Langbein Hermann. People in Auschwitz
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functionaries whom those who had to work under them remember as ‘‘very
decent.’’ Alwin Voigt had a good reputation, and so did another man, whom
the Poles remember only as ‘‘Mateczka,’’ which means ‘‘little mother.’’
The best-known and most shining exception was Otto Küsel, an inmate
with the number 2,who from the beginning occupied thekey position of head
of the Labor Service. I have spoken about him with many survivors of Ausch-
witz and never heard as much as a hint of a negative memory of this excep-
tional human being. He was swamped with requests, for it was known in the
camp that Küsel never turned anyone down imperiously, as did other func-
tionaries.What inmate did not want to get a place on a good detail for himself
or a friend? Of course, with the best will in theworld Küsel was not able to ful-
fill all wishes. Decades later I was frequentlyasked forKüsel’s address because
survivors of Auschwitz wanted to thank him.
When I asked this Berliner, who had a good sense of humor and the talent
to spread good cheer, in the fall of 1969 how he had managed to make no ene-
mies,hesaid: ‘‘Ofcourse, I wasn’tableto help everyonewho asked tobe put on
a good detail. When I had to turn someone down, I told him, ‘Keep checking
with me!’ Eventually I was able to accommodate him. I assigned newcomers
to the undesirable details, and transferred those who had been forced to work
on these for some time to better ones.’’
Küsel escaped from Auschwitz after Christmas 1942. ‘‘I wouldn’t have
wanted to escape, for I had a good life in Auschwitz,’’ he told me. As a univer-
sally liked viphe had access to all sources, but the reason he decidedto escape
is characteristic of him. ‘‘The Poles on my detail wanted to flee. Mietek was
an officer and had to expect that he would sooner or later be shot. The Politi-
cal Department pursued all those whom it suspected of having been officers
in the Polish army. My only options were to inform on them or escape with
them, for if they had escaped without me, no one would have believed that I
had not noticed their preparations. And then it would have been my turn. But
I did not want to report them.’’
Küsel used this escape to rid the camp of the bloody tyranny of the camp
elder Brodniewicz. The men escaped on a horse-drawn wagon that the Labor
Service,whichhadmany‘‘connections,’’ had managed toobtain. In thewagon,
which was abandoned outside the camp area, the ss found a letter from Küsel
that said that Brodniewicz had concealed treasures in the stove of the room he
occupied as camp elder. Gold was indeed found there. Brodniewicz was taken
to the bunker, and the camp breathed a sigh of relief.
After living in Warsaw for nine months and helping a secret Polish organi-
zation there, Küsel fell into the hands of the Gestapo and was taken back to
Auschwitz. He had good fortune in misfortune because at that time there was
a change of commandants. Liebehenschel’s bunker amnesty benefited Küsel
154 n the prisoners
as well, and at a later date he was transferred to Flossenbürg together with
other inmates who had been caught while trying to escape.
This man who could be as proud of his past as hardly another survivor of
Auschwitz,whowasofferedhonoraryPolishcitizenshipin 1945, and who kept
receiving tokens of gratitude is living in retirement in a Bavarian village and
does not answer letters from his former charges—he is still ashamed of his
past. As a young fellow he had received three sentences in a period of wide-
spread unemployment and poverty, the last one at age twenty-four. This is
what he told me by way of explaining his exemplary conduct: ‘‘Because of this
past I had guilt feelings, and this is why I helped others.’’
n Many German political prisoners did not model themselves on someone
like Küsel but adapted to the predominant type of Green vip. Georg Berger
was one of these. He specialized in murdering prisoners with gold teeth and
collecting the gold. When it became known that he had killed a fellow inmate
who had once been an ss man and was scheduled to be released from the
camp, Berger went to the bunker and was shot there. Berger was twenty-one
years old when he was given an armband and with it unlimited power.
