Free The Theory and Practice of Hell by Eugen Kogon Page B

Eicke Street. The residences of leading SS officers were built along this road. In the end ten luxurious villas equipped with every comfort stood there. These tasteful wooden houses had massive basements, garages of their own and wide terraces with a magnificent view of the Thuringian countryside. Long columns of prisoners dragged up the stone blocks for the terraces from the quarry.
    1 Count von Stauffenberg planted the bomb that almost killed Hitler on July 20, 1944.— Tr.
    2 Goerdeler was a leader in the plot of July 20, 1944.— Tr.
     

    T H E T H E O R Y A N D P R A C T IC E O F H E L L 45

    These homes were inhabited by the Commandant, the Officers-in-Charge, the Commander of Troops and certain other SS officers with their families and servants. Each house, in addition, had its prisoner orderlies, chiefly Jehovah’s Wit nesses of both sexes. Central hot-water and heating plants in the houses were likewise serviced by prisoners.
    A sharp contrast to headquarters and homes was offered by the barbed-wire enclosure. The predominant impression was one of desolation. It was a bare area—a clearing when the site lay in the woods—surrounded by an electrically charged barbed wire fence many feet high. Every 250 feet there was a guard tower of wood or masonry, with a roofed-over plat form from which a machine-gun was trained on the com pound. The guard on it was relieved every three hours. Beyond barbed wire and towers the camp was surrounded by an area several yards wide called the “ neutral zone,” on which the machine-guns were zeroed in. Entrance to the camp was gained by a gatehouse, a narrow structure, generally of two stories extending a considerable distance from either side of the actual gateway, which was surmounted by another tower affording a view of the entire camp. In addition to a large clock, this tower carried the floodlights that illuminated the entire area at night. One wing of the gatehouse held the of fices of the Officer-in-Charge on duty, the other, special camp prison cells. A public-address system connected the building to all important points in camp.
    Inside the gate a large bare space extended into the com pound. This was the so-called roll-call area. It was unrelieved by a single blade of grass, a quagmire in poor weather, a desert of dust when it was dry.
    Here the “ Little Camps” were established, either tem porarily or permanently, in order not only to accommodate an excess of inmates when the camps grew overcrowded but to effect special liquidation programs. A section of the com pound was marked off, once again surrounded with barbed wire, and filled with emergency barracks. Tent camps too were created for this purpose.
    At Buchenwald, for example, a Little Camp stood on part of the roll-call area, between the gatehouse and the first row of barracks from October 1939, to the spring of 1940. Four tents and a board shack were surrounded by a high barbed-
     

    46 E U G E N KO G O N

    wire fence. Part of the fenced-in area served as a separate roll-call area, while another spot served as a dump for dead bodies. One corner held a cage of barbed wire, called the “ Rose Garden.” It consisted of nothing but barbed wire. It served as a receptacle for special victims, who were there starved to death, at 5°F. by day, and down to 22° below zero at night, watched by their comrades, who never knew when their turn might come. Not far away was the latrine. The Little Camp at the time had neither stoves nor straw pallets nor lockers nor blankets. The fate of its inmates will be described when the story of the Poles in Buchenwald is discussed.
    In July 1943, 2,000 French prisoners came to Buchenwald from Compiegne. All the barracks were already overcrowded and the newcomers were placed in a fenced-in area beside the truck garden, below the last row of barracks. Two days later the SS provided five tents, each with a capacity of 200 men, and regarded the matter as closed. There were no cots,