suicide in nazi concentration camps

Journal of Contemporary History Copyright ! 2010 The Author. Vol. 45(3), 628648. ISSN 0022-0094.DOI: 10.1177/0022009410366558

Christian Goeschel

Suicide in Nazi Concentration Camps,19339

AbstractToo often histories of the concentration camps tend to be ignorant of the widerpolitical context of nazi repression and control. This article tries to overcomethis problem. Combining legal, social and political history, it contributes to amore thorough understanding of the changing relationship between the campsas places of extra-legal terror and the judiciary, between nazi terror and thelaw. It argues that the conflict between the judiciary and the SS was not aconflict between good and evil, as existing accounts claim. Rather, it wasa power struggle for jurisdiction over the camps. Concentration camp author-ities covered up the murders of prisoners as suicides to prevent judicial inves-tigations. This article also looks at actual suicides in the pre-war camps, tohighlight individual inmates reactions to life within the camps. The articleconcludes that the history of the concentration camps needs to be firmly inte-grated into the history of nazi terror and the Third Reich.

Keywords: concentration camps, judiciary, legal terror, murder, nazi terror, suicide

Soon after the Third Reichs downfall in 1945, Walter Poller, a Social Democratand a Buchenwald prisoner from December 1938 until May 1940, published hismemoirs of Buchenwald, where he had been working as a prisoner clerk in themedical block. He remembered that prisoners who had supposedly hanged them-selves in the camps latrine were not given a post-mortemby the camp doctor, whowould only look at the corpse for a few seconds before certifying death by suicide.Once, Poller saw a man who had allegedly hanged himself lying on the dissectingtable with a noose around his neck. His murderers, SS guards, had put a knotaround his neck after he had died.1 Pollersmemories of the SS practice of coveringup the murders of prisoners as suicides highlight the fundamental difculty ofexamining and interpreting suicides within nazi concentration camps.

I should like to thank Moritz Follmer, Jessica Reinisch, Nikolaus Wachsmann, the anonymous

referees and particularly Lucy Riall for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this article. I mustalso thank the AHRC and Birkbeck Colleges School of History, Classics and Archaeology for

funding my research.

1 Walter Poller, Arztschreiber in Buchenwald: Bericht des Haftlings 996 aus Block 39 (Hamburg1946), 924.

But why was it that camp ofcials murdered many prisoners and covered upthese deaths as suicides, effectively suiciding them? This questions legalaspects are crucial for a clearer understanding of the changing relationshipbetween extra-legal terror and the judiciary as the nazi dictatorship evolvedin the pre-war years. The concentration camps consolidation into a distinctsocio-racial means of persecution and control was by no means smooth. In fact,the camps expansion was accompanied by ruptures and conict among vari-ous state and party institutions, especially between the SS and the judiciary.2

This article reassesses the intricate relationship between nazi terror and thelegal system by studying suicide in the pre-war camps. Lothar Gruchmann, alegal historian, offered the rst, albeit cursory, account of the SS practice ofsuiciding camp prisoners in his massive 1988 monograph on the ReichMinistry of Justice, drawing upon ofcial legal documents. Gruchmannargued that the SS covered up the murders of camp prisoners as suicidesbecause it lacked the legal powers to execute inmates until the outbreak ofwar in 1939. Yet Gruchmann had little to say about the people singled outfor suiciding by the nazis. While Gruchmanns basic interpretation of thecover-up of murders as suicides seems plausible, his overall argument aboutthe relationship between the judiciary and the SS is misleading. Gruchmanntakes up a simplied version of Ernst Fraenkels 1941 classic interpretation ofthe Third Reich as a dual state, characterized by a conict between the goodjudiciary (the normative state) on the one hand and the evil SS and theGestapo on the other (the prerogative state).3 In Gruchmanns view, legal of-cials, motivated by their commitment to due process, tried to combat the SSsincreasingly successful attempts to turn the concentration camps into areas thatwere off limits for the judiciary. Yet Gruchmanns account tells us relativelylittle about the judiciarys collaboration with the SS.4 Johannes Tuchel, aGerman historian of the concentration camps, subscribes to Gruchmannsviews. Tuchel even claims that the SS could run the camps completely at itsown discretion from late 1935 onwards.5

In reality, matters were more complex. The conict between the SS and thejudiciary was above all an institutional rivalry, in which the judiciary tried toassert its jurisdiction over the camps vis-a`-vis the SS. This article builds onNikolaus Wachsmanns recent work on legal terror in nazi Germany andoffers a new perspective on the judiciarys responses to extra-legal terror inthe concentration camps.6 The practice of suiciding also reveals the regimes

2 Jane Caplan, Introduction, in Gabriele Hertz, The Womens Camp in Moringen: A Memoir ofImprisonment in Germany, 19361937, ed. Jane Caplan (New York 2006), 155, at 12.3 Ernst Fraenkel, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship (New York1941).

4 Lothar Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich: Anpassung und Unterwerfung in der Ara Gurtner19331940 (Munich 1988), 1124.5 Johannes Tuchel, Konzentrationslager: Organisationsgeschichte und Funktion der Inspektionder Konzentrationslager 19341938 (Boppard am Rhein 1991), 307.6 Nikolaus Wachsmann, Hitlers Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany (New Haven, CT,2004), 37883.

Goeschel: Suicide in Nazi Concentration Camps 629

concerns over atrocity propaganda about the camps. Rather than admit themurders of camp prisoners, camp ofcials, concerned with Germanys image athome and abroad, preferred to place the blame on the murdered by suicidingthem.But murders covered up as suicides were not the only story. This article also

considers real suicides for the light they shed on living conditions in the camps.Ofcial documents on suicide, such as investigations, are sparse because thecamp authorities, unlike the inmates, had no interest in documenting themisery inside the camps. For the same reason, there are no reliable statisticson suicides in the camps. Other documents on suicides, such as there are, raisesome important epistemological issues because of the nazi cover-up of murdersas suicides. Are these documents therefore about real suicides or covered-upkillings?

In the wake of the Reichstag re decree of 28 February 1933, nazi and stateinstitutions set up concentration camps amidst an unprecedented storm of vio-lence. Especially in the early months of the Third Reich, the nazis used extremeviolence against their political enemies. They beat up and killed many people,especially communists and social democrats, whom the nazis had long foughtduring the Weimar Republic.7 Well over 100,000 people, chiey communistsand social democrats, were held in protective custody in more than a hundredearly camps in 1933.8

Prisoners are generally more likely to commit suicide than others. Recentresearch shows that in late twentieth-century Britain, for example, penal insti-tutions recorded higher suicide rates than other environments. Inmates, espe-cially in their rst week of imprisonment, are often desperate about their lack offreedom and the strict rules and discipline.9 Many concentration camp pris-oners killed themselves, contrary to the claims of existing studies that therewere few suicides in the concentration camps. The sociologist Wolfgang Sofsky,for example, suggests that there were relatively few suicide attempts in theconcentration camps.10 The German psychiatrist Thomas Bronisch conrmedthis view, arguing that, on the basis of survivors memoirs, under extreme life-threatening conditions, there is a tremendous increase in the self-preservationinstinct.11 Bronisch also emphasizes the depersonalization of the inmates,

7 Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (London 2003), 31149.8 Klaus Drobisch and Gunther Wieland, System der NS-Konzentrationslager 19331939 (Berlin1993), 715; for numbers see also Christian Goeschel and Nikolaus Wachsmann (eds), Before theHolocaust: Documents from the Nazi Camps, 19331939 (forthcoming), introduction.9 Martin McHugh and Louisa Snow, Suicide Prevention: Policing and Practice, in GrahamTowl, Louisa Snow and Martin McHugh (eds), Suicide in Prisons (Leicester 2000), 125, at 5.10 Wolfgang Sofsky, Die Ordnung des Terrors: Das Konzentrationslager (Frankfurt am Main1993), 73.