Because he was a defendant in the Auschwitz trial at Frankfurt together
with membersof the ss,Emil Bednarekbecame better knownthan otherwear-
ers of a red triangle who had abused their power in Auschwitz. Bednarek was
born in 1907 in Königshütte, where his father had assumed Polish citizenship
when that Upper Silesian region became part of Poland. His national orien-
tation was, like that of many Upper Silesians, conflicted. At the outbreak of
the war he was mobilized as a Polish noncommissioned officer, but, accord-
ing to his own statements, he went over to the Germans after twelve days, and
in July 1940 he was sent to Auschwitz on suspicion of belonging to a Polish
resistance organization. Since he was an ethnic German, he was soon made
block elder. Jiri Beranovsky has given this concise description of conditions
at that time: ‘‘Beatings were normal and they were administered by Bednarek,
the dormitory elder, and the block leader. A bad salute was enough for a flog-
ging.’’ Pavel Danel testified as follows: ‘‘In my opinion Bednarek as a block
elder was forced to beat the inmates. After all, beating was an everyday occur-
rence in Auschwitz.’’ Karol Doeringexplained Bednarek’sconduct to the court
in these words: ‘‘He was a primitive person, and therefore the indoctrination
in the camp could mold him.’’ ss roll call leader Oswald Kaduk, once Bed-
narek’s superior and later his fellow defendant, confirmed the statements of
the former Polish prisoners: ‘‘The block elder had to slap a face now and then,
because everything had to go chop-chop when the inmates were to line up for
roll call.’’
Bednarek attempted to make the court understand the pressure he was
The vips n 155
always under as a block elder. He said that if anything went wrong, he was
himself beaten by the camp elder, the block leader, and the ss roll call leader.
‘‘It was very hard,’’ he said, ‘‘to maintain quiet, cleanliness, and order in the
camp in accordance with instructions. I often had to intervene when there
were thefts or brawls, and on a few occasions I had to do some whipping. If I
had not given them those few whacks, the inmates would have received even
more severe punishment because then I would have had to report them for
stealing bread, for instance.’’
However, Bednarek did not merely slap a few faces; there is proof that he
committed some murders when no ss man was present, which means that
there was not even indirect pressure. Several survivors of Auschwitz were
asked on the witness stand about Bednarek’s motivation, and their responses
are revealing. Stanislaw Klodzinski testified as follows: ‘‘I believe there was
some cause each time.The inmate was clumsy, he had made his bed poorly, or
something like that.’’ Leon Uchwat, a friend of Bednarek, pointed to a typical
motive: ‘‘When a person had been in Auschwitz for two or three months, he
had reached rock bottom physically and morally. Bednarek did not like to see
such inmates, and he thought that they would not survive anyway.’’ Uchwat
explained how hard it was to recognize a murder in Auschwitz: ‘‘Every day
some prisoners died of natural causes. It is possible thatone of thosehad been
slapped in the face by Bednarek.’’ According to him, flogging gave Bednarek
no pleasure: ‘‘One could see that beating was disagreeable to him. On several
occasions he gave extra food to an inmate after he had beaten him.’’
Likecolleagues credited with a similarly large numberof sins, Bednarek did
not just rage but also helped. Józef Mikusz concluded his gravely incriminat-
ing testimony with these words: ‘‘When children between nine and fourteen
came to the camp in late August or early September 1944, after the uprising
in the Warsaw ghetto, Bednarek took them under his wing. In those days we
barely recognized him; he had become a different person. He permitted us
to bring the children everything—bread, soup, medicines. I don’t think that
anyone else in his position would have done so much for the children. His
conduct in this period was 100 percent positive. On a later occasion I saw that
he took good care of those children in Melk and Mauthausen (where they had
been transferred after the evacuation in Auschwitz).’’ Other witnesses have
confirmed this change in Bednarek, the causes of which were not clarified in
the course of the trial.
Bednarek’s tragedy became apparent when the former head of the Gestapo
in Kattowitz was called to thewitness stand. Bednarek,who had been arrested
by that office, described excitedly how he was locked up in a coal cellar with-
out a hearing and received twenty-five lashes with a whip. ‘‘If I hadn’t been
156 n the prisoners
sent to the camp at that time, I wouldn’t be sitting here today,’’ he blurted out
tearfully before breaking down. The tragedy was followed by a grotesquerie.
Robert Kulka, who was sitting next to him in the dock, stroked the weeping
man’s hair paternally and soothingly. Fellow defendant Kulka was the former
adjutant of the commandant of Auschwitz.
n Numerous survivors who favorably remember inmate functionaries with
red triangles have testified that men like Berger or Bednarek were exceptions
to the rule. Mordechai Winekamien, who had been deported from Lodz in
late August 1944, has not forgotten his block elder in Birkenau because he
treated new arrivals ‘‘very decently.’’ He remembers only that his first name
was Hubert and that he was a German with a red triangle who had formerly
been in Dachau.
