more color about just how BRUTAL Jacob Tannenbaum was, in addition to the NY Time article to which you linked (i.e., http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/05/nyregion/a-jew-who-beat-jews-in-a-nazi-camp-is-stripped-of-his-citizenship.html), see also these articles, particularly the one from the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1988/04/24/poisoned-lives/f563ac87-59ad-4588-82f7-7b7859cfd81a/
http://www.jta.org/1988/02/07/archive/jewish-kapo-loses-citizenship-but-wont-be-deported-fron-u-s
neo-neocon, while you and I apparently disagree regarding the sympathy to be accorded the likes of Tannenbaum, THANK YOU for your great blogging.
Ira
Ira:
Well, as I wrote in my post—I would have to know more before making a decision about Tannenbaum’s guilt. As far as I know from reading a fair amount about the Tannenbaum trial, there was no evidence presented that Tannenbaum ever directly killed anyone. Of course, if he did, and if the person you cite is telling the truth, that would be different information and would of course indicate more guilt. I also continue to think that even such a murder, if it had in fact occurred, would be a crime but with a lesser degree of guilt than someone under no such pressure.
Glad you like the blog.