11 Thomas Bronisch, Suicidality in German concentration camps, Archives of Suicide Research2 (1996), 12944, at 142.

630 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 45 No 3

which allegedly did not allow them to contemplate suicide.12 All these accountsoverwhelmingly focus on the wartime camps and do not consider any differ-ences in suicide patterns as the camp system evolved.Suicide was a widespread phenomenon in nazi Germany amongst those

politically and racially persecuted by the regime.13 It is not surprising, there-fore, that many concentration camp prisoners committed suicide in sheer des-pair over their brutal treatment by the nazis. Uncertainty as to whether theywould ever be released was a common cause of despair amongst prisoners.14

Suicides were overwhelmingly male, reecting the fact that the vast majority ofconcentration camp prisoners were men.15 In the Saxon Hohnstein camp, set ina castle on a rock overlooking the Elbe valley, several inmates who were unableto bear torture, humiliation and punishments are said to have jumped to theirdeaths in 1933.16 Sachsenburg, another Saxon camp, witnessed at least 35suicide attempts between August 1934 and late 1935, according to a survivorsestimate.17

Other camps too displayed very high suicide levels. In the Kemna camp,set up by the SA in a suburb of Wuppertal in the Ruhr Valley in thesummer of 1933, there were at least 25 suicide attempts before thecamps dissolution in January 1934, according to the Wuppertal state pros-ecutors investigation of Kemna atrocities carried out in 1934. Real numbersmust have been higher still. But did these people really try to kill themselves,or did the nazis attempt to suicide them? Kemna prisoners were subjectedto constant beatings and a particularly cruel form of torture: SA guardsforced detainees to eat salty herrings covered with castor oil, which cameto be known as Kemna sandwiches (Kemnaschnitten). Karl Ibach, a formerKemna prisoner, later remembered in an eyewitness account, publishedafter the 1948 trial of Kemna camp ofcials: The tormented were torturedin such a way that they preferred to take their lives to more torture.According to Ibach, there were so many suicide attempts that the campauthorities conscated all bread knives and razor blades. Kemna guardsalso encouraged inmates to kill themselves, but Ibach doubted whether theguards requests to inmates to commit suicide were serious. When prisonersaccepted rope from the guards to hang themselves, the guards

12 Ibid., 13940.

13 For a survey, see Christian Goeschel, Suicide in Nazi Germany (Oxford 2009), esp. 56148.14 Wachsmann, Hitlers Prisons, op. cit., 1367.15 On gender and the concentration camps, see, for example, Jane Caplan, Gabriele Herz:

Schutzhaft im Frauen-Konzentrationslager Moringen 19361937, in Gisela Bock (ed.),Genozid und Geschlecht: Judische Frauen im nationalsozialistischen Lagersystem (Frankfurt amMain 2005), 2243.

16 Carina Baganz, Erziehung zur Volksgemeinschaft: Die fruhen Konzentrationslager inSachsen 193334/37 (Berlin 2005), 194.17 Ibid., 2745.


shouted: This would be easy for you. You wont have it that easy. Wellkill you piece by piece! And the tortures began again.18

There was no general SS policy on inmate suicide. Yet the SS increasinglytried to prevent inmates from committing suicide to maintain their total controlover the lives of inmates. This was the case in Sachsenhausen. Upon his arrivalat the Sachsenhausen camp in November 1936, the communist Harry Naujokssaw a failed suicide by an alleged habitual criminal, lying in a small room nextto the camp doctors surgery. He had tried to hang himself. The camp doctorrefused to treat him, so he died shortly thereafter. Naujoks later discovered thatthe Sachsenhausen camp SS punished suicide attempts with 25 lashes and harsharrest. Given that failed suicides did not receive any medical treatment, thiscame close to a death sentence.19 However, SS policy on inmate suicide wasoverall arbitrary at this time.According to reports of agents of the SPD in exile, there were between six and

seven suicide attempts per week in 1937 in Dachau. These gures suggest thatthere were over 300 suicide attempts per year in Dachau alone. Not all of theseattempts were successful, because fellow prisoners and SS guards often stoppedsuicidal inmates from killing themselves. A former communist Reichstag dep-utys brother, in Dachau since 1933, expected to be released from Dachaushortly before Christmas 1936 after camp guards promises. He was notreleased, and in early 1937, he tried to break his skull with a hoe.Hewas stoppedby an SS guard. Just an hour later, he attempted to hang himself with his braces.This time a fellow prisoner stopped him. Finally, he slit his wrists with a scrap ofmetal. He was found lying dead in a pool of his own blood.20

As the camps populations increased in 19378, with the arrests of criminals,so-called asocials and Jews, suicide levels must have increased too. Some his-torians even suggest that suicide levels in Sachsenhausen rose from seven amonth in 1937 to 33 a month by 1938, although these numbers are not reliablebecause the SS covered up murders as suicides. Still, Sachsenhausens suiciderates were lower than Dachaus because of the Sachsenhausen camp SSs brutalpolicy of punishing suicide attempts.21

The wave of mass arrests in the wake of Kristallnacht saw many suicideswithin the camps, probably at least a hundred.22 In the pogroms immediateaftermath, the Gestapo arrested up to 26,000 Jewish men across Germany and

18 Markus Meckl, Wuppertal-Kemna, in Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (eds), Der Ort desTerrors: Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, Band 2, Fruhe Lager, Dachau,Emslandlager (Munich 2006), 2204, at 222. For an eyewitness account see Karl Ibach, Kemna:Wuppertaler Lager der SA 1933 (Wuppertal 1948), 735. For background of the Kemna trials seeJurgen Zarusky, Juristische Aufarbeitung der KZ-Verbrechen, in Benz and Distel (eds), Der Ortdes Terrors, I, 34562, at 346, 352.19 Harry Naujoks, Mein Leben im KZ Sachsenhausen: Erinnerungen des ehemaligenLageraltesten, 19361942 (Frankfurt am Main 1987), 35.20 Klaus Behnken (ed.), Deutschland-Berichte der Sopade (Frankfurt am Main 1980), IV, 697;Goeschel, Suicide, op. cit., 78.21 Cf. Drobisch and Wieland, System der NS-Konzentrationslager, op. cit., 302.22 On suicides after the pogrom see Goeschel, Suicide, op. cit., 1013.


sent them to concentration camps.23 Conditions were chaotic, as the campauthorities were not prepared for so many new inmates and there was notenough food or accommodation for them. Also, guards treated the Jews extre-mely brutally. Most Jewish inmates, including those who had seen active ser-vice in the rst world war, were shocked by the sudden arrests and the terribleconditions. The pogrom and the mass arrests clearly conrmed that Jewish lifewould no longer be possible in nazi Germany. In this bleak context, manyJewish inmates committed suicide. In Buchenwald, many inmates ran intothe barbed wire or exposed themselves to the guards ring at them, as onesurvivor later remembered.24 The many suicides created extra administrativework for the SS personnel, prompting the roll call ofcer to issue the followingorder over the camps tannoy: If more Jews string themselves up, will theykindly put a slip of paper with their name in their pocket, so that we know whoit is.25 In Dachau, camp commandant Hans Loritz issued an order shortly afterKristallnacht: If a prisoner tries to kill himself, he insisted, it is prohibited onpain of punishment to stop him. Not everyone obeyed Loritzs order. Inmatesoften tried to save suicidal fellow prisoners. And some guards, for whateverreason, also prevented prisoners from committing suicide. In late 1939, a des-perate Dachau Jewish prisoner walked towards the electried perimeter fence,hoping that guards would shoot him. According to a Jewish inmates testi-mony, collected by agents of the exiled Social Democratic Party in July1939, an SS shouted at him to turn around. The man survived.26

