THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS
concession of the totalitarian state to the prejudices of society which
can in this way most readily be accustomed to the existence of the
camps. The amalgamation of criminals with all other categories has
moreover the advantage of making it shockingly evident to all other
arrivals that they have landed in the lowest level of society. It soon
turns out, to be sure, that they have every reason to envy the lowest
thief and murderer; but meanwhile the lowest level is a good begin–
ning. Moreover it is an effective means of camouflage: this happens
only to criminals and nothing worse is happening than what de–
servedly happens to criminals.
8
The criminals everywhere constitute the aristocracy of the camps.
(In Germany, during the war, they were replaced in the leadership
by the Communists, because not even a minimum of rational work
could be performed under the chaotic conditions created by a criminal
administration. This was merely a temporary transformation of con–
centration camps into forced labor camps, a thoroughly atypical phe–
nomenon of limited duration. With his limited, wartime experience
of Nazi concentration camps, Rousset overestimates the influence
and power of the Communists.) What places the criminals in the
leadership is not so much the affinity between supervisory personnel
and criminal elements-in the Soviet Union .apparently the super–
visors are not, like the SS, a special elite of criminals-as the fact
that only criminals have been sent to the camp in connection with
some definite activity and that in them consequently the destruction
of the juridical person cannot be fully successful, since they at least
know why they are in a concentration camp. For the politicals this
is only subjectively true; their actions, in so far as they were actions
and not mere opinions or someone else's vague suspicions, or acci–
dental membership in a politically disapproved group, are as a rule
not covered by the normal legal system of the country and not juridi–
cally defined.
To the amalgam of politicals and criminals, wlth which concen–
tration camps in Russia and Gennany started out, was added at an
early date a third element which was soon to constitute the majority
of
all
concentration camp inmates. This largest group has consisted
ever since of people who had done nothing whatsoever that, either
in their own consciousness or the consciousness of their tormentors,
had any rational connection with their arrest. In Germany, after
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