Lucie Adelsberger, a physician in the Gypsy camp, has reported about Felix
Amann, the capo of the disinfection section: ‘‘Three times a week, from five
to six o’clock, there was ‘staff bathing’ with hot showers thanks to a benevo-
lent capo, a politically outlawed German.This was a shining hour for us in the
camp, for the capo responded to a few words of appreciation with even kinder
ones, and let the warm water run on our bare bodies in abundant streams and
not sparsely and amid blows, as in other camps.’’
Erich Kohlhagen writes about an Austrian named Aigner who headed the
Electricity Commando in Monowitz:
This Aigner was not only a fine person but also an outstanding capo, who
showedallothercaposhow to lead a detail as ahumanbeingandan inmate.
He did this without coming into conflict with the ss, which wanted high
job performance and, most important of all, expected the capo to see to it
that the inmates in his care had enough to eat, were well dressed, and had
peace and quiet in the camp. He was the true father of the Jews in Mono-
witz. How many came running to him with their problems and worries!
How many he saved from being sent to the coal mine, which would have
spelled their doom, by bravely going to the ss camp leader or the Political
Department and selflessly pleading their case.
In fairness to others who did not receive such a positive evaluation, it should
be added that a capo who headed a detail consisting of skilled workers had
much more favorable opportunities than one who was in charge of earth-
works.
The Poles Erwin Olszowska and Alfred Woycicki treasure the memory of
Franz Malz, a German political prisoner from Stettin who was the capo of
the Identification Service. In the summer of 1943 Malz told ss Sergeant Jakob
The vips n 157
Raith that the Germans were going to lose the war. The following day he was
arrested by the Political Department and shot.The inmates on his detail were
told to let this be a warning to them.
Alex Rosenstock has not forgotten the block elder Hans Röhrig, also a Ger-
man with a red triangle: ‘‘When the Czech family camp was liquidated and
capos and block elders were ordered to help the ss in getting the job done,
Röhrig refused to participate. Schwarzhuber, the head of the camp, asked
him the reason for his refusal, and Röhrig replied, ‘I am not an executioner.’
Whereupon he was ordered to cut his hair, which he had been allowed to
growas a privileged prisoner.’’ Accordingto Otto Kulka,who was in the family
camp at the time and was spared the general carnage together with a group
of adolescents, Röhrig was sent to the penal company but released again after
a few days. Kulka emphasized that ‘‘this greatly increased his stature in our
eyes.’’
When I think of German inmate functionaries with a red triangle whose
conduct was exemplary, I particularly remember Hans Neumeier, a Bavarian
communist who was not hardened or made insensitive by his long imprison-
ment in Dachau. In that camp he had become known for his refusal to punish
his fellowinmates by flogging them. Hewas more inclined toaccept such pun-
ishment himself than to beat another man. He and I were transferred from
Dachau to Auschwitz together, and he was assigned to the infection block as
a block elder. I often visited him in his miserable place where there were not
even enough straw pallets to replace those soiled with the excrement of dying
patients, where two patients per bunk had to be on three-tiered bedsteads and
the nurse could not ascertain when someone on the third tier had died for the
timely removal of his corpse, and where the ss kept selecting feeble inmates
fordeath to the dismay of the nurses. I saw how none of this made Hiasl Neu-
meier lose his courage and how he did not flag in his efforts to help those
entrusted to his care. He once told me with a laugh: ‘‘If the ss couldn’t get us
down in Dachau, we won’t let the lice do it here,will we?’’ The lice did get him,
however. He caught typhus in his infection block and died a slow and pain-
ful death. Only a small number of people will remember his self-sacrificing
activities, for they lasted only a few short weeks. For me he will remain the
model of a good comrade, a man to whom an armband meant an obligation
and nothing else.
n It has frequently been observed that despite their opposition to Nazism
German political prisoners were not capable of distancing themselves from
the Third Reich in a way that any other inmate of a concentration camp took
for granted. Simon Laks and René Coudy mention the fifty-six-year-old block
elder Josef Hofmann, a policeman from Breslau who had been sent to the
158 n the prisoners
camp for black-marketeering and enjoyed a good reputation in Birkenau. Ac-
cording to them, Hofmann was firmly convinced of a German victory as late
as the evacuation in January 1945, believed in the promised miracle weapons,
and regretted that he could not participate in the fight and victory in the ranks
of the German army.
