PARIS LETTER
499
writer exposes the mechanisms by which enormous conglomerations of
prisoners from every country in Europe were made to serve the purposes
of Juggernaut: the production of war materials, the security (not simply
social, but intimate and personal) of the Nazi overlords, and the physical
destruction of the enemies of the German state. Since the S.S. were
by far too few to staff any but the top posts of the bureaucracy (which
included the camp police, infirmary, sources of food, clothing, records
etc.) they were obliged to call upon the collaboration of prisoners who,
in turn, co-opted into their ranks the minor assistants, informers, hench–
men, mignons, who were necessary for the maintenance of the S.S.
order and the satisfaction of the bureaucrat's desires. And since these
posts frequently made the difference between life and death, and in any
case procured material advantages which made survival more probable,
they were the object of a constant, ferocious comiJetition between prison–
ers and, later, between organized groups of prisoners. Prisoner-bureau–
crats were better fed, better housed, and better clothed than the ple–
beians; they were armed with clubs and whips, ·and were themselves
rarely beaten. (It is worth noting that the physical aspect of the prison–
ers was crucial to their survival: just as any cop will immediately as–
sume an aggressive attitude to a tramp, and a relatively respectful one
to a solid-looking citizen, the camp authorities measured out their bru–
tality in accordance with the precise degree of their victims' vestimentary
dilapidation. Whoever controls the camp must control the
Kleidcnkam–
mer.)
To conserve their power, the bureaucrats were obliged to exercise
it in line with the methods and the philosophy of their masters. They
were obliged to obtain maximum work and maximum discipline in the
areas of their power.
They were obliged to collaborate actively in the
entire enterprise of the camps.
This is the point. And this is why Rousset's vision of the camp
functionaries differs so radically from that of other witnesses, plebeians
who lived through their nightmare with little or no inkling of the
intrigues and the struggles which went on constantly among the bureau–
crats. Dr. Wetterwald, for example (in
L'Enfer de Buchenwald)
saw the
functionaries, the
Stubendienst,
the
Arbeitsdienst,
the
Blockaltester,
sim–
ply as infamous brutes, vile and sadistic instruments of the S.S. power.
The S.S., in their clean uniforms and shining boots, were distant gods
who (especially after 1940) rarely stooped to beat or kill the filthy,
stinking, bedraggled, and starving prisoners. The beatings were ad–
ministered by other prisoners-and the stranglings, too. Rousset, who
spoke the Marxist language, was able to approach the German Com–
munists
who, by the time he arrived in Buchenwald, were virtually in
complete control of the camp. He learned that the power they exercised
had been won after a long, costly, bloody struggle against the common–
law criminals, who had ruled the camps from their inception until the
