I was looking in Webshots and came upon an album showing the Dachow(sp?) concentration camp. Part of the exhibition is a crematorium. It made me wonder who ran them. Did the Germans force prisoners to run the ovens? Did German military? Did German civilians?
Wow - this is a big subject to open and can inevitably lead to argument - but here goes. Although the distinction may appear fine, Dachau was not an 'extermination camp' ( vernichtungslager ). It was one of many concentration camps ( along with such as Belsen, Mauthausen, Ravensbruck, etc etc ). Of course, many died in these camps. But the Nazis constructed six dedicated extermination camps in Poland ( Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belsec, Chelmno, Majdanek ). The camps were organised by the Allgemeine-SS ( ie as distinct rom the Waffen-SS ). In many cases they were 'run' by non-Germans, or 'Germans' from the Eastern territories - people who were anxious to please their masters. And in the camps, inmates were coerced into doing the menial tasks by the promise of living - a little longer. German civilians were not involved, except maybe in some local situations. This is an awful subject even to post this small reply about. There are countless thousands of books on the subject - many are unreadable or overly sensational. One I'd recommend for a real insight into the mentality that operated these places is Gitta Sereny's brilliant 'Into That Darkness'. She interviews at length the former Commandant of Treblinka who is actually a quite banal minor official who considers that he's just 'doing his job' and the 'better' he does it - the better he's rewarded..... Scary stuff indeed.
If I remember right, Naval & Military Press sell a book called 'The Camp Women'( I think), which tells about the female camp guards. Have a look here
Even Himmler realized the extent of the horror of the death camps. That's why he didn't like the idea of Germans being exposed to the undeniable bad effects of having to do the job. So right from the start, in Poland, he arranged to have non-Germans handle the very bad stuff. Certain nationalities even liked the duty. So Estonians became the preferred choice. Non- killers, like Jehovah's Witnesses, did all the personal work, like shaving the brass.
Though some Waffen-SS units were constituted with former Allgemeine-SS personnel, like the Totenkopf Verbände, which later was the backbone of the 3rd SS Panzer division…
Nor were the German doctors the only ones guilty of conducting these type of medical expirements. For a look at the Japanese atrocities one can start at this site; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
Yes, both countries had cases where they would experiment with prisoners. A web page I looked at last month (sorry couldn't find again) had a interview/confession from a doctor that talked about how they would use Chinese prsioners to give their surgeons practice. They would take a perfectly healthy, if neglected, prisoner and just start practicing different proceedures on them. The Japanese also had a grizzly habit of using their prisoners as a sort of initiation device. Officers would sometimes be forced to behead someone with their samurai sword to prove their willingness to fight or get them over their squemishness. One officer who told his story even used a similar technique to initiate his NCOs. He had them bayonet prisoners. Their stories show the same total disregard for human life as long as it was one of the "inferior" peoples. It kind of reminds me of the way we decimated the native indian population here in the United States. There is such an ugly side to that kind of thinking. Societies really have to be careful to teach dignity for all so these kinds of things don't go on.
Maybe when it comes to the concentration and extermination camps the best final word can come from a prayer that was supposed to be discovered in the clothes of a child at the Ravensbruck camp. “O Lord, remember not only the men and woman of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all of the suffering they have inflicted upon us: Instead remember the fruits we have borne because of this suffering, our fellowship, our loyalty to one another, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart that has grown from this trouble. When our persecutors come to be judged by you, let all of these fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness."
