- Headline
-
Germany Tortures Nazi Foes in Concentration Camps--Mowrer
- Sub-Headline
- Men Beaten, Writer Says
- Publication Date
- Thursday, September 7, 1933
- Historical Event
-
Dachau Opens
This database includes 466 articles about this event - Article Type
- Newspaper
- Location
- Page Section and Number
- 11
- Author/Byline
- Edgar Ansel Mowrer (Exclusive Cable to The Des Moines Tribune and the Chicago Daily News)
- Article Text
- LONDON, ENGLAND—Concentration camps for refractory Christians is the latest threat of Hitlerite Germany.
Exact information about all the camps is impossible, since the government will not give it and no one else knows. Apparently in all Germany there are about 30 of them. Each can house anywhere from 500 to 1,500 prisoners and probably there is no lack of tenants.
In theory, concentration camps are not really much different from those in which war prisoners were tucked away during the "late steel bath." In practice, the difference is enormous. War prisoners were left alone. Political prisoners in Nazi Germany are in process of what their captors call education.
Education.
This education is remarkable in the history of civilization. In three camps, which are most spoken of—Oranienburg, near Berlin; Dachau, near Munich, and Durrgoy, near Breslau—it is something as follows:
(Durrgoy is reported temporarily closed, while its former inmates are doing convict labor near Osnabruck.)
Prisoners are recruited from the following sorts of persons in order of their reputed iniquity—pacifists, Communists, Socialists, Jews, Republicans and, occasionally, Catholics and Nationalists. Recently the Prussian authorities broke up a secret camp in which brown shirts were imprisoning members of the steel helmet organization of the Nationalists.
No Trial.
Fully half the people in the camps are not what they are supposed to be, but have been arrested following private denunciation from motives of personal revenge. As there is no examination or trial, they have no recourse.
In the camps, they are divided into three classes, which may be called the "harmless," the "convertible" and the "inconvertible." The first, the harmless, are reasonably well treated. The second, the convertible, are only occasionally beaten and tortured.
The life of the third class, the unconvertible, is made so unbearable that they sometimes prefer suicide — a procedure which Nazi guards generally encourage.
Have Character.
Under the convertible heading, the Nazis understand those persons who can be brought to accept Nazi rule passively and, when possible, to accept Nazi doctrines.
The unconvertibles have character. They obviously have not the slightest intention of ceasing their struggle against the present rulers of Germany. Therefore, the choice offered them is of suicide or of having their spirits broken by torture or permanent imprisonment.
Here one must limit oneself to what is actually reported. This correspondent has spoken at length with prisoners released from Dachau, Durrgoy and Oranienburg. At the latter place, three Communists were initiated into camp life in the following manner.
Whipped.
Stripped of their shoes, they were pursued by brown shirts armed with whips around a gravel-strewn courtyard until they collapsed, the process taking five, six and nine hours, respectively.
After the first half hour, their feet began to bleed and, at the end, they were like raw meat with bones poking through. At Dachau old men were compelled to climb high fences and bend their knees a hundred times and perform other impossible things. They were beaten and derided when they failed.
But the best educational work begins after all have retired for the night. Suddenly a light appears in the dark barrack-like cells. The storm troopers are looking for their evening victims. - History Unfolded Contributor
- Shelby M.
- Location of Research
- Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)
Learn More about this Historical Event: Dachau Opens
- Dachau (Encyclopedia Article)
- Nazi Camps (Encyclopedia Article)
Bibliography
Berben, Paul. Dachau, 1933-1945: The Official History. London: Norfolk Press, 1975.
International Dachau Committee. The Dachau Concentration Camp, 1933 to 1945: Text and Photo Documents from the Exhibition. Dachau: Comite´ International de Dachau, 2005.
Marcuse, Harold. Legacies of Dachau: The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933-2001. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Neurath, Paul. The Society of Terror: Inside the Dachau and Buchenwald Concentration Camps. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2005.
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