This essay seeks to examine a Holocaust phenomenon so foreign to the standard conception of death camps that it seems to defy both comprehension and belief. The persistence of such apparently humane and civilized features in such horrific circumstances demands historical attention and, as far as is possible, explanation.
For lack of a better word, I will refer to these occurrences in the concentration camps of Europe as abnormalities. This term is not intended to imply that they were uncommon, but, rather, that they are not easily reconcilable with a standard understanding of the Holocaust as an event devoid of any marks of humanity, lacking elements of civilization in any form. In fact, that such abnormalities could have existed in a place like Auschwitz seems impossible, bordering on ridiculous.
When comedian Lewis Black, in a stand-up routine about the lack of sportsmanship in modern quail hunting, exclaimed that “they turned a petting zoo into Auschwitz” he was capitalizing on the outright absurdity of this comparison; surely, for a modern audience confronted with the term Auschwitz, one of the last things to come to mind would be a petting zoo. However, in the camp grounds of Auschwitz there was indeed a petting zoo, where inmates were employed. Incredibly, in the death camps of Europe, it is evident that the absurd was not absent or uncommon, but a daily reality.
That these abnormalities actually occurred is uncontroversial fact. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum displays photographic evidence of prisoners' orchestras in Auschwitz I, Buchenwald, Westerbork, Janowska, and other concentration camps. Numerous news agencies, including CNN, have recently featured stories about these camp orchestras. Evidence for the existence of concentration camp theater companies is similarly plentiful, such that even the programs for concentration camp theater productions are preserved and on display at Mauthausen camp.
Evidence of SS v. Sonderkommando Only the most ardent disbelievers in the Holocaust could attempt to refute these factual claims, which rest upon mountains of historical evidence. soccer games is abundant in Debarati Sanyal's work, most notably her article “A Soccer Match in Auschwitz: Passing Culpability in Holocaust Criticism.” Countless inmates' memoirs refer to the hospital of their camp, and some, such as Primo Levi, testify that they were actually kept alive in part because of them.
Accordingly, this essay does not seek further verification, but rather to account for these phenomena by examining four possible reasons for their existence. One obvious reason is that the seeming abnormalities may actually have had nothing to do with humanitarian concerns, but existed merely for reasons of efficiency, to increase worker productivity and to bolster a deception scheme designed to smooth the process to the gas chambers.
Another reason is that they may have been part of a deliberate Nazi attempt to depersonalize and humiliate the victims of the Holocaust. Also, they may have originated out of the camp guards' desire for simple amusement. Finally, and most controversially, they may have been necessary to satisfy the "moral" feelings and self-professed "civilized" nature of the personnel who ran the camps.
The first of these possible explanations, that the abnormalities were useful in the smooth running of the camps , is perhaps the easiest to accept because it accords with the well-established stereotype of German efficiency. There is no doubt that efficiency in the camps was hard fact when they were in operation. According to the research of historian and sociologist John Roth, when SS Head Heinrich Himmler met Rudolf Höss at Buna in the summer of 1942, his main concern was “to increase worker efficiency.” Accordingly, Höss wrote of his desire to make Auschwitz “a clean and healthy place” in order to encourage productivity.
He believed that the philosophy of Arbeit Macht Frei could apply completely only “where the conditions are [more] normal.” Roth suggests that it was this pragmatic, business-like concern during a time of war that allowed such contradictory, and indeed seemingly paradoxical, aims to co-exist. Since working people to death, along with direct extermination, provided the “most efficient Final Solution,” it was important to ensure that the slave laborers - who were already “less than energetic because of their meager diet” - kept to at least a basic level of efficiency.
The potential positive effects of hearing music or of playing a game of soccer, however absurd these concepts might have seemed in the face of prisoners being worked to death, would likely have been desirable to efficiency-minded commanders like Höss and Himmler. Film director Christoper Nupen, who spoke with several survivors regarding the role of concentration camp music, reports that it “gave them a spiritual sustenance.” Terezin historian Joza Karas writes that the music of Terezin played an important part in prisoners' lives, helping them to survive day to day. He explains that though “there was no food for the body, there was food for the soul.”