Suicide by exposing oneself to guard re or by electrocution at the perimeterfence was common in other camps too. Forty-year-old Hans Berger, arrested inBuchenwald after Kristallnacht, witnessed many such suicides:

Entering the area of death [i.e. the area of the electried fence and the barbed wire] is suicide

and is also seen as such by the camp commanders. Many have made use of it, and when one

heard two or three shots of the submachine guns at nights, one could be sure to nd a corpse

in the area of death the next morning.27

Yet, despite the tendency to punish individual suicide attempts, SS attitudestowards inmate suicide seem to have been largely arbitrary before the war.

23 Benz, Der November-Pogrom, in idem (ed.), Die Juden in Deutschland, 499544, at 528; seealso Michael Wildt, Violence against Jews in Germany, 19331939, in David Bankier (ed.),Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews,19331941 (New York 2000), 181212, at 2024; Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power19331939 (London 2005), 591.24 Wiener Library London, P.II.d.240, Memoirs of Rabbi Dr. G. Wilke, 1957.25 Quoted in Eugen Kogon, The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Campsand the System Behind Them (London 1950), 164.26 Klaus Behnken (ed.), Deutschland-Berichte, op. cit., VI, 935.27 Memoirs of Hans Berger (1939), printed in Monika Richarz (ed.), Judisches Leben inDeutschland: Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte, 19181945 (Stuttgart 1982), 330. OnBuchenwald, see Eugen Kogon, Der SS-Staat: Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager(Munich 1974), 20832; Gedenkstatte Buchenwald (ed.), Konzentrationslager Buchenwald19371945: Begleitbuch zur standigen historischen Ausstellung (Gottingen 1999).


Once the war had started, the SS punished all suicide attempts, because suicidewas an expression of self-determination that ran counter to the nazis totalclaim over the lives and bodies of the inmates.28 But there was anotheraspect of suicide in the concentration camps to which we must now come:the suiciding of prisoners.In the early months of the Third Reich, camp guards often encouraged pris-

oners to kill themselves, even bringing them rope with which to do it. InGermany, death by hanging was a dishonourable execution, traditionallyreserved for criminals, so giving prisoners rope with which to hang themselveswas an act of humiliation and mental torture.29

At Dachau, the rst SS-run concentration camp, set up near Munich inMarch 1933, Hans Steinbrenner, a SS guard, encouraged several prisoners tocommit suicide. He and the Dachau SS were determined to kill Hans Beimler, aleading Bavarian communist and former Reichstag deputy. According toBeimlers own account, rst published in Moscow in 1933 and therefore prob-ably rounded up for effect, the SS threatened to kill him if he did not commitsuicide. Upon his arrival at Dachau in April 1933, Beimler, like the otherprisoners, underwent the brutal admissions procedures, which included beat-ings and humiliation by SS guards. The guards, many of whom were fromDachau and its vicinity, had long known Beimler and harboured a particularlystrong animosity against him. Unlike the other new prisoners, Beimler was notassigned to a barrack with other prisoners, but immediately put into solitaryconnement in the bunker. Here Steinbrenner and other SS guards beat himunconscious several times. Beimler claimed that a guard gave him a six-footrope as thick as my nger, and told me to hang it on the little turncock of thewater pipe.30 Beimler refused to kill himself, although he was terried by theprospect of being murdered by the SS. Steinbrenner and Hilmar Wackerle, thecamp commandant, repeatedly urged him to commit suicide, giving him abread-knife and tying a noose for him. Beimler knew that if he killed himself,the nazis would deny responsibility for his death and brand him a weaklingwho was too cowardly to stand up for his communist activities. In the end,Beimler escaped unnoticed by the SS guards.31 For many communists, therefusal to commit suicide under SS pressure was an act of strength,reecting their commitment to resisting the nazis.32 Moreover, many com-munists, particularly in the nazi regimes early phase in 1933, expectedthat the nazi regime would not last long. Beimlers case was not anisolated one. On 25 January 1934, The Timess Munich correspondent

28 Sofsky, Die Ordnung des Terrors, op. cit., 73.29 Richard J. Evans, Rituale der Vergeltung: Die Todesstrafe in der deutschen Geschichte 15321987 (Berlin 2001), 748.30 Hans Beimler, Four Weeks in the Hands of Hitlers Hell Hounds: The Nazi Murder Camp ofDachau (New York 1933), 25, 28, 40.31 For context, see Hans-Gunter Richardi, Die Schule der Gewalt: Die Anfange desKonzentrationslagers Dachau 19331934. Ein dokumentarischer Bericht (Munich 1983), 1720.32 Allan Merson, Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany (London 1985), 1389.


conrmed rumours that in the cells of certain prisoners at Dachau ropesand sharpened knives had been placed in order to induce the prisoners tocommit suicide.33

In the early camps, established in 1933 and 1934, hundreds of inmates werekilled or died from nazi torture. The nazis could not simply kill prisonerswithout risking legal prosecution, which would have revealed the savagebrutality of camp guards to a wider public in Germany and abroad. In manycases, therefore, senior camp ofcials covered up the killings of prisoners assuicides or claimed that inmates had been shot while trying to escape (aufder Flucht erschossen) to deny responsibility and prevent judicialinvestigations.34

Another reason for camp ofcials to cover up murders as suicides wasthe nazi concern for public opinion. Many law-abiding Germans welcomedthe nazi clampdown on communists, but probably not on the social dem-ocrats, who still had wide support: they had received seven million votes inthe March 1933 Reichstag elections, despite the nazi onslaught against theLeft.35 The support of law-abiding Germans, concerned with due legalprocess and maintaining law and order, was important for the regime inits rst months in power, between Hitlers appointment as Chancellor on20 January 1933 and President Hindenburgs death in August 1934, whichmarked the consolidation of nazi rule. Terror alone would not win over themajority of law-abiding Germans. The nazis were not hesitant to admittheir unprecedented wave of terror, though. As Joseph Goebbels said inhis rst press conference as Reich propaganda minister on 15 March 1933,just days after the Reichstag elections where the nazis and the national-conservative German National Peoples Party (DNVP) had received justunder 52 per cent of the vote, the nazi regime would not be contentwith 52 per cent behind it and with terrorizing the remaining 48 percent.36

But why did the judiciary investigate camp guards for the suicidingof prisoners? The overwhelming majority of judicial ofcials hadalready been in ofce in the Weimar Republic, where most of them hadbeen sympathetic to the right and sometimes even to the nazis. They hopedthat the nazi regime would back them in their efforts to implement author-itarian law and restore the states authority, which had purportedly been

33 For similar cases at Dachau see Stanislav Zamecnik, Das fruhe Konzentrationslager Dachau,

in Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel, Terror ohne System: Die ersten Konzentrationslager imNationalsozialismus 19331935 (Berlin 2001), 1339, at 18; The Times, 25 January 1934.34 Evans, Rituale, op. cit., 81617; Drobisch and Wieland, System der NS-Konzentrationslager,op. cit., 3023.

