The role of communication in the survival of Nazi concentration camp prisoners

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyze the communication of prisoners of Nazi concentration camps as one of the factors in the prisoners' struggle for life in extreme conditions. The sources of the research are materials from Russian and foreign archives: the State Archive of the Russian Federation (Russia), the Yad Vashem Archive (Israel), the Security Service Archive (Ukraine), the Holocaust Memorial Archive (USA), the Bundesarchive (Germany), as well as published memoirs and interviews of former prisoners. In particular, the authors analyzed the testimony of former prisoners, criminal cases against the concentration camps' administrative and security personnel convicted in the course of post-war trials. As a result of their research, the authors concluded that language ability and communication played a critical role in the rescue of prisoners. If prisoners spoke several languages, mastered the internal camp jargon, and also managed to build communication with representatives of the camp administration, functionary prisoners and ordinary prisoners, their chances of survival increased significantly. If adaptation to the camp's linguistic realities did not take place, prisoners had practically no opportunity to escape. The authors examine the characteristics that determined the framework of the camp community, among which the main were Nazi ideological attitudes, as well as prisoners' pre-camp experience. They thoroughly analyze German and camp jargon - the languages that, if mastered, determined prisoners' survival. The authors show how German changed due to lexical and semantic neologisms and the role it played in prisoners' subjugation, demonstrate that the camp jargon developed in several directions - the formation of a single lingua franca and the formation of jargon in national groups of prisoners, and also pay particular attention to the role that translators played in the camp life. The authors characterize the basic models of camp communication: “SS man - ordinary prisoner”, “SS man - camp functionary”, “representative of the camp ‘elite' - ordinary prisoner”, “prisoner - prisoner”, “prisoner - civilian worker”, and note the possibility (or impossibility) of prisoners within each of them to be saved. Finally, the authors describe the role of communication in organizing the underground Resistance, in order not only to survive, but also to actively resist the Nazi terror.