Concentration Camps

Concentration Camps (see Holocaust Children Studies)

• Auschwitz -- Bergen-Belsen -- Buchenwald -- Dachau -- Gunskirchen -- Mauthausen -- Plaszow -- Majdanek

• Nazi Ghettos -- Internment Camps -- Transit Camps -- Concentration Camps -- Mass Shootings -- Death Camps

Overview

Concentration Camps were built with the aim of exploiting the work of Jews until exhaustion and death.

Some children (especially teenagers) survived in concentration camps, essentially

(1) Pretending to be older and being treated as adults and slave workers.

(2) Being employed as errand boys.

(3) In some family camps (Theresienstadt, Bergen-Belsen, and Auschwitz).

(4) Being selected for medical experiments (at Auschwitz and elsewhere).

Says Primo Levi : «The children were in Birkenau like birds of passage: after a few days, they were transferred to the Block of experiences, or directly to the gas chambers»

Errand Boys

Self-disciplined children who could speak German (and other language), could serve the Germans or the Kapos as errand boys. In the language of the camp they were called Pipel / Piepel.

The way they were treated depended on their protector. In order to do their job they were generally well fed and well dressed. Some were relatively well-treated, others were badly abused, physically and/or sexually. At any moment, if their protector was displeased, they could be sent to the gas chamber.

The reputation of these children in the camp depended largely on the reputation of their protector. Some of these children were hated by the other inmates since in order to please their protector they behaved badly with the other inmates. Some were pitied as innocent victims and the other inmates understood their suffering. Some were loved as they tried their best to help as much as they could.

The testimony of Elie Wiesel

"At the camp the pipels were hated: they often showed themselves to be more cruel than the adults. One day I saw one of them, thirteen years old, beat his father."

However, in chapter 4 of The Night, in one of the most famous passages of the book, Elie Wiesel recalls witnessing the horrific hanging of a young pipel, who was beloved by the prisoners in the camp. Elie describes the boy as being angelic and beautiful. After a stash of weapons is found in the Oberkapo's block, the pipel is tortured before being sentenced to death by hanging. During the hanging, the pipel's body is too light, and he continues to breathe as he hangs from the rope. For a half an hour, the pipel dangles from the rope, "lingering between life and death." The prisoners are forced to watch the delicate, beautiful child hang to death in the middle of the prison. Elie mentions that the pipel was still alive when he walked past him. When one prisoner begins to ask where God is, Elie silently answers,

Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows . . . (90)

Survivors

Among the children who survived as Pipel were Thomas Buergenthal, Luigi Ferri, Beni Virtzberg, Hellmuth Szprycer, Michal Kraus, and others.