35 Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, op. cit., 333.36 Quoted in Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham (eds), Nazism 19191945: A DocumentaryReader (Exeter 2000), II, 1867, at 187.


undermined by the various Weimar governments.37 The judiciary thereforehappily co-operated with the nazis in the process of undermining the rule oflaw, for example in the amnesties of March 1933 and July 1934 whichexonerated nazis from prosecution.38

Yet, despite all their enthusiasm for the nazis, the judiciary were keen to retainlegal formalism and, above all, due legal process.39 Legal ofcials insisted ontheir right to investigate dubious cases of death in the pre-war camps, includingalleged suicides, not because they opposed the nazis, but rather because theywanted to maintain their own power of jurisdiction over the SS and the concen-tration camps. State prosecutors remained formally in charge of investigatingcrimes perpetrated by camp guards. In early 1933, Munich state prosecutorsCarl Wintersberger and Josef Hartinger, concerned with due legal process andthe judiciarys powers, investigated dubious deaths at Dachau. After earlierinvestigations (three men had been shot while allegedly trying to escape inApril 1933), the Munich state prosecutor received the news on 16 May 1933that the businessman Louis Schloss, a Jew, had hanged himself with his braces.The prosecutor immediately ordered Schlosss autopsy. It revealed that Schlosshad been brutally beaten to death. The murderers, SS guards, had put a noosearound his neck after his death to cover up this murder. The camp doctor and thecamps leadership classied Schloss death as suicide. A suspicious Hartingercharged Wackerle, the camp doctor and the camp administrator with beingaccessories to the murder of prisoners on 1 June 1933.40

In themeantime, another dubious death was reported. On the night of 25May1933, Dachau guards found the Munich businessman Sebastian Nefzger dead,lying in a pool of his own blood. Nefzger, an ex-nazi, had been discharged fromthe party on accusations of treason, so the SS guards strongly resented him.41

The camp administration waited two days before they reported his death to theDachau court and the Munich state prosecutor, claiming that an autopsy wasunnecessary, given that the camp doctor had certied suicide.42 The state

37 Klaus Marxen, Strafjustiz im Nationalsozialismus: Vorschlage fur eine Erweiterung der his-

torischen Perspektive, in Bernhard Diestelkamp and Michael Stolleis (eds), Justizalltag im DrittenReich (Frankfurt amMain 1988), 10111; Anthony McElligott, Sentencing towards the Fuhrer?The Judiciary in the Third Reich, in idem and Tim Kirk (eds),Working towards the Fuhrer: Essaysin Honour of Sir Ian Kershaw (Manchester 2003), 15385, at 154. For a good survey, see RalphAngermund, Deutsche Richterschaft 19191945: Krisenerfahrung, Illusion, politischeRechtssprechung (Frankfurt am Main 1990).38 Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power (New York 2005), 73.39 Bundesminister der Justiz (ed.), Im Namen des Deutschen Volkes: Justiz undNationalsozialismus (Cologne 1989), 6894.40 Staatsanwaltschaft bei dem Landgerichte Munchen II an den Herrn Generalstaatsanwalt bei

dem Oberlandesgerichte Munchen, 1 June 1933, in Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrechervor dem Internationalen Militargerichtshof Nurnberg 14. November 19451. Oktober 1946(Nuremberg 1948), XXVI, ND-644-PS, 17486; Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit.,635; Richardi, Die Schule der Gewalt, op. cit., 88115.41 Archiv Dachau, No. 554, Kasimir Dittenhuber: Der Weg in den Abgrund. Ich war Hitlers

Gefangener. Bl. 8.42 Staatsarchiv Munich, Staatsanwaltschaften 7014, Beglaubigte Abschrift, 26 May 1933.


prosecutor, suspicious of this verdict, ordered a post-mortem, revealing thatNefzger had been strangled. After Nefzgers death, SS guards had cutNefzgers wrists to conceal the murder.43 Wintersberger passed on these inves-tigations to the BavarianMinistry of Justice, run by Hans Frank, Hitlers formerlawyer. Wintersberger also forwarded to Frank a copy of the May 1933 Dachaucamp regulations. According to these regulations, a camp court, consisting of thecamp commandant and other SS ofcers, had the power to sentence any prisonerto death who disobeyed these draconian rules.44 These regulations were illegal,because only the judiciary had the authority to pass death sentences.45 Frank, anazi concerned with maintaining due legal process and his own position vis-a`-visthe SS, insisted that these suicides and the camp regulationsmust be discussed atthe Bavarian cabinets next meeting. But Frank was rebuffed by the BavarianInterior Minister Adolf Wagner, nominally Heinrich Himmlers superior.Himmler, Reich Leader of the SS and ultimately in charge of the SS-runDachau camp, was at the same time Munich Police President, as well as headof the Bavarian Political Police and thereby part of the Bavarian executive.Because of his dual role, it was not difcult for Himmler to block the investiga-tions.Without the polices support, the judiciary was powerless to investigate theDachau killings. Himmler wanted to avoid an open confrontation with the judi-ciary. Before the SS purge of the SA leadership in the summer of 1934, it wasnominally still subordinate to the SA, so the SSs position was not yet consoli-dated. Himmler therefore sackedWackerle. No camp ofcial was ever sentencedfor the murders, although it was clear that SS guards had killed these inmates.46

It would be some time until the power struggle between the judiciary and theSS over the jurisdiction of the camps was resolved. In Dachau, the practice ofsuiciding prisoners continued. On the night of 17/18 October 1933, WilhelmFranz, a communist, and Dr Delvin Katz were found hanged in their isolationcells. Fellow inmates later reported that the SS guards particularly hated them,especially Katz. Not only was Katz Jewish; he was a medical doctor who hadalso secretly treated inmates who had been tortured by the SS. The SS accusedFranz and Dr Katz of smuggling out information (Kassiberschmuggel), a cap-ital offence under the new camp regulations enacted by Theodor Eicke,Dachaus new commandant, on 1 October 1933.47 Katz and Franz weredetained in isolation cells, where the SS killed them.48 Predictably, the

43 Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher, XXVI, ND-645-PS, 1879. See also BAB, R3001/21167, Bl. 245.

44 Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher, XXVI, ND-922-PS, 610.45 Evans, Rituale, op. cit., 81617.46 Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit., 6389, 644. Der Prozess gegen dieHauptkriegsverbrecher, XXVI, ND-926-D and ND-930-D, 4159; Richardi, Die Schule derGewalt, op. cit., 113; see also Evans, Rituale, op. cit., 816.47 For a copy of the same regulations, implemented at Esterwegen from 1 August 1934, see

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, RG-11.001M.20, Reel 91, Fond 1367, Opis 2, Folder

19, Disziplinar- und Strafordnung fur das Gefangenenlager Esterwegen vom 1. August 1934.

