Before Auschwitz: The Formation of the Nazi Concentration Camps, 1933-9

Abstract

Is there any more potent a symbol for the destructive power of modern state terror than the nazi concentration camp? In the concentration camps, the nazis pioneered new methods of mass detention, abuse and extermination, driven by a lethal mix of extreme nationalism, bio-politics and racial antisemitism. During the short lifespan of the Third Reich -little more than 12 yearsmillions of prisoners were taken to concentration camps run by the SS, and subjected to humiliation and degradation, dirt and disease, fear and hunger, ruthless discipline and random violence, forced labour and mass murder. In all, some two million prisoners lost their lives, including around one million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, in Auschwitz, the largest and deadliest of all the concentration camps. 1 Long before the regime's final collapse in May 1945, the concentration camp came to be known as the most notorious invention of the Third Reich. To be sure, many details of the inner life of the camps remained hidden while they still existed. But it was already clear that the camps were places of brutal discipline and death. Outside Germany, reports about the camps had appeared since the nazi takeover of power. Among the earliest accounts was that of Gerhart Seger, a former Social Democratic Reichstag deputy, who had managed to escape from the Oranienburg camp outside Berlin in late 1933. Seger's memoirs described in graphic detail the brutality of the camp authorities as well as the arbitrary nature of nazi terror. With a foreword by Heinrich Mann, one of Germany's leading anti-nazi writers in exile, Seger's book was soon translated into French, Swedish, Danish and Dutch. 2 His account was just one of

A political ecology of the camp

“…As such, the railroad involves a series of corresponding innovations linked to the intensities and speeds it envelops. The camp, in this sense, is an offshoot of the transit system that creates the conditions of possibility for providing the flow of energy into the camp (Goeschel and Wachsmann, 2010). Motorized transport systems, for instance, constitute important components of several camp assemblages because they unveil new intensities of speed and density that enable the construction and functioning of the camp.…”

“… 9. The development of the infamous Zyklon B gas chamber is arguably a product of these flows because the infestation of lice made prussic acid an ideal fumigation agent and the conversion of insect extermination into human extermination emerged from an effort to prevent the spread of lice to the camp administration. The discursive construction of Jews and others as lice or vermin is no doubt also a part of the thinkable conversion of prussic acid to these purposes, see Goeschel and Wachsmann (2010) …”

Uncertain Fates: Allied Soldiers at the Miranda De Ebro Concentration Camp

“…The pre‐war Nazi‐German camp model was used at Miranda and Paul Winzer (1908‐? ), a member of the Gestapo and the SS in charge of reviewing concentration camps in territory conquered by Franco, participated in its design . By the time the unexpected transition from Civil War camp to World War camp occurred, the Spanish authorities boasted of years of experience managing these facilities and no Nazis further participated directly in its direction.…”