Commandant of Auschwitz Page 4
When we asked them where they were taking their moss, they explained that it was destined for the monasteries of Jerusalem, where it would be sold to the pilgrims. We were somewhat mystified by this explanation. A little later I was wounded and sent to a hospital in Wilhelma, a German settlement between Jerusalem and Jaffa. The colonists in this place had emigrated from Württemberg for religious reasons some generations before. While I was in the hospital, they told me that a very profitable trade was carried out in the moss that the peasants brought to Jerusalem in their carts. It was a kind of Icelandic moss with grayish-white streaks and red spots. It was described to the pilgrims as having come from Golgotha, the red spots being the blood of Jesus, and it was sold to them at a high price. The colonists explained quite frankly that in peacetime, when thousands visited the holy places, the sale of this moss was an extremely lucrative business. The pilgrims would buy anything that was in any way connected with the saints or the shrines. The large pilgrim monasteries were the greatest offenders. There every effort was made to extract the maximum amount of money from the pilgrims..After my discharge from the hospital, I had a chance of seeing with my own eyes some of these activities in Jerusalem. Owing to the war, there were only a few pilgrims, but this shortage was made good by the presence of German and Austrian soldiers. Later on I came across the same business in Nazareth. I discussed this matter with many of my comrades, because I was disgusted by the cynical manner in which this trade in allegedly holy relics was carried on by the representatives of the many churches established there.
Most of my friends were indifferent, and said that if people were so silly as to be taken in by these swindlers they must expect to pay for their stupidity. Others looked on the whole thing as a kind of tourist trade, such as always flourishes in places that have a special interest. But a few of them who, like me, were devout Catholics, condemned this traffic carried on by the churches, and were sickened by the way they cashed in on the deep, religious feelings of the pilgrims, many of whom had sold all they possessed in order to visit the holy places just once in their lives.
For a long time I failed to sort out my feelings in this matter, but nevertheless they probably played a decisive part in my subsequent renunciation of my faith. I should, however, mention in this connection that my comrades were all convinced Catholics, from the strongly Catholic Black Forest district. Never during this period did I hear a word spoken against the Church.
At this time I also experienced my first love affair. When in the hospital at Wilhelma, I was looked after by a young German nurse. I had been shot through the knee, and at the same time I came down with a severe and protracted bout of malaria. I therefore had to be given particular care and attention lest I harm myself during a feverish delirium. Not even my mother could have looked after me better than did this nurse. Gradually I became aware that it was not mother love alone that made her bestow such loving attention on me. Until then I had never known love for a member of the opposite sex. I had of course heard a great deal of talk about sexual matters among my comrades, and soldiers do not mince their words on this subject. But, perhaps through lack of opportunity, I had had no personal experiences. In addition the hardships of that particular theater of war were not exactly conducive to love-making.
At first I was distressed by her tender caresses and by the way in which she would hold me up and support me longer than was strictly necessary. For, ever since my earliest childhood, I had shunned all demonstration of affection. But at last I too fell under the magic spell of love, and began to regard the woman with new eyes. This love affair, which developed under her guidance stage by stage until its final consummation, was for me a wonderful and undreamed-of experience. I would never have been able on my own to summon enough courage to bring it about. In all its tenderness and charm it was to affect me throughout all the rest of my life. I could never again speak flippantly of such matters; sexual intercourse without real affection became unthinkable for me. Thus I was saved from casual flirtations and brothels.
The war came to an end. The upshot of my army service was that I had reached manhood, both physically and mentally, long before my years. My wartime experiences had left their mark on me, a mark that would never be erased. I had broken away from the narrow safety of my parents’ home. My attitude to life was wider. I had seen and experienced a great deal during the two and a half years that I had spent in foreign lands. I had got to know all sorts and conditions of men, and had observed their needs and weaknesses.
The frightened schoolboy who had escaped from his mother’s care and fought his first action against the enemy had become a tough and hardened soldier. I became a noncommissioned officer at the age of seventeen, the youngest in the army, and was decorated with the Iron Cross, First Class. After my promotion I was engaged almost entirely on long-range reconnaissance and sabotage behind the enemy lines. Meanwhile I had learned that the ability to lead men depends not on rank, but on skill, and that in difficult situations it is icy calm and unshakable imperturbability that are decisive in a commanding officer. But I had also learned how hard it is always to be an example to others and to keep up an appearance that does not betray one’s real feelings.
The armistice found us in Damascus. I was determined at all costs not to be interned, and decided on my own initiative to fight my way home. The Corps had warned us against this. After a discussion, all the men of my troop volunteered to come with me. Since the spring of 1918 I had commanded an independent cavalry troop of which all the men were in their thirties, while I was just eighteen.
We had an adventurous journey through Anatolia, safled across the Black Sea to Varna in a miserable coaster, traveled on through Bulgaria and Romania and made our way, in deep snow, through the Transylvanian Alps to Hungary and Austria. We eventually reached home after almost three months of traveling. We had no maps to help us and had to rely on a school atlas. We were always short of food both for ourselves and our horses and we had to force our way through a Romania which had now become hostile again. Our arrival at the regimental depot was completely unexpected. So far as I know no other complete unit from our theater of war succeeded in reaching home.