48 The Yellow Spot: The Outlawing of Half a Million Human Beings (London 1936), 2634;Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit., 6412.


camp authorities classied these deaths as suicides. The SS claimed that Franzhad hanged himself with his belt and Katz with his braces. State prosecutorWintersberger, not prepared to accept these illegal SS executions, immediatelystarted an investigation. When he viewed the cells, the corpses had already beenremoved to a shed and the belt and braces with which Franz and Katz hadallegedly killed themselves had disappeared. A post-mortem revealed that Franzand Katz had been strangled, probably by SS guards. Himmler insisted that theinvestigations must be stopped, expressing concern that the SSs public imagewould suffer otherwise. Bavarian Minister of Justice Frank pursued the casefurther. But Himmler referred the investigation team to Ernst Rohm, Chief ofthe SA, and at that time still in charge of Himmler and the SS. Rohm did not evenbother to speak to the investigation team. He told Himmler to pass on a messageto the investigation team and Frank. In it, Rohm, concerned with the publicimpact of legal investigations into SS terror within the Dachau camp, forbadelegal ofcials to carry out investigations inside Dachau, a camp for prisoners inprotective custody who are detained for political reasons. Rohm promised thathe would ask Hitler to reach a nal verdict about the legal investigations.49

Rohm and Himmler did indeed consult Hitler over this matter, but Hitler didnot give them clear instructions on how to proceed. Hitler knew too well thatthe SS would eventually prevail over the judiciary. For Hitler and Himmler, thejudiciary was ineffective and completely inadequate for the implementation ofthe Third Reichs racial and social agenda because it was based upon old-fashioned laws and due legal process.50 Once again, Himmlers BavarianPolitical Police refused to co-operate with the legal investigations, so thestate prosecutor had to close the case in September 1934. This nazi victoryover the judiciary was a signicant step towards the ofcial recognition of theextra-legal SS system of unlimited terror.51

The SS also covered up murders as suicide in other camps. Take the incidentsin the Hamburg-Fuhlsbuttel camp, situated on the site of a penitentiary.52

Here, SS-Sturmfuhrer Willi Dusenschon ordered SA and SS men savagely tomistreat inmates. Prisoners were beaten with whips, ox-goads and legs ofchairs, and sometimes even fettered for days to iron grills. Fritz Solmitz, ajournalist and social democratic activist from Lubeck, was found hanged on19 September 1933 in a Fuhlsbuttel isolation cell. The SS claimed that Solmitz,a Jew, committed suicide by hanging. A suicide note was found in his cell,apparently faked by SS guards.53A prolic writer, even under nazi torture,

49 Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen MilitargerichtshofNurnberg 14. November 19451. Oktober 1946 (Nuremberg 1948), XXXVI, ND-926-PS, 545.50 Evans, The Third Reich in Power, op. cit., 723.51 On background see Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit., 645.52 See Herbert Diercks, Fuhlsbuttel das Konzentrationslager in der Verantwortung derHamburger Justiz, in Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (eds), Terror ohne System, op. cit.,261308, at 273.

53 Christian Jurgens, Fritz Solmitz: Kommunalpolitiker, Journalist, Widerstandskampfer undNS-Verfolgter aus Lubeck (Lubeck undated), 76. Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit.,375, claims that Solmitz killed himself without presenting any evidence.


Solmitz jotted down his experiences of his time in the isolation cell until the daybefore his death. Probably aware that the camp guards would murder him, hewrote these remarkable notes on cigarette paper. He hid the notes in his pocketwatch, which was handed over to his widow after his death. On his rst day insolitary connement, Solmitz was repeatedly ogged by guards, on the com-mandants orders. He did not receive any food and was denied medical treat-ment. On the night before his death, a detachment of guards entered his cell,announcing that he would be beaten again on the following day. One guardthreatened: Hang yourself! Then you wont receive any beatings.54 One wit-ness at a 1961 trial against Dusenschon claimed that the ofcial autopsy ofSolmitzs body, ordered by the state prosecutor in 1933, had revealed thatSolmitz had died from exsanguinations following the severe beatings hereceived. Solmitz was clearly murdered.55

After the Rohm purge on 30 June 1934, when top nazis, led by Hitler,purged the SA and members of the conservative elite, the regime, backed bythe judiciary, passed the Amnesty Law of 7 August 1934, clearing nazis, includ-ing camp ofcials, who had killed or maltreated supposed enemies of the state,of any charges. Legal investigations against nazi thugs were stopped and nazisalready sentenced were exonerated. Some cases were explicitly exempt fromthis amnesty due to the efforts of Reich Minister of Justice Franz Gurtner, anational conservative. He was concerned that cases of sadistic torture andmurder in concentration camps would reect badly on the regime. Both thejudiciary and the nazis wanted to maintain the myth that they had restoredorder, trying to appeal to law-abiding Germans.56

In some cases judges sentenced camp ofcials for abusing and killing pris-oners. In May 1935, a Dresden court sentenced the commandant and 22guards of the Saxon Hohnstein camp to prison terms for torturing inmates.Nazi ofcials, including the Saxon Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann, demandedtheir immediate release and acquittal, bullying the court. The case also reachedHitlers desk. He decided in late 1935 that the guards must be freed and amnes-tied, a decision reecting Hitlers disregard for the judiciary and his fundamentalbelief that he and the regime stood above the law.57 In another case, judicialofcials did not put concentration camp guards on trial. The Wuppertal stateprosecutor began to investigate Kemnas director and six guards in March 1934for the systematic abuse of prisoners. Neither of the accused was ever put on trialbecause of direct nazi pressure. In August 1934 Rudolf Hess, Hitlers deputy,concerned about the impact of this case on public opinion, cashiered the guardsfrom the nazi party. Eventually, the NSDAPs supreme party court overturnedHesss decision and merely issued a warning to ve guards, including the campdirector, because they had been overzealous in their service for the nazi cause.

54 Quoted in Jurgens, Fritz Solmitz, op. cit., 87.55 Jurgens, Fritz Solmitz, op. cit., 76.56 Drobisch and Wieland, System der NS-Konzentrationslager, op. cit., 21727.57 Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit., 36974; Zarusky, Juristische Aufarbeitung, op.cit., 346.


Two guards were completely acquitted. The nazi party supreme court dismissedthe Wuppertal court proceedings because they were allegedly based upon com-pletely exaggerated and partly dubious testimony of communist activists, whoseresistance had to be crushed lest they attack the nazi regime. Eventually, thejudiciary had to accept this verdict and the fact that it had been overturned onceagain by the nazis.58

Yet the SS continued to suicide prisoners in the ongoing power strugglebetween the judiciary and the SS. Ferdinand B., a metalworker, was taken tothe Fuhlsbuttel camp on 13 September 1934. Upon arrival, B. was immediatelytaken into strictest solitary connement and, according to a police record,handcuffed with his hands behind him because he was allegedly suicidal. Thenext morning, a guard handcuffed B. in front of his body so that he could havebreakfast. An hour later a guard found B. dead. Fuhlsbuttel ofcials reported tothe Hamburg Gestapo that B. had hanged himself with a handkerchief whichhe had attached to a ventilation shaft.59 This version was suspicious, not leastbecause B. was still handcuffed when he hanged himself. In a memorandum of14 September, a Hamburg Gestapo ofcial noted that B. had been beaten upduring an interrogation and that B.s corpse must be cremated immediately toprevent his relatives or the state prosecutor from looking at the torture marks.This practice was the result of a secret agreement between the HamburgGestapo, under Himmlers control since November 1933, and HamburgJustice Senator Curt Rothenberger, later to become state secretary in theReich Ministry of Justice. According to this agreement, corpsesof Fuhlsbuttel inmates who had allegedly committed suicide in protectivecustody were to be cremated immediately.60 This practice was illegal, as itwas in breach of paragraph 159 of the code of criminal procedure(Strafprozeordnung), which prescribed that the state prosecutor investigatedubious cases of death.61 This agreement indicates that the SS and the judiciaryoften collaborated very closely, contrary to Gruchmanns claim that the rela-tionship between the SS and the judiciary is best understood in terms of conictand tension.62

58 Bundesarchiv Berlin (hereinafter BAB), NS 36/14, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche

Arbeiterpartei: Oberstes Parteigericht, Beschluss, 1 April 1935; see also the camps official healthstatistics Hauptstaatsarchiv Dusseldorf, Gerichte Rep. 29, Nr. 303, Krankenbuch Kemna. On the

Kemna investigations see also Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit., 35160.59 Staatsarchiv Nurnberg, KV-Anklage, NG-2489, Bl. 1: Konzentrationslager Fuhlsbuttel an die

Staatspolizei Hamburg, 14 September 1934. Ibid., Bl. 3: Fuhlsbuttel, den 14 September 1934.60 On background, see Werner Johe, Institutionelle Gleichschaltung in Hamburg 1933: Freiheit

des Individuums oder Sicherheit und Schutz der Gemeinschaft?, in Ursula Buttner and Werner

Jochmann (eds), Zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur: Nationalsozialistische Machtaneignung inHamburg Tendenzen und Reaktionen in Europa (Hamburg 1984), 6690, at 89.61 BAB, R 3001/21056, Bl. 401: Diensttagebuch, 16 May 1935.