With reference to the first bombardments of the Buna Works in the sum-
mer of 1944, Primo Levi remarked sarcastically, and surely generalizing un-
fairly, that ‘‘even the inmates from the German Reich in the camp, including
the political prisoners, feel in the hour of danger an attachment to blood and
soil.’’
Karl Bracht, a German communist who had been imprisoned since 1936
and as a capo in Birkenau stood out from the Greens in a positive sense, told
me two decades after the liberation with unmistakable pride that ss camp
leader Schwarzhuber once called him his best capo in the presence of all
others.Thetendencyof the camp administration to appeal to a solidarity of all
Germans beyond the barbed wire led to a macabre incident that has been de-
scribed by Otto Fabian, who as a corpse carrier was able to observe shootings
at the Black Wall. ‘‘One time a man broke away from Jakob (who had to escort
those destined for death at the Black Wall), pounded his chest, and cried out:
‘This is how a German from the Reich has to croak.’ This outcry did not keep
the ss from shooting him, of course.’’
Primo Levi reports that at the time of the evacuation in Monowitz the ss
appointed a German political prisoner named Thylle as block elder in the in-
firmary before leaving the camp with those able to march.Those unable to do
so remained in the infirmary. ‘‘As a German he took this temporary appoint-
ment very seriously,’’ writes Levi. ‘‘In the ten days before the disappearance of
the ss and the arrival of the Russians, while everyonewas waging a final battle
against hunger, sickness, and the cold, Thylle made a thorough inspection of
his new domain and registered the condition of the floors and the number of
blankets (one for each person, living or dead).’’ Primo Levi characterizes this
old communist as ‘‘petrified by ten years of wild and dubious camp life.’’
The last stage of my internment was Lerbeck, a satellite camp of Neuen-
gamme, where I served as a roll call clerk. In early April 1945 we were evacu-
ated to Fallersleben, which was also being prepared for clearance since the
ss did not want any inmates to fall into the hands of the approaching Ameri-
cans. When I was trying to turn the Lerbeck file over to the roll call clerk of
Fallersleben in accordance with regulations, he had to point out that it was
quite unimportant whether the record was correct or not because the ss had
already lost track of such matters. At the time I was ashamed that I needed to
be told that assignments made by the camp administration did not remain in
force once the administration was gone.
The vips n 159
In exceptional cases the ss released German inmate functionaries in order
to use them as civilian workers in the camp area. Thus Erich Grönke, a crimi-
nal, was installed as head of the leather factory in late 1941, and in July 1942
Dr. Diethelm Scheer, a political prisoner, was employed as an expert fish
breeder. Even two Polish surgeons, Dr. Wladyslaw Dering and Dr. Jan Grab-
szynski,who had proved themselves as assistants in human experiments were
released in this fashion in 1944. Grabszynski did not take his civilian duties as
seriously as Dering; rather, he used his freedom to join the partisans. Most of
the releases from the camp with simultaneous assignments to civilian work
were made by the centralconstruction office. A dozen Polish orethnic German
architects gained relative freedom in 1943 and 1944.
n The camp administration even considered the integration of inmate func-
tionaries into the ss. Anton van Velsen, block elder and camp capo in Birke-
nau, received such an offer. He testified beforethe Frankfurt court: ‘‘In Ausch-
witz I was asked to volunteer for the ss as a Dutch officer, but I would have
preferred Zyklon B in my lungs to an ss uniform on my body.’’
In my Bericht I have the following to say in this regard:
Today the ss infirmary is on red alert. Orderlies rush back and forth. The
reason for the excitement is that Dr. Lolling, the chief physician in the
wvha, has announced his visit for today, and no one should attract his at-
tention. It seems that the visit went well. Wirths is beaming and comes to
our room, which he rarely does.We rise; I stand behind my little typewriter
table and he leans on the other side of the table:
‘‘You know, Langbein, the infirmary capo from Dachau, Zimmermann,
has been released.’’ After a pause, this sudden question: ‘‘Do you want to
join the ss?’’