During the war I had repeated doubts concerning my suitability for the priesthood. The affair of my confession and the trade in sacred relics that I had seen in the Holy Land had destroyed my faith in priests. I also had doubts concerning various established customs of the Church. Gradually I became of the opinion that I must refuse to follow the profession that my father had vowed should be mine. I discussed this with no one. In the last letter that she wrote before her death, my mother had told me never to forget the future that my father had foreseen for me! The respect that I had for my parents’ wishes, and my rejection of the profession they had chosen for me, threw my mind into a turmoil, and I was still unable to see matters clearly when at last I arrived home.
My guardian, and indeed all my relations, badgered me to go at once to a training college for priests, so that I might find the right surroundings and prepare for my predestined profession. Our household had been completely broken up, and my sisters had been sent to a convent school. I realized for the first time the full significance of my mother’s death. I no longer had a home. My “dear relations” had shared out among themselves all those cherished possessions which had formed nart of the home we had loved; they were certain that I would become a missionary and my sisters remain in the convent, and that therefore we would have no further use for such worldly things. Sufficient money had been left to buv our entry into the mission house and the convent.
Filled with indignation at my relations’ highhanded action, and, with distress at the loss of my home, I went that very day to my uncle, who was also my guardian, and told him curtly that I had decided not to become a priest. He tried to compel me to change my mind, by telling me that he was not prepared to find the money to set me up in any other profession, since my parents had decided upon the priesthood for me. I speedily resolved to reno
unce my share of the inheritance in favor of my sisters, and on the following day I got my lawyer to draw up the necessary documents. From then on I refused to accept any further help from my relations. I would battle my way through the world alone. Full of rage and without saying goodbye, I left this “relation-ridden” house, and traveled to East Prussia, in order to enlist in a Freikorps destined for the Baltic States.[14]
In this way, the problem of my profession was suddenly solved and I became a soldier once more. I found a home again and a sense of security in the comradeship of my fellows. Oddly enough it was I, the lone wolf, always keeping my thoughts and my feelings to myself, who felt continually drawn toward that comradeship which enables a man to rely on others in time of need and of danger.
The fighting in the Baltic States was more savage and more bitter than any I had experienced either in the World War or later with the Freikorps. There was no real front, for the enemy was everywhere. When it came to a clash, it was a fight to the death, and no quarter was given or expected. The Letts excelled in this kind of fighting. It was there that I saw for the first time the horrors endured by a civilian population. The Letts exacted a terrible revenge on those of their own people who sheltered or cared for the German or Russian soldiers of the White Army. They set their houses on fire and burned the occupants to death. On innumerable occasions I came across this terrible spectacle of burned-out cottages containing the charred corpses of women and children.
When I saw it the first time, I was dumfounded. I believed then that I was witnessing the height of man’s destructive madness.
Although later on I had to be the continual witness of far more terrible scenes, yet the picture of those half-burned-out huts at the edge of the forest beside the Dvina, with whole families dead within them, remains indelibly engraved on my mind. At that time I was still able to pray, and I did.
The Freikorps of the years 1918 to 1921 were peculiar phenomena of the times. The government of the day needed them whenever trouble started either on the frontiers or within the country, and when the police force, or later the army, was too weak to deal with the situation or for political reasons dared not put in an appearance. Once the danger had passed, or when France made pointed inquiries, the government promptly disowned them. They were then dissolved and the new organizations which succeeded them, and were awaiting employment, were prosecuted.
The members of this particular Freikorps consisted of officers and men who had returned from the war and who found themselves misfits in civilian life, of adventurers who wanted to try their hand at this game, of unemployed men anxious to escape from idleness and public charity, and of young enthusiastic volunteers who hastened to take up arms for love of their country. All of them, without exception, were bound by a personal oath of loyalty to their Corps leader. The Corps stood or fell with him. As a result there developed a feeling of solidarity and an esprit de corps which nothing could destroy. In fact the more we were pushed around by the government in office, the more firmly did we stick together. Woe to anyone who attempted to divide us—or betray us!
Since the government was forced to deny the existence of these volunteer corps, the authorities were unable to inquire into or punish offenses committed by their members in the cause of their duties, offenses such as the theft of weapons, the betrayal of military secrets, high treason, and so on. The Freikorps and their successor organizations therefore administered justice themselves, after the ancient Germanic pattern of the Vehmgericht of olden times.[15]
Treachery was punished with death, and there were many traitors so executed.
