Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence: The Majdanek Concentration Camp, 1942-1944

424 Pages·2015·2.384 MB·English

by  Elissa Mailänder, Patricia Szobar

FEMALE SS GUARDS
AND WORKADAY VIOLENCE
The Majdanek Concentration Camp, 1942–1944
By Elissa Mailänder / Translated by Patricia Szobar
Michigan State University Press / East Lansing
Copyright © 2015 by Michigan State University.
Original title: Gewalt im Dienstalltag: Die SS-Aufseherinnen
des Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslagers Majdanek 1942–1944,
© 2009 by Hamburger Edition, Hamburg, Germany.
The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaft en International—
Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint
initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Offi ce, the
collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels
(German Publishers & Booksellers Association).
i The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
p
Michigan State University Press
East Lansing, Michigan 48823-5245
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014954452
ISBN: 978-1-61186-170-9 (cloth)
ISBN: 978-1-60917-459-0 (ebook: PDF)
ISBN: 978-1-62895-231-5 (ebook: ePub)
ISBN: 978-1-62896-231-4 (ebook: Kindle)
Book design by Charlie Sharp, Sharp Des!gns, Lansing, Michigan
Cover design and map of the Majdanek camp by Travis Kimbel
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Contents
vii list of illustrations
ix acknowledgments
xi introduction
xvii abbreviations
1 chapter 1. Methodological and Th eoretical Considerations
23 chapter 2. Th e Majdanek Concentration and Death Camp:
An Overview
45 chapter 3. Women Looking for Work: Paths to Careers in the
Concentration Camps
71 chapter 4. Ravensbrück Training Camp: Th e Concentration Camp
as Disciplinary Space
107 chapter 5. Going East: Transfer to the Majdanek Concentration
and Extermination Camp, 1942–1944
141 chapter 6. Work Conditions at Majdanek
159 chapter 7. Annihilation as Work: Th e Daily Work of Killing
in the Camp
189 chapter 8. Escapes and Th eir Meaning within the Structure
of Power and Violence in the Camp
207 chapter 9. License to Kill? Unauthorized Actions by the Camp Guards
231 chapter 10. Violence as Social Practice
255 chapter 11. Cruelty: An Anthropological Perspective
273 conclusion
281 notes
373 bibliography
397 index
Illustrations
25 figure 1. Nazi-annexed territories and the General Government,
late 1941
35 figure 2. Organizational chart of SS personnel for Concentration
and Extermination Camp Majdanek
86 figure 3. Map of Ravensbrück Women’s Concentration Camp
88 figure 4. View of the female guards’ housing from the headquarters
building
88 figure 5. Construction by female prisoners in the female guards’
housing estate
94 figure 6. Female guards of the Ravensbrück Women’s Concentration
Camp in formation for the visit of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler
94 figure 7. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler inspecting the female
SS guards
98 figure 8. Portrait of Hermann Hackmann, the fi rst protective custody
camp leader
98 figure 9. Portraits of guard Alois Kurz from camp records
99 figure 10. Dog handler Herta with “Greif” at Ravensbrück
112 figure 11. Draft plan for Majdanek, dated March 1942
113 figure 12. Map of the Majdanek camp area
117 figure 13. Th e former guards’ housing barracks, 2004
147 figure 14. Th ree female SS guards
148 figures 15 and 16. A birthday party at the “Deutsches Haus” in Lublin
214 figure 17. Penal order request form from Ravensbrück Women’s
Concentration Camp
216 figure 18. Execution of sentence form
218 figure 19. Flogging trestle
243 figure 20. Camp guards beat a prisoner at the Cieszanow labor camp
Acknowledgments
No scholarly work is ever the product of one single mind. Many institu-
tions and people contributed to the publication of this study through their fi nancial
support, careful reading, critical suggestions, and friendship.
I gratefully acknowledge the fi nancial support for my archival research that also
gave me the opportunity to concentrate on writing: the Centre interdisciplinaire
d’études et de recherches sur l’Allemagne (CIERA) in Paris, the Hamburger Stiftung
zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur, and the Österreichische Akademie der
Wissenschaften. Moreover, the Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship made it
possible for me to spend three months in 2006 at the Center for Advanced Holocaust
Studies in Washington, DC.
I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to Alf Lüdtke and Michael Werner
for their scholarly and personal support and supervision; and to Birthe Kundrus,
Christian Ingrao, and Michael Wildt for the stimulating conversations, construc-
tive criticism, and helpful advice that they provided at various stages of the work.
I would also like to express my deep appreciation for the valuable input I received
from numerous colleagues at various times while researching and writing this book:
Henriette Asséo, Susanne Beer, Falk Bretschneider, Patrick Bruneteaux, Michaela
Christ, Paula Diehl, Marten Düring, Patrick Farges, Paola Ferruta, Winfried R.
Garscha, Christian Gudehus, Karin Harrasser, Max Kramer, Tomasz Kranz, Françoise
n ix