The ss sergeant for accounting is also in the room; he is fiddling with
something off to the side.When the question was posed, he turned around.
So I just smile at Wirths. He smiles back; then he leaves.
The next time I come to his room alone, he broaches the same subject.
‘‘I told Lolling about you, and he told me that it is possible to take inmates
who do especially good work into the ss and continue to work in the camp
as ss men.’’
‘‘HerrDoktor,ifIhavetobeinakz, then only in the uniform I’m wear-
ing now.’’
I don’t know if Wirths would have tolerated this answer just a few
months ago. Now he just looks at me, and his facial expression is no longer
friendly. ‘‘But it would be better for you.’’
‘‘Can I do something like that, Herr Doktor? You know the orders an ss
160 n the prisoners
man in Auschwitz must carry out.The inmates here are my comrades, even
if I no longer wear their uniform tomorrow.’’
He looks through the window into the camp with its motley swarm of
striped garments. It is the noonday break. ‘‘Your views do you honor.’’ His
voice sounds a bit disappointed. He senses that my answer is a judgment.
When the situation at the front worsened for the Germans, the ss made
more frequentoffers to German prisoners to put on its uniform. It is revealing
that the ss first turned to the criminals.
On February 19, 1944, Himmler issued the following decree: ‘‘I want ss
Lieutenant Colonel Dirlewanger personally to select from the antisocials and
the career criminals in the concentration camps men who are between seven-
teen and thirty-five years of age, in exceptional cases up to forty, men who
will volunteer for military service at the front for the purpose of rehabilitating
themselves. Political criminals and key workers in the arms factories of the
concentration camps are not eligible.’’ Himmler initially limited the number
of such volunteers from all camps to 800, but later these recruitments were
stepped up considerably, and in the fall of 1944 German political prisoners
were included as well. It need not be emphasized that Himmler’s stipulation
of a quota for each camp made the concept of ‘‘volunteering’’ problematical.
TadeuszBorowski,anexcellentobserver,reports that one day Green inmate
functionaries who were well known in the camp could be seen at a military
drill in ss uniforms.
First they are taught to march, and then the leaders wait to see whether they
will fit into the community. They are evidently quite taken with the com-
munity, for they try very hard. They have been together for just a few days
and have already broken into the storeroom and swiped a lot of packages,
made kindling wood of the canteen, and demolished the brothel. Why, so
they say quite reasonably, should we let ourselves be beaten and stick our
necks out? Who is going to shine our boots at the front, and who knows
whether there are young lads there?
There they go, a whole horde of them singing ‘‘Tomorrow in our home-
land.’’ Notorious killers, all of them, one more notorious than the next:
Sepp, the terror of all roofers, who mercilessly makes his charges work in
the snow and the rain and will throw a person from the roof because of a
badly hammered-on nail. Arno Böhm, number 8, a longtime block elder,
capo, and camp capo who killed a dormitory elder if he caught him selling
tea and punished every word spoken after the evening gong with twenty-
fiveblows,the same man whowrotehisagedparents in Frankfurttouching,
albeit short letters about farewells and reunions. We know them all, every
oneofthem.
The vips n 161
Kaduk remembers three transports of released German inmates to the
Special Dirlewanger Unit. Höß writes that Himmler kept ordering additional
‘‘volunteers.’’ He appreciatively emphasizes that many inmates becamevaliant
soldiers but also says that among the political prisoners there were numer-
ous deserters. Dirlewanger Units also participated in massacres of the civilian
population.
Political prisoners faced a momentous decision when they were asked to
volunteer for Dirlewanger. We had agreed in Auschwitz that we would accept
an invitation to join the Wehrmacht but would, if at all possible, resist being
integrated into an ssunit. I was never put to the test. Neither in Auschwitz nor
in Neuengamme, where I experienced the final phase of the war, were veterans
of the Spanish Civil War invited to come forward.
n Originally, non-Germans received armbands only in exceptional cases.