Only a few of these incidents became known, however, and even then it was only very rarely the “executioners” were caught and brought to trial before the State Court for the Defense of the Republic, a court especially created for this purpose.[16]
But that was what happened in my case. There was a Vehmgericht murder trial in which I was involved and as a result of which I, as the alleged ringleader and the person most concerned, was sentenced to ten years’ hard labor. We had killed the man who had betrayed Schlageter to the French. One of us who was present when we carried out the execution gave an account of it to Vorwärts, the leading social-democratic newspaper, ostensibly out of feelings of remorse but actually, as was afterward established, in order to make money. What really happened was never made clear. The witnesses for the prosecution were not sufficiently sober at the time of the incident to be able to remember the exact details. Those who really knew what had taken place remained silent.
I was certainly there myself, but I was neither the ringleader nor the person chiefly concerned. When I saw, during interrogation, that the comrade who actually did the deed could only be incriminated by my testimony, I took the blame on myself, and he was released while the investigation was still going on. I need not emphasize that, for the reasons given above, I was in complete agreement with the sentence of death being carried out on the traitor. In addition, Schlageter was an old comrade of mine. I had fought beside him in many a bitter scrap in the Baltic and in the Ruhr, and had worked with him behind the enemy lines in Upper Silesia. We had also done a lot of illicit gunrunning together.
I was at the time, and remain to this day, completely convinced that this traitor deserved to be put to death. In all probability no German court would have convicted him, so it was left to us to pass sentence in accordance with an unwritten law which we ourselves, owing to the exigencies of the times, had laid down.[17]
This can, perhaps, only be fully understood by those who lived, or can imagine themselves living, in the chaotic conditions existing at that time.
During the nine months that I spent awaiting trial, and also during the trial itself, I was far from appreciating the seriousness of my position. I firmly believed that my trial would probably never take place and that even if it did I would certainly be acquitted. The political crisis in the Reich during 1923 was so acute that the overthrow of the government by one side or the other seemed inevitable. I confidently anticipated that in due course we would be set free by our comrades. Hitler’s abortive Putsch on November 9, 1923, should have made me think again. I still pinned my hopes, however, on a favorable turn of events.[18]
My two defense lawyers took great pains to point out the gravity of my position and were of the opinion that I must expect at least a lengthy term of imprisonment, if not the death sentence itself, as a result of the new political composition of the tribunal and the more stringent measures that were being inforced against all nationalist organizations. I could not bring myself to believe this. While in prison awaiting trial, we received every possible consideration, for the great majority of us were, politically speaking, from the left, mostly Communists; comparatively few belonged, like myself, to the right. Even Zeigner, the Minister of Justice for Saxony,-sat in his own prison accused of profiteering and of perverting the course of justice.[19]
We could write a lot and were allowed to receive both letters and parcels. We could get the newspapers and so were at all times aware of what was happening outside. We were, however, kept strictly isolated from one another, and we were always blindfolded when we were taken from our cells. Contact with our friends was confined to a few, occasional words shouted through the windows.
During the trial we found that the conversations that we were able to have among ourselves during the intervals and during our journeys to and from the court, and the renewed contact with our comrades were far more important and interesting than the trial itself. Even the pronouncement of sentence made little impression on me or my comrades. We left the court in a boisterous mood, shouting and singing our old songs of battle and defiance. Was this just a grim sort of humor? For my part I do not think so. I was simply unable to believe that I would have to serve my sentence.
The bitter awakening came only too soon, after I had been transferred to the prison where I was to begin my term of hard labor.
A new, and up to then unknown, world now opened before me. Serv
ing a sentence in a Prussian prison in those days was no rest cure.
Every aspect of life was strictly regulated down to the smallest details. Discipline was on severe, military lines. The greatest emphasis was placed on the punctilious discharge and most careful execution of the exactly calculated task that was allotted each day. Every offense was severely punished, and the effect of these “house punishments” was increased by the fact that they entailed a refusal of any possible reduction of sentence.
As a political prisoner, found guilty of a “crime of conviction,” I was kept in solitary confinement. At first I was not at all happy about this, for I had just had nine months’ solitary in Leipzig, but later I was only too thankful, in spite of the many small amenities that life in the large communal cells offered. In my cell I had only myself to consider. Once I had completed my allotted task, I could arrange my day as I wished without regard to any fellow prisoner, and I escaped the hideous bullying practiced by the real criminals in the larger cells. I had learned, though at secondhand, a little about such bullying which is directed mercilessly against all who do not belong to the criminal fraternity or who fail to hide their views. Even the strict supervision of a Prussian prison was unable to prevent this terrorism.
At that time I believed I knew all about human nature. I had seen all sorts and types of men of many different nations and classes, and had observed their habits, both the good and even more so the bad. For though I was still young, I had had considerable experience of the world, and had been through a lot.
The criminals who shared my prison made me realize how little I really knew. Even though I lived alone in my cell, I yet came into daily contact with my fellow prisoners during exercise in the courtyard, or on the way to one or another of the prison administration offices, in the washhouses, through contact with the cleaners, or at the barber’s, or with the prisoners who brought or collected the work materials, or in many other ways. Above all, I listened to their talk every evening from my window. From all this I got a fairly good insight into the minds and souls of these people, and an abyss of human aberrations, depravities, and passions was opened before my eyes.