10 - Dignity in the Concentration Camps

Summary

Maintaining dignity or assuming a sense of morality in the concentration or extermination camps was highly problematic. The degradation process typically began with an exhausting train ride that dehumanized the deportees, who were crammed into freight cars without food or water and with little air to breathe. Upon arrival, prisoners were robbed of their individuality, including all of their clothing, hair, and personal possessions; the SS never referred to them by their names, only by their tattooed numbers. The shearing of the inmates' hair and the conformity of the prisoners' garb reduced individuality to an indistinguishable mass. Moreover, the inmates were now bereft of any social identity, having lost their businesses, fortunes, homes, families, jobs, land, and religious affiliations. Without these social institutions intact, humans lose their sense of security. Jean Améry, who spent a year in Auschwitz, recalls, “If one has no home, however, one becomes subject to disorder, confusion, desultoriness.” The Germans essentially turned the prisoners into slaves, and, as such, they were socially dead beings. In other words, as discussed in chapter 4, Häftlinge were reduced to suffering bodies and nothing more. The Nazis, of course, found it easier to exterminate people if they looked and acted like subhumans or vermin.

These bodies could not feel good about themselves because they were constantly subjected to pain and indignity. Without proper nutrition, prisoners were typically ill and starving, thus further reducing them to subhumans.