62 Diemut Majer, Justiz und Polizei im Dritten Reich, in Ralf Dreier and Wolfgang Sellert (eds),

Recht und Justiz im Dritten Reich (Frankfurt am Main 1989), 13651, at 143; cf. Gruchmann,Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit.


Dr Reuter, an ambitious senior state prosecutor (Oberstaatsanwalt), disclosedthis agreement in September 1934 when a Hamburg Gestapo ofcer, apparentlyby mistake, requested Reuters permission for B.s cremation.63 Reuter had closeconnections to the nazi party, which expected lawyers like him to act in favour ofthe nazi party, thereby carrying out the Fuhrers will.64 Yet Reuter, annoyedabout the fact that he had not been promoted after the nazi seizure of power,refused to permit the cremation. He was suspicious of the Gestapos version ofB.s death. On 17 September, he seized B.s corpse and the handkerchief withwhich B. had allegedly hanged himself and ordered an autopsy.65 The ofcialautopsy arrived promptly, revealing that B. probably died because of hang-ing.66 Anxious to cultivate good relations with the nazis, the doctor carryingout the post-mortem wrote a fairly inconclusive report which failed to clarifywho had hanged B. Reuter, unhappy with this report, commissioned anotherautopsy, which was carried out by the same doctor. It revealed that B. had killedhimself. Reuter opened proceedings against Dusenschon and other Fuhlsbuttelofcials for this suicide and other killings in the Fuhlsbuttel camp. TheHamburg Reichsstatthalter and Gauleiter, Karl Kaufmann, ultimately incharge of the Hamburg judiciary, suspended Reuter in October 1934.Kaufmann insisted that Dusenschon must not be tried, following HitlersAmnesty Law of 7 August 1934. The Hamburg general state prosecutor,Reuters superior, shelved the case.67 An angry Reuter complained aboutKaufmanns decision to Walter Buch, chief of the nazi partys supreme court.Buch asked Himmler, Dusenschons SS superior, to punish Dusenschon. YetHimmler maintained that the judiciary had to keep its nose out of the concen-tration camps and rehabilitated Dusenschon. This prompted a furious Reuter towrite to Buch again on 8 February 1935. He hoped Buch would help to reinstallhim. In his surprisingly open letter, he highlighted the cover-up of suicides asmurders:

When I am taken toa concentration campand theybeatme todeath. . . . then theyquicklyput anoose

around my neck . . . so that there is a strangulation mark. And my wife receives the message that her

husband, apparently aware of his guilt, has nished his life by suicide. The [subordinate] institutionsresponsible for the beating to death nd a physician who, based on his diagnosis of the strangulation

mark, issuesadeathcerticate, claimingthat thecauseofdeath isapparentlysuicidebyhanging.Those

who die in the concentration camp are cremated if suicide has been established, thus circumventingthe legally prescribed autopsy etc. Everythinghappenswith theReichsstatthalters full knowledge and

63 Staatsarchiv Nurnberg, KV-Anklage, NG-2489, Bl. 5: An die Staatsanwaltschaft Hamburg,

17 September 1934.

64 McElligott, Sentencing towards the Fuhrer?, op. cit., 158. On Reuter see Klaus Bastlein,Vom hanseatischen Richtertum zum nationalsozialistischen Justizverbrechen: Zur Person und

Tatigkeit Curt Rothenbergers 18961959, in Justizbehorde Hamburg (ed.), Fur Fuhrer, Volkund Vaterland. . .: Hamburger Justiz im Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg 1992), 74145, at 99100.

65 Staatsarchiv Nurnberg, KV-Protokolle, NG-2489, Bl. 1416: Der Generalstaatsanwalt an die

Landesjustizverwaltung, 17 September 1934.

66 Ibid., Bl. 21.67 Ibid., Bl. 26: Der Generalstaatsanwalt, 2 November 1934.


sometimes even at his request and under his pressure who wants an amnesty in such cases, therebybeingat least complicit. Isnt that an impossible situation, isnt that a situationwhich is notworthyof a

Rechtsstaat?68

The state prosecutor was not readmitted to his old job and ended up as a judgein Cologne. The Fuhlsbuttel case revealed that the judiciary was unable toinvestigate illegal killings, covered up as suicides, within the camps becausepowerful party ofcials blocked them even before the complete centralizationof the judicial systems of the individual German states under the Reich Ministryof Justice in 1935.69 There must have been many similar cases of camp author-ities suiciding prisoners here and elsewhere in Germany.Yet the SS continued to cover up murders as suicides, as it still lacked the

legal powers to execute inmates, because Hitler and other leading nazis, con-cerned with the support of law-abiding Germans, felt unable ofcially to legal-ize executions within the concentration camps. Above all, Hitler, Himmler andthe SS probably saw no need for this legalization of SS killings in the campsbecause they did not want their power to be limited by an ineffective law thatwould soon be overridden by the regimes progressive radicalization.70

In the meantime, the remaining SS concentration camps were put undercentral SS control. Theodor Eicke, inspector of the concentration camps sincethe summer of 1934, and other SS ofcials were concerned that the judiciarystill had the power, at least formally, to investigate murder and maltreatment inthe camps. In May 1935, Eicke issued a secret decree to all camp comman-dants: all dubious deaths of camp prisoners must be reported to the Reichleader SS and the Gestapo. With this new regulation in place, Eicke hopedthat the judiciary would stop investigating suicides of camp inmates.71

Nevertheless, the SS continued to murder inmates and conceal their deaths assuicides, though not in the high numbers of 1933 and 1934, because inmatenumbers had dropped sharply after 1934 when political repression was increas-ingly transferred from the concentration camps to the state penal system.72

And still, tensions remained between the camp administration and the judi-ciary over suicides in the camps. At the same time, the judiciary, includinglocal courts and state prosecutors in charge of dealing with deaths in the camps,increasingly co-operated with the SS. According to a 1935 statistic,three Dachau prisoners and one Sachsenburg prisoner had killedthemselves in early May 1935. Local judicial authorities, resigning to thecreeping SS undermining of the legal system, simply recorded these casesand permitted the funerals of these prisoners without carrying out further

68 Institut fur Zeitgeschichte Munich, Fa 284, Bl. 18: Oberstaatsanwalt Rudolf Reuter to Walter

Buch, 8 February 1935; also quoted in Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit., 378.69 Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit., 379. For similar cases see BAB R 3001/21056,Diensttagebuch des RJM, Bd. 3, Eintrag vom 16. Mai 1935.