When more and more functionaries were needed later and the percentage of
Germans decreased, a Polish capo was no longer a rarity, and even Jews re-
ceived such an armband. The Pole Franz Nierychlo, who had been in Ausch-
witz since June 1940, became the head of the camp orchestra. Its members
were assigned to work in the camp so they could be reached quickly at any
time. Nierychlo became the capo of the inmate kitchen. Since he occupied
a privileged position as conductor of the orchestra, he did not need to be
especially submissive to the ss as a capo. Nevertheless, he gave beatings to
members of his detail, and he is reputed to have killed, together with his ss
chief Egersdörfer, seven inmates who had broken into the storeroom of the
kitchen at Christmastime in 1941. Rablin remembers that the corpses were
placed under the Christmas tree as a deterrent. That Pole has given this con-
cise characterization of his compatriot: ‘‘His specialty was the drowning of
Jews in water tanks.’’ This imperious conductor was servile to the camp ad-
ministration, and to please it he called a march that he composed ‘‘Arbeit macht
frei’’ (Work makes you free). Following the example of Dachau, the ss had af-
fixed this slogan to the entrance gate. As an ethnic German, Nierychlo was
later conscripted into the Wehrmacht.
A statement by Elie Wiesel may suffice to demonstrate that my repeated
warning against generalizations applies to Polish functionaries as well.Wiesel
remembers that the block elder of Block 17, a young Pole, tried to make the
first hours easier for him and other Jewish newcomers with comradely words
and valuable advice. ‘‘These were the first humane words,’’ writes Wiesel.
Block elders and capos appointed as their assistants dormitory orderlies
and foremen who were like them. H. G. Adler has given the following de-
scription of the vips that he encountered in Birkenau in the fall of 1944: ‘‘The
assistants emerge from their special rooms—block elders and block clerks
162 n the prisoners
as well as dormitory orderlies, all strong young lads, some of them fantasti-
cally dressed up. Most of these are Poles and Germans who have been in the
camp for many years and almost feel at home here.They are hardly among the
lost ones, but their world has become natural to them because they no longer
know another. This is the only order; in this world it is possible to dominate
and spread terror, and one must know how to live a life at the edge of all life.’’
Samson Boeken testified on September 1, 1947, that a dormitory orderly
in Birkenau thought nothing of killing ten inmates, Jews from Holland, if he
could buy himself some vodka with their bread ration. This is said to have
happened in the summer of 1942.
Neither Adler nor Boeken mentions the color of the triangles worn by these
assistants of the block elders. It may be assumed, however, that most of them
were not career criminals, for the small number of Greens usually occupied
the top rung of the inmate hierarchy in Birkenau.
Thanks to the experienced Polish pedagogue Józef Kret, who was forty-
seven when he was assigned to the penal company in summer 1942, we have
a revealing study of a man who had reached the midpoint of that hierarchy.
Kret’s dormitory elder, Józef Mitas,was a Pole from Upper Silesia, a locksmith
just under forty years of age. Hewas in charge of distributingfood in the penal
block.
He never stopped snapping at us as he poured a half liter of so-called tea
(for two people) into our mess kit. He only interrupted himself to beat
someone over the head with his ladle. Nothing escaped his attention.
Whether someone sneaked to the head of the line, dared to talk, or put
his bowl down clumsily—Mitas saw everything and immediately adminis-
tered a beating. When there was nothing to criticize, he struck randomly
anyway—as a warning, to keep his hand in, because it gave him pleasure,
because that’s what the block elder wanted, because Moll (the ss officer in
charge of the penal company) demanded it, because the capos liked it, be-
cause it consolidated his position as dormitory elder...andinanycase,
this was the penal company and not an ordinary detail.
This kind of grim pride in a particularly difficult detail was repeatedly en-
countered. Kret madea studyof Mitas.‘‘Hehad a viewof peoplethat he had ac-
quired in a school of hard knocks,’’ he wrote, ‘‘and he classified people’s good
and bad points in an original way. Clumsiness, faintheartedness, and softness
could make him fly into a rage. The sight of slow awkward movements and
figures marked by apathy and resignation made him foam with rage. ‘People,
where are your brains?’ he would scream. ‘You accursed intellectuals! Where
did you dumb people grow up and not learn how to help yourselves?’’’
Kret asks how Mitas got that way. ‘‘Perhaps some long-repressed instincts
The vips n 163