The Thesaurus of Hell:
Twenty-Six Years of the Periodical Przeglad Lekarski-Oswiecim
by Wolf Oschlies
Translated by Martha Humphreys.

The journal Przeglad Lekarski (Medical Review) first appeared in Cracow in 1862 and has been published since then with few interruptions; throughout this period it was the professional journal most widely read by Polish physicians. Since 1961, the journal has each year added to its first issue a special supplement dealing with the experiences and consequences of the Nazi concentration camps, Przeglad Lekarski-0su,iecbn.

note: A selection of articles from Przeglad Lekarski-Oszviechn has now been pub lished as Die Ausclizvitz-Hefte: Tcxte der poliiischn Zeitsclzrift "Przeglad Lekarski" uber Iiistorische, psycliisclie und iiiedizinische Aspekte des Lebens und Sterbois in Au schwitz, ed. Hamburger Institut fur Sozialforschung, trans. from the Polish by Jochen August, Friedrich Griese, Veronika Korner, Olaf Kuhl, and Burkhard Roepke, 2 vols. (Weinheim and Basel: Beltz Verlag, 1987).

That journals entitled "Oswiecim," the Polish name for Auschwitz, appear in Poland should not surprise us. The Nazis erected about 6,000 camps, prisons, and detention centers in Poland. Even today, more than 30,000 persons who spent time in Nazi camps are still alive in Poland.

Each issue of Przeglad Lekarski-Oswiecini comprises approximately 250 pages arranged around three thematic foci: (1) medical, psychological, and sociological research; (2) forensic investigations; and (3) historical documentation. Each issue is introduced with a comprehensive foreword by Josef Bogusz, who speaks for the supplement's independent editorial board. Bogusz, the cloyen of the Polish medical profession, comments with sovereign tranquility upon events in Poland and abroad that touch upon the subject covered by Przeglad Lekarski. Thus, in recent issues he cited with approval the speech by the West German President Richard von Weizsacker concerning German responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era, and denounced the film Shoah as an inaccurate representation of Polish behavior.

Incidentally, the author is entitled to his own opinion, particularly as it was formed entirely within the context of the tradition of Polish social sciences. Unlike Czechoslovakia and Romania, in Poland these disciplines, particularly sociology, did not originate in academies and lecture halls but were the work of erudite laymen. These origins, even today, characterize Polish research in the social sciences. The method is strictly empirical, focuses primarily on national concerns, and is anthropocentrically and relatively unconcerned with international theoretical discussions and interpretations.

Przeglad Lekarski is also within this tradition, and that is what comprises its unique value within the framework of the Holocaust. World War II began around the issue of Poland, the war lasted longer in Poland than elsewhere, the country and people made the most severe sacrifices in the war, and the worst Nazi concentration camps were located on Polish territory. Czeslaw Pilichowski, who headed the Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland and who died a few years ago, once projected that the bare chance of survival was 9 percent in Auschwitz, 28 percent in Maidanek, 29 percent in Stutthof, 44.5 percent in Gross-Rosen, and 46.5 percent in Plaszow. And this calculation does not even include the camps created solely for the purpose of extermination, which were also on Polish soil.

At the present, there are still more than 30,000 persons living in Poland who spent years of their lives in a concentration camp. In Poland there is probably not a single family that did not have to suffer from the murderous German occupation. At every step and turn are the ruins of the camps, prisons, and detention centers, of which the Nazis erected a total of approximately 6,000 in Poland. To investigate, to enlighten, to help, and to have a preventive effect is the diverse task which Przeglad Lekarski has addressed for over a quarter of a century and which will continue to concern it.

The following pages attempt to provide a brief overview of the topic and findings in this periodical. This survey is inevitably fragmentary since it is impossible to acknowledge the entire work of the Cracow authors, not to mention the impossibility of dealing with the compilation and secondary literature that have been published in Przeglad Lekarski

In the 1984 issue, Stanislaw Klodzinski stated that "death was the rule, survival the exception in the camp." This realization is inescap able to anyone working on the problems related to the concentratior camps. Anyone who reads memoirs of survivors, anyone who deal with their statements (such as those that have been collected in more than 200 volumes in the archive of Auschwitz), anyone who reads testimony contained in monographs about concentration camps constantly vacillates between feelings of dismayed outrage about what happened and dissatisfaction with the manner of presentation. Witt continued reading, the "suspicion" is strengthened that all the state ments fall short of being representative, that these are the expression of a so-called elite who, merely through the fact of their survival, have set themselves apart from the masses that were imprisoned in concentration camps.