70 Evans, Rituale, op. cit., 764.71 BAB, NS 4 BU/12, Bl. 393: Eicke an die Kommandanten der Konzentrationslager, 24 May

1935.72 Evans, The Third Reich in Power, op. cit., 87.


investigations.73 One of these cases was that of Max Kohn, a Jewish traineelawyer who had been imprisoned at Dachau since April 1933. On 26 May1935 the Pariser Tageblatt, a left-wing exile newspaper, reported that the SShad murdered Kohn. This article prompted the Munich State Prosecutor, wor-ried about foreign atrocity propaganda, to contact the Bavarian Political Policeto investigate Kohns dubious death. The Dachau SS claimed Kohn had hangedhimself with his belt. Weeks later, on 15 July, the Bavarian Political Policepenned a curt reply to the Munich State Prosecutor, rejecting an investigationand insisting that an objective comment on atrocity lies in Jewish exile news-paper [was] not possible for the Bavarian Political Police. The judiciary did notpursue its investigations further.74 On 16 October 1935, Reich Minister ofJustice Gurtner sent a list with details of suspicious deaths in the camps, includ-ing suicides, to Himmler. On 6 November 1935 Himmler wrote to Gurtnerthat specic measures. . . were not deemed necessary given the already mostconscientious leadership of the concentration camps.75 Himmler had consultedwith Hitler who, unsurprisingly, fully supported him, with the result thatGurtners subsequent complaints about murder and torture in the concentra-tion camps fell on Hitlers and Himmlers deaf ears.76

With Hitlers full support, the Gestapo was statutorily exempted from jurid-ical review in February 1936.77 Yet the SS still did not have the power to killinmates, even after Himmlers appointment as Chief of the German Police inJune 1936, which considerably increased the SSs power and control of bothpolitical repression and terror against social outsiders. The SS and the police stillhad to report cases of unnatural deaths to the judicial authorities which is whythey continued deliberately to misreport murders as suicides.78 In the meantime,many legal ofcials began to accept that investigating killings and maltreatmentof concentration prisoners was not their responsibility. There was increasingcollaboration rather than conict between the SS and the judiciary.79

Take the case of Josef B., a 52-year-old alleged habitual criminal who hadbeen imprisoned in various concentration camps since July 1934. On the nightof 2122 February 1939, B. allegedly hanged himself with his vest in aSachsenhausen arrest cell. B. had been locked up in the arrest block becauseof a pending investigation. An SS guard, on duty in the arrest ward, found B.hanging on a radiator. An ofcial autopsy certied that B. had committedsuicide. Signicantly, the state prosecutor was not present when the SS guard

73 BAB, R 3001/21056, Bl. 1056: Diensttagebuch des Reichsjustizministers.

74 BAB, R 3001/21059, Bl. 59: Diensttagebuch des Reichsjustizministers. For the article see In

Dachau zu Tode gemartert, Pariser Tageblatt, no. 530, 26 May 1935.75 Quoted in Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit., 649.76 Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit., 64952.77 Wachsmann, Hitlers Prisons, op. cit., 175.78 Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit., 646.79 Wachsmann, Hitlers Prisons, op. cit., 184.


who had found B. dead was interrogated by the camps political department.The state prosecutor did not open proceedings.80

In another case, the judiciary and the SS even collaborated with each otherwhen they investigated a suicide in the Sachsenhausen camp. FriedrichWeissler, a baptized Jew and a former senior judge, was murdered in theSachsenhausen camp on 19 February 1937 by SS guards. Sacked in the wakeof the April 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service,Weissler was a leading member of the Confessing Church, founded by pastorsconcerned with the nazication of Protestant doctrine. From 1937 the regimebegan to suppress the Confessing Church with particular zeal. Around 700pastors were arrested, including Martin Niemoller, one of the ConfessingChurchs leaders. In May 1936, members of the Confessing Church, includingWeissler, had sent a memorandum to Hitler, criticizing nazi attempts to purgeChristianity of its Jewish roots. They also protested against nazi terror and theconcentration camp system. After the memorandums publication in foreignnewspapers in July 1936, the Confessing Church distanced itself from thememorandum and blamed Weissler for it. He was taken into Gestapo custodyand, on 13 February 1937, transferred to Sachsenhausen camp.81 Weissler wasput into an isolation cell, where he was found strangled on 19 February 1937.A former prisoners eyewitness statement, written before a postwar trial againstSachsenhausen guards, raises the question of agency. According to this testi-mony, the Gestapo had instructed the camp SS to kill Weissler. Because thecamp SS did not have the formal right to execute Weissler, they left it to guardsto suicide him. Two SS guards kicked him with their jackboots until he wasdead.82 To cover up this murder, they put a noose around his neck, claimingthat he committed suicide. One of the guards, Blockfuhrer Paul Zeidler, thenordered Dr Walter von Schwichow, the camps chief paramedic and Kapo ofthe Jewish barrack, to certify that Weissler had committed suicide. When givingevidence to a Frankfurt court in 1964, Schwichow stated that he had refused toissue a death certicate. Schwichow claimed that he contacted the Berlin stateprosecutor via a go-between. A Berlin court opened proceedings against thetwo SS guards.83

The two guards could only be prosecuted because Eicke, worried about thenegative impact of this case on public opinion in Germany and abroad, backed

80 Landesarchiv Berlin, A Rep. 35802, Nr. 2880, Betrifft: Todesermittlungssache betr. denBerufsverbrecher B.

81 On his admission to the camp, see Archiv Sachsenhausen, D 30A/32, Bl. 222; on his death see

the brief note in Archiv Sachsenhausen, D 1A 1016, Bl. 88.82 Archiv Sachsenhausen, JD 4/18, Bl. 478: letter from Pastor Augustin Flossdorf to investigat-

ing judge, 30 September 1960. On Weisslers death see also Drobisch and Wieland, System der NS-Konzentrationslager, op. cit., 303.83 Archiv Sachsenhausen, JD 8/2, Teil 1, Bl. 57, testimony of Dr. Walter von Schwichow, 29October 1964.


the judiciary in the case. He discharged Zeidler and published Zeidlerssacking in a circular read by all SS camp guards.84 A Berlin courtsentenced Zeidler to one year in prison for grievous bodily harm. Concernedabout public opinion and the foreign presss reaction, the court excludedthe public from the trial.85 According to an ex-prisoners testimony givento a Dortmund court in 1961, Weisslers relatives, anxious about their liveli-hood, prompted his life insurance company to carry out an autopsy of hiscorpse. The post-mortem revealed that the two SS guards had indeed kickedhim to death.86

The conict between the SS and the judiciary over investigating suicides andthe jurisdiction over the camps was only fully resolved after the outbreak of thesecond world war. The regime, backed by many legal ofcials, was less and lessconcerned with maintaining due legal process and the SS, with Hitlers full sup-port, became more assertive. After October 1939, SS courts alone were in chargeof all cases involving SS and police personnel. Thus the judiciary was no longer incharge of investigating crimes perpetrated by SS personnel within the camps.Only inmates suicides and cases in which one prisoner had killed another werestill to be investigated by the courts. But this rule was soon superseded by theincreasingly powerful SS. From early 1940 onwards, SS courts were solely incharge of investigating all deaths of camp inmates,87 marking their completeindependence from the judiciary.88 This regulation reected the increasing nazidisregard for the judiciary and the growing collaboration between the judiciaryand the SS. After the outbreak of war, the nazis and the SSs contempt for thejudiciary meant that due legal process was to be superseded by what the naziscalled healthy popular sentiment. In their view, the legal system was treatingalleged criminals and eugenically worthless elements who were underminingthe war effort too softly, while young Germans were dying on the front line. Atthe same time the legal system became more radical during the war, sentencingmore and more people to death and, from 1942, even handing over certain

84 Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, MA 293, SS-TV Befehlsblatt Nr. 5, May 1937.

