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outbreak of total war. He knew that the S.S. maintained the politicals
in power for one reason only: the directives from Berlin called for
production, and the criminals were anarchical and incapable of organ–
izing work. The politicals, of course, were frequently corrupted by their
power, even to the point where the ruling fraction was obliged to take
action against some of its members. For Wetterwald, however, the
Block–
attester
was a dangerous brute with a club, whatever his political
antecedents.
But, says Rousset, when lists were made up for a transport to Dora,
which meant a very high mortality en route and almost certain
death for the survivors in Dora, the prisoner-functionaries were able to
manipulate the lists and thus, at least, choose who was going to die.
It was in this way, for example, through the clandestine liaison be–
tween the French Communist cell and the German Communists who
ruled the camp, that many French intellectuals were removed from
the lists and, temporarily at least, saved from extermination. The nature
of this feat can be appreciated if one remembers that all this, the strug–
gles within the bureaucracy, the trading of life for life, the sordid give
and take between the ragamuffin tyrants who controlled one area of
power or another in the camp, went on in utter secrecy: even the mass
of Communists in the plebe, infinitely more bedraggled and hungrv than
the bureaucrats, could not be allowed to suspect what was going on.
Betrayal meant disaster. The S.S. punished the merest suspicirm of
prisoner-organization with death.
You must read Rousset's books. I mention them now only in order
to reinforce my point about the central and tremendously dramatic
relevance of the camps, of the experience of internment, to our times.
These are the days when whole nations are interned, when millions of
men, women and children are, properly speaking, formed in camps and
barracks, when all human society tends to assume the patterns of a
camp. Meeting Rousset for the first time, I plunged dizzily into his
world of gargantuan humor and vigor and I was sure, as I listened to
him tell his fantastic stories of the Ubues.que aspects of Buchenwald,
that man could master the Terror. Now, I am not so sure. We were
at the home of Rene Menard, the editor of a series of
Cahiers)
published
by an association of ex-prisoners. Rousset, round and bouncing with
energy, a shock of curly black hair constantly falling over his glasses,
kept assailing his comrades with memories, a kaleidoscope of horror,
obscenity, grotesquerie and surprise, roaring with laughter over the
patness and malignity of his own intelligence, his understanding, his
mastery of this immensely comic Inferno.
"Te souviens-tu?
. . .
T e
rappelles-tu?
...
Impayable
...
ebourrifant!"
And what a profound
joy he drew from his pipe, which he kept stuffing with his stubby, hairy
finger! Now that I have read his books and find myself distressed by
