Muselmann (concentration camp)

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Sculpture The Dying Prisoner in the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (2006)

Moslem (also: Moslem , plural Moslems , Polish Muzułman ) were in the Lagerszpracha of Nazi concentration camps those prisoners named by utter malnutrition to the bone emaciated were already hungry and caused characteristic behavioral changes through to the agony showed.

Appearance

Deceased, malnourished prisoners, Buchenwald concentration camp (April 1945)
Survivors in Gusen Concentration Camp (June 1945)

People who were in the last stage of starvation were called "Muselmänner" in the concentration and extermination camps. They were characterized by the effects of hunger: skin and skeleton, swollen legs and bellies. Their only instinct was self-preservation and the search for food, for example potato peel from waste bins. The SS they were by this behavior as an example of " subhumans ," she did not take them to the infirmary. Kapos treated them brutally. Some of the inmates also pushed them out of the residential barracks, as they had fallen into apathy and agony of starvation and feared among other inmates that they would "end up the same way".

Apart from the end of the war , when the Allies liberated the camps, a person who had reached the stage of "Muselmann" had practically no chance of surviving. If he did not die of exhaustion, hunger or illness, the SS " selected " him to be killed.

Origin of the word

Historically, it is not clear where the term comes from, but research has now found indications of a possible origin.

Former prisoner Viktor Frankl reports in his memoirs that camp inmates used this expression for one another. He puts this in connection with the system of prison functionaries and derives these phenomena from the general barbarization of people under conditions such as camp detention, forced labor and malnutrition .

Assuming that " Muselmann " is a term for Muslims - albeit outdated during the Nazi era, explanations for the term were initially sought in orientalist associations such as Muslim prayer postures or turban-like rags wrapped around the head. Linked to this is the assumption that the term refers to (Islamic) fatalism . This is how Eugen Kogon calls the “Muselmänner” “people of unconditional fatalism”.

It is likely that the term was adopted in the camp language because "Muselmann" in German colloquial language no longer (only) referred to a Muslim, but to a sick, weak or old person. The use of the term in this meaning was probably promoted not least by the well-known coffee canon composed by Carl Gottlieb Hering :

CAFFEE
not drink so much coffee shop,
not for children, the Turks drink,
weakens the nerves,
Makes you pale and sick,
Do not be a Moslem,
He can not let him.

It is possible that the name got into the camp language through this song, which combines the two meanings “Muslim” and “weak / sick person”. For example, the survivor Renata Yesner reports in her autobiography: “'Don't be a Muselmann!' This word stayed firmly in the conversations ”. The designation could have been introduced into the camps by German concentration camp guards as well as by prisoners.

According to Herman, Primo Levi in his work I sommersi ei salvati (1958) describes a Muselmann as a person who has reached a low point of humiliation and an absolutely passive attitude. Here, however, according to Herman, a phase is indicated in which an active decision can save one from this state.

The phenomenon and term “Muselmann” are examined philosophically by Giorgio Agamben and Gil Anidjar .

Auschwitz concentration camp

In his report, which he wrote in the summer of 1945, the inmate Witold Pilecki described the following:

In the spring of 1941, the term Muselmann spread among the camp inmates . This is what the German guards called a prisoner who was so emaciated and jaded that he could hardly walk - and the word kept. As it was said in a camp song: Muslims "... they flutter in the wind ...". To be a Muselmann meant that you were on the borderline between life and ... crematorium. It was very difficult for someone who had come this far to regain their strength. Usually you ended up in the so-called protection block (block 14 according to the old and 19 according to the new numbering). There the camp administration granted several hundred such unfortunate figures the grace to stand motionless in the corridors all day long; but just standing around killed people.

According to Hermann Langbein , the expression "Muselmann" was probably used in the camp language in Auschwitz. He had been a clerk in the Dachau prisoners' infirmary from May 1, 1941, and was transferred to KL Auschwitz in August 1942. He reports the following:

The destroyed people were called Muselmanns in Auschwitz . The term was later used in other camps as well. Before I came to Auschwitz, I hadn't met him in Dachau. There one said to the decrepit in Bavarian dialect Kretiner .