85 Einzelne Aktionen und ihre Opfer: Die Ermordung von Haftlingen des KonzentrationslagersSachsenhausen, in Gunter Morsch (ed.), Mord und Massenmord im KonzentrationslagerSachsenhausen 19361945 (Berlin 2005), 71151, at 718. On Weissler see Martin Greschat,Friedrich Weissler: Ein Jurist der Bekennenden Kirche im Widerstand gegen Hitler, in Ursula

Buttner and Martin Greschat (eds), Die verlassenen Kinder der Kirche: Der Umgang mitChristen judischer Herkunft im Dritten Reich (Gottingen 1998), 86122, at 115. On theConfessing Church see Evans, The Third Reich in Power, op. cit., 2303.86 Archiv Sachsenhausen, JD 21/21, Bl. 13, interrogation of Anton Kramer, Dortmund, 6 July1961.

87 For a survey of SS courts see Bianca Vieregge, Die Gerichtsbarkeit einer Elite:Nationalsozialistische Rechtssprechung am Beispiel der SS- und Polizei-Gerichtsbarkeit (Baden-Baden 2001).88 Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit., 6545.


prisoners to the police for extermination through labour in concentrationcamps.89

The suiciding of prisoners in large numbers stopped after the outbreak ofwar, because the SS now had the power to execute inmates. Statistics from theSachsenhausen camp illustrate this shift. In 1940, the Sachsenhausen campauthorities recorded 109 suicides. Most cases were probably not suicides, butcovered-up murders. In 1941, despite rapidly increasing inmate numbers, thenumber of reported suicides dropped to 13.90

So what does this study of suicide in the pre-war nazi concentration camps tellus about repression and responses to it in the Third Reich more generally? Wellinto the late 1930s, camp guards suicided prisoners to prevent judicial inves-tigations. Often the suicided prisoners were Jewish, reecting the nazis deep-seated antisemitism.91 The agency of suiciding prisoners varied. Sometimesindividual guards killed prisoners or tortured them to death on their own ini-tiative; sometimes senior camp ofcials ordered guards to kill prisoners. In anycase, senior camp ofcials helped cover up the killings as suicides and usuallybacked individual guards when they faced legal investigations. The judiciaryremained in charge of what went on within the camps, at least on paper. It isthis legal aspect that helps us better understand the changing relationshipbetween the camp system and the judiciary and the power conicts withinthe nazi regime, which in turn shaped the prole of the emerging concentrationcamp system.92 As the Third Reich consolidated its power, the differencebetween the judiciary on the one hand and the SS on the other became increas-ingly blurred. The judiciary did not succeed in punishing camp ofcials whohad suicided inmates. State prosecutors increasingly surrendered to the powerof the SS and often did not even open proceedings against camp guards. Yetbefore 1934 the public impact of legal investigations concerned the SS. As theSS apparatus became more powerful after the Rohm purge in 1934 andHimmlers appointment as chief of the German police in 1936, the SS,backed by Hitler, became more condent in its dealings with the judiciary.The judiciary saw itself increasingly outmanoeuvred by the SS. HitlersNovember 1935 amnesty of Hohnstein guards who had been sentenced toprison terms for abusing and killing prisoners was a signicant step towardsthe ofcial recognition of the camps as places beyond the law and of the law-lessness of nazi terror that knew no limits.93

89 Nikolaus Wachsmann, Annihilation through Labor: The Killing of State Prisoners in the

Third Reich, Journal of Modern History 71 (1999), 62459.90 Archiv Sachsenhausen, D30A/34/1.91 Jurgen Matthaus, Verfolgung, Ausbeutung und Vernichtung: Judische Haftlinge im System

der Konzentrationslager, in Gunter Morsch and Susanne zur Nieden (eds), Judische Haftlimge imKonzentrationslager Sachsenhausen 1936 bis 1945 (Berlin 2004), 6490.92 Caplan, Introduction, in Gabriele Hertz, The Womens Camp in Moringen, op. cit., 12.93 Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, op. cit., 374.


There were many attempts at placing nazi terror in the camps under bureau-cratic control, ranging from Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Fricks 1935 ini-tiative to place permanent bureaucratic limits on the use of protective custodyto the judiciarys attempts to maintain its ultimate jurisdiction over thecamps.94 From 1935 the judiciary gradually began to accept that the campswere places beyond its control. At around the same time, Himmler and Hitlerdecided that the existing camps would be transformed into permanent sites ofpreventive policing.95 Yet because of nazi concerns about public opinion inGermany and abroad, it was not until the outbreak of the war that the SSgained the formal power to execute inmates, transforming the camps intoextra-legal places of connement.Actual suicides allow us to highlight individual inmates reactions to nazi

terror. There were many suicides in the pre-war camps. However, actual sta-tistics are scarce, and even if available, they are hard to interpret because of theSS cover-up of murders as suicides. Despair over the uncertainty of their impris-onment and the unbearable conditions drove many inmates to suicide.Crucially, the cover-up of murders as suicides allowed the nazis to deny legalresponsibility, placing the blame on the inmates themselves. For the SS, suicidewas an act of weakness, and inmates who committed suicide were portrayed ascowards.96 In the early years of the Third Reich, the SS encouraged inmates tocommit suicide. Towards the late 1930s, and especially after the beginning ofthe war, SS attitudes towards inmate suicide gradually underwent a fundamen-tal transformation. No longer did they encourage inmates to kill themselves,because the SS increasingly saw itself as the master over the lives and deaths ofinmates in a system of unlimited nazi terror. What all this suggests is that weneed to integrate the history of the nazi camps into the wider social and polit-ical history of the Third Reich and to overcome the recent historiographicaltrend towards ever more detailed histories of the concentration camps.97 Therecent historiography has, with some notable exceptions, articially isolatedthe nazi concentration camps from the political and social history of the ThirdReich. We need to broaden our view of nazi terror, not narrow it. And we needto locate the concentration camps in a wider web of nazi terror and combine

94 Jane Caplan, Political Detention and the Origin of the Concentration Camps in Nazi

Germany, 19331935/6, in Neil Gregor (ed.), Nazism, War and Genocide: Essays in Honour ofJeremy Noakes (Exeter 2005), 2241, at 37.95 Tuchel, Konzentrationslager, op. cit., 30717.96 Goeschel, Suicide, op. cit., 612.97 See for example the following multi-volume publications: Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel

(eds), Der Ort des Terrors: Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager (7 vols,Munich 2005); idem (eds), Geschichte der Konzentrationslager 19331945 (Berlin 2001). For areview of the recent literature see Karin Orth, Die Historiografie der Konzentrationslager und die

neuere KZ-Forschung, Archiv fur Sozialgeschichte 47 (2007), 57998; and Nikolaus Wachsmann,Looking into the Abyss: Historians and the Nazi Concentration Camps, European HistoryQuarterly 36 (2006), 24778.


legal, social and political history to understand the pre-war origins of a systemof terror, repression and mass murder on an unprecedented scale.

Christian Goeschel

is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Birkbeck College, Universityof London, where he teaches Modern European History. Apart from

articles in several journals, he has published Suicide in NaziGermany (Oxford 2009). With Nikolaus Wachsmann he has justcompleted The Nazi Camps 19331939: A Documentary History

(forthcoming).
