THE NAZI INTERNEES
By THE REV. D. H. C. READ
CIVIL Internment Camp X is reputed to be the worst in the British zone. It is one of the numerous " cages " in which we are holding all ex-Nazi leaders liable to automatic arrest, and living conditions here are reported to be the most deplorable of all. Most people in Britain are vaguely aware that such camps exist, but, apart from occasional hysterical whispers of British "concentration camps," little is known of their nature or their inmates. Along with some other members of the British Churchmen's delegation I visited this particular camp and was given complete freedom to wander around it at leisure and speak to any of the inhabitants. It was obvious that the Commandant and his officers in charge welcomed the visit, and that they are most anxious to discharge their distasteful duty with the maximum of humanity and understanding. The set-up was familiar to me from experience in German P.O.W. camps during the war. The camp had originally been used by the Germans for Russian prisoners, and consists of the usual rows of standardised huts in separate compounds within a large barbed-wire perimeter. Between the outer and the inner gate lie the offices of the staff and the hospital blocks. On the corners are the machine-gun towers. The guards in this camp are German, and there were few of them to be seen. The most striking difference between this present camp and a German Gefangenenlager is the absence of armed guards and the chivvying and shouting which usually accompanied them.
The camp itself is a depressing enough spectacle. Rain always turns the paths in autumn and winter into a morass of mud, and there is little for prisoners to do save stand around in drab groups or lie on their bunks. As we drove in with the Commandant, men of all ages, dressed mostly in worn Army uniforms, touched their caps and looked at us with expressionless faces. They were neither sullen nor servile ; they just looked unhappy. Inside the huts they live a huddled existence in conditions certainly not worse than the Ofiags of 1940 and 1941. They have a few books, are allowed parcels and a limited mail. Four blankets are issued to each prisoner, but there is a shortage of straw for the mattresses. We sampled the evening meal and saw the ration sheets ; food is adequate. The worst feature is the washing accommodation—six taps for two thousand men. You can work that out in terms of ablutions on cold mornings.
Who are these men? They are ex-Nazi leaders above a certain rank. We spoke to dozens of them—a most remarkable mixture. Some were the criminal type, the kind of thug the Nazis creamed off for special duty. Others were the smooth-spoken, steely-eyed men of middle-age whom we used to know as more dangerous than the thugs. But a great many were very ordinary people whose one desire is to get home and do a job of work. And the anomaly of their retention is surely a matter for a much more speedy investigation than is actually happening. I spoke with a youngster of eighteen. He was arrested as a Hitler-Youth leader at the age of sixteen and a- half, and has been in internment ever since. His one desire, he said, was to be able to learn a trade and support his parents. Meanwhile we are keeping him indefinitely in this camp in the worst possible company. There must be hundreds like him.
In the centre of the camp I was surrounded by a crowd of eager and wistful Austrians. There were fifty of them, they said, all members of an orchestra. Towards the end of the war they found themselves transferred to Berlin and designated the official S.S. Symphony Orchestra. And now as S.S. men they were in automatic internment, and were almost without contact with their homes. The same story of transfer (involuntary) to the S.S. was told us by doctors. As senior medical officers in the Wehrmacht or Luftwaffe they had rankings in the S.S. that brought them into the categories for allied arrest. One doctor told me that the sole reason for his detention was that he was official medical inspector for the local Hitler Youth. In the hospital we spoke to legless ex-S.S. troops who are being cared for, but not promised release. These were the most disgruntled of any that we saw. We also visited the arrest-cells where camp- offenders are given solitary confinement. Most sentences were for about ten days for the infringement of local regulations—and such a sentence, as any ex-P.O.W. will tell you, can be more of a relief than a punishment in a crowded camp. We saw every inmate. In one cell was a young lad who answered my questions with a frank smile. Why in the camp? A youth leader. And why in the cell? Found with too many blankets. The door closed, and when the next one opened a most villainous countenance met our eyes. Why in the camp? " Gestapo." And why in the cell? " Thieving."
That contrast is a symbol of the major mistake in our denazification methods : lack of adequate discrimination. Civil internment camps are probably still necessary, but the function they fulfil in our present occupation is avowdly security, not punishment. The urgent need is to ensure the retention of potentially dangerous individuals, and the speedy release of the harmless. The present situation leads the Germans to suppose that the camps are a kind of reprisal, a notion that is encouraged by the practice of anonymous denunciation by which one who was, let us say, a member of the S.S. in 1935 and left it in 1938 can still be exposed to sudden arrest and intern- ment. Discrimination is now being effected by a system of categories in which all former Party members are graded, but the need for prompt action is urgent. At present a process of screening is going on by which a small proportion of internees have been released. But the Germans calculate that at the present rate of progress it will be seven years before the process is completed.
Meanwhile this mixed multitude lingers in the camps. An immediate step that ought to be taken is the segregation of the young, many of whom are potential leaders of the right sort if given the chance. Training camps for them, with good conditions, might work wonders for the future of Germany—and they must be given a definite date for final release. And it should not be difficult to declare an amnesty for the lower categories of all ages. It is difficult to over-estimate the harm that is being done by the prolongation of the denazification process. It is poisoning the life of the nation in at least three different ways. First, it is causing even well-intentioned Germans to think that revenge and not security is the real motive behind it. Secondly, it favours the very development it was designed to arrest—the silent nationalism that plots and hates. And thirdly, it is providing far too much room for the operation of petty spite and revenge among the Germans themselves.
From a close inspection of conditions in this camp it is right to insist that exaggerated reports have circulated as to our treatment of the internees. Any comparison with Nazi concentration camps is ludicrous. But what does impress the visitor is the injustice and the folly of keeping so many men more than a year and a-half after the end of the war behind barbed wire without a real opportunity to have their case heard, and with no discrimination of age or type. As the main reason for this is at present the lack of trained personnel for the screening process, it would seem essential to proceed to the swifter method of the amnesty for all but special classes. As I drove away, pondering the opinion of the British on the spot that a big proportion of the men they are holding are not dangerous, I put this question to my German driver, who worked in the official section of the camp : " In your opinion, how many of the ten thousand there are bad men? " He thought it over. " About two thousand." I think he was right.
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