One of the SS troops amused himself by having the orchestra repeatedly play a melody while the other prisoners were forced to sing and dance, without respite.
Genia Demianova, a Russian schoolteacher, was interrogated, tortured and gang raped in August And SS Col. Walter Blume, a commander in the Einsatzgruppen , the notorious SS death squad, was known to gather his men after a day of murder for evening singalongs around a campfire.
The single largest massacre of prisoners in a concentration camp occurred on Nov. In September , a group of German policemen prepared to execute Jewish men, women and children near the Ukrainian town of Cutnow. In postwar testimony, one of the policemen described the presence of a band as the Jews were marched to the grave site. Speak Freely. Tags Torture National Security. To collect children in one place to use them, to beat them, to starve them, to deny them an education all goes against the rights of children.
Nobody could believe that they were treated badly. The camp area was separated from the ghetto with a high wooden fence made by Jewish work units. Wooden barracks for inmates were built that offered little protection from the cold during winter, while the German guards, made up of SS and Volksdeutsch, were accommodated in existing brick buildings. Public domain. The camp was set up because the Germans had a problem about what to do with Polish children arrested for petty theft, smuggling and street trading, as well as children whose parents had been killed or arrested.
All the children had to work in the workshops and they were given daily quotas that had to be met under threat of punishment. The boys straightened needles and made shoes of straw, wicker baskets, belts for gas masks and leather parts for backpacks, while the girls worked in the laundry, kitchen, tailor's workshop and in the garden.
Testimonies from prisoners after the war tell of constant, unrelenting hunger. For breakfast, the children would receive a slice of camp bread and half a litre of black coffee, sometimes sweetened with saccharine. Dinner was a litre of rutabaga or potato soup with beet leaves or cabbage. Sometimes they were given a spoonful of marmalade. A typical punishment was to be denied food.
As a result, the children in the camp suffered from chronic hunger. They became experts at hunting birds and rodents and they would sprinkle dead flies and insects into their watery soup. Washing took place outside under a pump or in a basin, regardless of the weather. The consequences for those people who were denounced could be severe. During the course of an investigation, Gestapo officers interviewed witnesses, searched homes and apartments, and conducted surveillance.
In Nazi Germany, there were no limits to these activities. Many people feared Gestapo surveillance. In reality, the Gestapo had limited personnel and only used these methods in specific cases. There was no widespread surveillance of the German population. This was why denunciations were so important. The Gestapo was infamous for the ruthless ways it carried out interrogations. Gestapo officers regularly used intimidation, and psychological and physical torture.
It was common for Gestapo officers to beat detainees in custody. However, some people did die during interrogations or in Gestapo custody. Individual agents could choose to be lenient. They could let people go, dismiss cases, or issue warnings and fines. But Gestapo agents could also choose to be ruthless.
They could detain someone in prison indefinitely or condemn someone to a concentration camp. The only monitoring of these decisions came from within the Gestapo itself. Therefore, the Gestapo was responsible for policing Jews as part of its mission to defend the state. This became increasingly important in the second half of the s. The Gestapo did arrest some Jews in and However, these Jews were typically detained because they were Communists or Social Democrats.
The Gestapo considered them political opponents. They also criminalized extramarital sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. In response to the new laws, Gestapo offices throughout Germany established specialized Jewish Departments Judenreferate. One of their responsibilities was investigating cases of race defilement. This was their way of dealing with the supposed Jewish threat to the Nazi regime.
During this time, the Gestapo carried out a variety of tasks at home in Nazi Germany and abroad in German-occupied territories. These tasks were supposed to guarantee the security of the Nazi regime. The war radicalized the role of the Gestapo. When Gestapo agents deployed to German-occupied territories, they behaved brutally and with impunity against the local populations. Dams, Carsten and Michael Stolle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Translated from German published Gellately, Robert. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Johnson, Eric A.
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