literature

  • Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons . Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .
  • Mona Körte: silent witness. The 'Muselmann' in memory and narration . In: Silke Segler-Messer (ed.): From testimony to fiction. Representation of camp reality and the Shoah in French literature after 1945 . Frankfurt am Main 2006, pp. 97-110.
  • Hermann Langbein : People in Auschwitz . Ullstein book no. 33014. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Vienna 1980, pp. 111-128, ISBN 3-548-33014-2 .
  • Witold Pilecki : Voluntarily to Auschwitz. The prisoner Witold Pilecki's secret records. Translated from the English by Dagmar Mallett , Zurich, 2013, Orell Füssli Verlag 2013, ISBN 978-3-280-05511-3 .
  • Zdziław Ryn, Stanisław Kłodziński : On the border between life and death. A study of the appearance of the "Muselmann" in the concentration camp [1983]. Translated from Polish by Olaf Kühl. In: The Auschwitz Booklets. Volume 1. Texts from the Polish magazine “Pzregląd Lekarski” on historical, psychological and medical aspects of life and death in Auschwitz . Published by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research . Weinheim / Basel 1987, pp. 89–154.
  • Marie Simon: The word Muselmann in the language of the German concentration camps . In: Julius H. Schoeps (ed.): From two witnesses mouth . Gerlingen 1992, pp. 202-211.
  • Nicole Warmbold: camp language. On the language of the victims in the Sachsenhausen, Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps . Bremen 2008, pp. 280–285.
  • Danuta Wesołowska: Words from Hell. The "lagerszpracha" of Auschwitz prisoners . From the Polish by Jochen August. Krakau 1998, pp. 120-136.
  • Kathrin Wittler: "Muselmann". Notes on the history of a designation . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 61, 2013, No. 12, pp. 1045-1056.

Web links

Wiktionary: Muselman  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks

  1. ^ Stanislav Zámečník : That was Dachau. Published by the Comité International de Dachau . Luxemburg 2002, ISBN 2-87996-948-4 , pp. 149f.
  2. ↑ Cf. in summary Kathrin Wittler: "Muselmann". Notes on the history of a designation . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 61, 2013, No. 12, pp. 1045-1056.
  3. ^ VE Frankl: ... to say yes to life anyway. A psychologist experiences the concentration camp . dtv, Munich 1982, 22nd edition. P. 39f: He quotes an Auschwitz inmate and colleagues with the words: “Do you already know what we call a Muselman? A wretched figure, a downcast who looks sickly, is emaciated and can no longer work hard physically. Sooner or later, mostly sooner or later, every Muselman will step into the gas! ”; P. 76 (Dachau): “… there was no crematorium there , so no gas chambers either . And this meant that someone who had become a 'Muselmann' could not be brought straight into the gas, but only when a so-called ambulance to Auschwitz was put together. "
  4. ↑ Eugen Kogon: The SS State . The system of the German concentration camps [1946]. Munich 1974, p. 400.
  5. ^ Marie Simon: The word Muselmann in the language of the German concentration camps . In: Julius H. Schoeps (ed.): From two witnesses mouth . Gerlingen 1992, pp. 202-211.
  6. ↑ The Canon. A songbook for everyone . Edited by Fritz Jöde. Vol. 3: From Romanticism to the Present . Wolfenbüttel 1925, p. 8.
  7. ↑ Kathrin Wittler: "Muselmann". Notes on the history of a designation . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 61, 2013, No. 12, pp. 1045-1056.
  8. ↑ Renata Yesner: Every day was Yom Kippur. A childhood in the ghetto and concentration camp . Translated from English and with an afterword by Mona Körte. Frankfurt am Main 1995, p. 141, quoted here from Kathrin Wittler: "Muselmann". Notes on the history of a designation . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 61, 2013, No. 12, pp. 1045–1056, here p. 1048.
  9. ↑ Herman, Judith, Verena Koch (translator), and Renate Weitbrecht (translator). The Scars of Violence: Understanding and Overcoming Traumatic Experiences. Paderborn: Junfermann Verlag, 3rd edition 2010. P. 121.
  10. ↑ Giorgio Agamben: The "Muselmann". In: Giorgio Agamben: What remains of Auschwitz. The archive and the witness. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2003, pp. 36-75; Gil Anidjar: The Jew, the Arab. A History of the Enemy . Stanford 2003. Cf. critically Fethi Benslama: La représentation et l'impossible . In: L'Evolution psychiatrique 66 (2001), pp. 448-466, esp. Pp. 460-465.
  11. ↑ Pilecki 2013, p. 110.
  12. ↑ Klee 2013, p. 246.
  13. ↑ Langbein 1980, p. 113.