Citation de Sodapop_Curtis
The extralegal detention of social outsiders grew during the mid-1930s. In Prussia, the police arrested more men as professional criminals, focusing on “usual suspects” like burglars and thieves with many previous convictions. In 1935, the police authorities concentrated them in Esterwegen, prompting Inspector Eicke to describe that KL as the most difficult to rule ; by October 1935, it held 476 so-called professional criminals, forming the largest prisoner group. Meanwhile, several other German states adopted the radical Prussian policy and placed criminals into preventive police custody in concentration camps, too. Parallel to the pursuit of criminals, the detention of so-called asocials also continued in the mid-1930s. As before, Nazi officials mainly targeted the destitute. In Bavaria, for example, the political police arrested more than three hundred “beggars and vagabonds” in summer 1936 and sent them to Dachau, in a cynical attempt to smarten up the streets before the Olympics. In addition, the authorities trained their sights on “indecent” individuals (prostitutes).
Prisoners with the green triangle could expect little support from other inmates, whose hostility toward the “BVer,” as they were often called (short for Berufsverbrecher, or professional criminal), sometimes matched that of the SS men. Just like Soviet political prisoners in the faraway Gulag, many political inmates in the KL despised so-called criminals as coarse, cruel, and corrupt — “the dregs of society,” as one of them put it. Such loathing grew from social prejudices against men thought to have been arrested as brutal thugs and from the daily encounters inside the KL, with political prisoners claiming that the new arrivals used their criminal energies against fellow inmates and collaborated with the SS.
The picture of the “criminal greens” has long been shaped by these testimonies of political prisoners. But it requires correction. Even in the late 1930s, the vast majority of so-called professional criminals were property offenders, not violent felons. Also, the “greens” forged no united front against other KL inmates. Of course, some formed friendships and cliques inside, since they often worked together and slept in the same barrack. These bonds appear to have been looser than those among political prisoners, however, since so-called criminals could rarely build upon a shared past or ideological beliefs.Finally, although the tensions between some “red” and “green” prisoners were real, they did not always arise from the latter group’s alleged brutality, but simply from competition for scarce resources, a struggle that would escalate during the war.
Contrary to the convictions of so many political prisoners, only a few "greens" had been sent to the KL as violent criminals. Even an observer as astute as Primo Levi was wrong to believe that the Nazis had specially selected hardened criminals in prisons to deploy them as Kapos. In fact, most of those detained in the prewar KL had committed minor property crimes, as we have seen, not brutal excesses. And this did not change during the war. Convicted rapists and murderers did not normally end up in concentration camps, but in state prisons, either locked in dark cells, or led to the gallows or guillotine. The mass of “green” KL inmates were still small-time offenders, if they were guilty of any crimes at all. The reputation of these men and women as savage convicts owed less to their criminal record than the dark fantasies of their fellow inmates, in whose imagination petty criminals mutated into serial murderers. Wild rumors became fact, as the violence of some Kapos was explained by their imagined homicidal past.
Prisoners with the green triangle could expect little support from other inmates, whose hostility toward the “BVer,” as they were often called (short for Berufsverbrecher, or professional criminal), sometimes matched that of the SS men. Just like Soviet political prisoners in the faraway Gulag, many political inmates in the KL despised so-called criminals as coarse, cruel, and corrupt — “the dregs of society,” as one of them put it. Such loathing grew from social prejudices against men thought to have been arrested as brutal thugs and from the daily encounters inside the KL, with political prisoners claiming that the new arrivals used their criminal energies against fellow inmates and collaborated with the SS.
The picture of the “criminal greens” has long been shaped by these testimonies of political prisoners. But it requires correction. Even in the late 1930s, the vast majority of so-called professional criminals were property offenders, not violent felons. Also, the “greens” forged no united front against other KL inmates. Of course, some formed friendships and cliques inside, since they often worked together and slept in the same barrack. These bonds appear to have been looser than those among political prisoners, however, since so-called criminals could rarely build upon a shared past or ideological beliefs.Finally, although the tensions between some “red” and “green” prisoners were real, they did not always arise from the latter group’s alleged brutality, but simply from competition for scarce resources, a struggle that would escalate during the war.
Contrary to the convictions of so many political prisoners, only a few "greens" had been sent to the KL as violent criminals. Even an observer as astute as Primo Levi was wrong to believe that the Nazis had specially selected hardened criminals in prisons to deploy them as Kapos. In fact, most of those detained in the prewar KL had committed minor property crimes, as we have seen, not brutal excesses. And this did not change during the war. Convicted rapists and murderers did not normally end up in concentration camps, but in state prisons, either locked in dark cells, or led to the gallows or guillotine. The mass of “green” KL inmates were still small-time offenders, if they were guilty of any crimes at all. The reputation of these men and women as savage convicts owed less to their criminal record than the dark fantasies of their fellow inmates, in whose imagination petty criminals mutated into serial murderers. Wild rumors became fact, as the violence of some Kapos was explained by their imagined homicidal past.