HumanRightsEssaysIX

Human Rights Essays IX

     Concentration Camps,
        Myths and Realities

                           By Karl Hausner

For the average Westerner, especially the American people, concentration
camp means Nazi Germany and Holocaust. This, as Rabbi Lapin stated, is
unfair and counter-productive. "History is written by the Mighty," stated
Paul Harvey, and as he would say, "Let us look at the rest of the story".

For those of us who have been imprisoned in such a camp will have learned,
by experience, that man can be extremely brutal when given excessive
power, and when such power comes from a too-powerful government. On
the other hand, those of us who have been in such a camp have also
experienced moments of kindness from people who extended these
kindnesses, from just a smile, to a slice of bread or even hiding us at the
risk of endangering themselves.

Although concentration camps and forced labor lamps are often the same,
there is a significant difference. TThe concentration camps operated by the
Nazis and the Communists were actually forced or slave labor camps.

With regard to classical concentration camps, we must look at different
times and occasions. The Indian Reservations during the Nineteenth
Century, the internment camps of the Japanese, German and
Italian-Americans, especially during World War II, and the camps operated
by the British during the South African War early in the Twentieth Century
were concentration camps. To some degree the prisoner-of-war camps, and
in particular, the camps operated during the bloodshed in Yugoslavia were
concentration camps, whose primary purpose was to isolate certain groups
of people from the rest of society.

During the Bolshevik Revolution, and especially thereafter, up to the end of
their regime in 1990, millions of Russians and other ethnic people in the
Soviet Union were thrown into labor camps, not just operated in Siberia.
Nazi concentration camps were also located near factories and the inmates
were exploited to labor for the cause of the State. In China such camps are
still in operation at this time.

Shortly after Hitler took power in 1933, thousands of German citizens were
arrested and thrown into concentration camps. One of the oldest and first
camps was at Dachau near Munich. There the inmates had to dig drainage
ditches for the purpose of draining the swamps that surrounded the
campsite. The inmates consisted of labor leaders, leaders of the opposition
parties, the clergy who spoke out against the regime, and some Jewish and
other ethnic leaders which did not support the State.

Since most Austrian and German Jews were relatively wealthy and well
educated, the immigrated prior to World War II. In our village there were
no Jews, but the nearby town of Bautsch there were twelve families. All but
one immigrated during the spring of 1939. At the time, they were permitted
to take along most of their tangible property. Only one family, the
Schnabel sisters, advanced in age, remained until 1943. After the armed
uprising in the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw, they were also arrested and no
one knows whether they survived.

Every German knew of the existence of concentration camps, because it was
made clear that anyone who resisted the regime would be punished by
concentration camp labor. The pastor of our nearby city, Wigstadtl, was
arrested in 1941, and spent the rest of his years at the Dachau Camp, as did
the Social Democratic mayor.

Hatred Escalated Hatred

Entrance to Auschwitz