Reflections of this kind are only noted indirectly and marginally ir the pages of Przeglad Lekarski. Here one is dealing more with question that are, so to speak, of direct concern, the kinds of questions that flov~ directly from research into the concentration camp syndrome. This re search began even during the German occupation of Poland, and the first publications appeared in 1944 in Lublin. Since then much work has been done on this topic in Poland and elsewhere without having achieved absolute clarity about what, in the end, constitutes the concentration camp syndrome. It deals of course with the totality of the in juries to health that have occurred in the wake of imprisonment in a concentration camp. But at this point the ideas already become fluid for the syndrome is based on a singular unity of psychological and physical consequences resulting from the particular conditions of in carceration. The 1986 issue of Przeglad Lekarski noted that "the goal o these conditions was to destroy all inmates within the briefest possible time," and then concisely provided the precise details as to what awaited each prisoner in a concentration camp:

Hunger, caloric and vitamin deficiencies, frost, heat, inadequate clothing, forced labor, tortures, beatings, lack of sleep, poorest accommodation, lack of water and soap, plagues of insects, diseases (particularly infectious ones), abscesses, wounds, etc., plus the constant threat of death, humiliation, isolation from the normal world, . . . the impossibility of gratifying intellectual needs, lack of religious consolation, constant performance of activities on command and under duress, uncertainty of fate, etc.

Przeglad Lekarski holds a special methodological position concerning the concentration camp syndrome. Unlike memoirs, which represent the recollection of one individual, and the work of doctors and psychiatrists who always deal with only one patient, this journal has presented studies yielding comprehensive and representative results. That is the achievement of the particular methods of Przeglad Lekarski.

In detail the procedure for these studies was as follows. First, the editors set up a topic for which authentic material was to be gathered. For this purpose a specially prepared questionnaire was sent to a group (selected or chosen by drawing lots) of 100 to 200 former prisoners. The format of the questionnaire provided for free statements with no restriction as to length and also required concrete data concerning the topic under investigation. The return rate of the filled-out questionnaires varied, but as a rule was usually at least 50 percent. Even for a very normal investigation, that would be a good result. With this group of persons, it is absolutely astonishing; for the respondents are usually between 55 and 70 years of age, change of residence and instances of death are frequent, and each topic must inevitably awaken old recollections (hence not infrequently must awaken the unwillingness to go into the proposed problem at all).

For each study the completed questionnaires were collected and evaluated, but the type of evaluation employed differed from the simple counting of heads common to sociologists. Basically, the journal cited the statements collected from former prisoners extensively, arranged the citations, and provided connecting interpretations. A list of the respondents and of the appropriate literature was appended to each study. During the last quarter century, Przeglad Lekarski published at least a hundred of these studies, which form the most authentic and moving contributions to the literature of the concentration camps.

Death, hunger, and compulsory labor were the three everyday occurrences in a concentration camp. In 1982 one issue dealt expressly with "Death and Dying in the Concentration Camps." Przeglad Lekarski states: "Why so late? Because this topic, surely the most important in the entire set of problems relating to the pathology of the concentration camp, requires a certain distance-temporally as well as personally." This distance also frees the statements from potential distracting emotions or, as is stated elsewhere in the study, "the further it recedes into the past, the more the thirst for revenge diminishes."

The respondents to the topic of death considered their lives since liberation as a gift. We may ask why this is so. Let the respondents speak for themselves:

From the moment of arrest, the prisoners stood eye to eye with death, which threatened them each moment.

In Auschwitz there was a threat to one's own life every day, for nobody knew what awaited him after returning from work.

The atmosphere of murder and death penetrated the prisoner community so thoroughly that after a two or three months' stay in the camp an inmate was preoccupied by it and was constantly prepared for death.

People reacted in an extreme way to this uninterrupted threat: either with utter indifference ("Why go through all this, isn't it better to be dead?") or with great determination to survive ("to prolong life for at least the next hour, the next day"). There were a few things people themselves could do to survive. One respondent, a priest, even related a whole codex of behavior: not be conspicuous, avoid encounters with SS and other officials, carry out assignments, endure harassment ("I'll show you that a Polish priest will do even that"), in unobserved moments just go through the motions of working, don't provide any reason for punishment, fall to the ground at the first blow by the SS.

Mostly, however, people were completely exposed and defenseless. In long quotations the victims themselves speak of the ongoing fear of death that spread among them in response to unexpected "selections"; of the alternation between despair and hope in Block 11 (the death block); of the martyrdom of children ("very few children who were born or were imprisoned there survived it"); and of those who, as Muselindnner, even "during their lifetimes crossed the threshold of death."

As early as 1977, the journal had asked survivors for an answer to the question "Why I survived," and in 1985 published several studies of survivors and their descendants. The result could be summarized only in a general hypothesis: anyone who survived the concentration camp owed a debt of gratitude, not to his physical strength, but to his psychological makeup that equipped him with a special will toward suirvival. These characteristics have carried over to subsequent generations. When we have not eaten for a few hours, we consider ourselves "hungry" and look for food. But what does this mean? Are we like those concentration camp survivors who, even four decades after the end of the war, cannot be sent shopping by their relatives because they unfailingly and compulsively buy more bread than they and the whole family can eat? Anyone who ever had contact with concentration camp survivors is familiar enough with such instances, all of which compel a single question: What must these people have suffered if, so long after their liberation, they are still under such compulsion?

Probably one must have been in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbruck ... to understand what being hungry means. Only there in the camps did the word hunger reveal its full meaning. I understand that there are vari- ous meanings of hunger, that "I am hungry" is not the same as "I am starving."

In the concentration camps located on Polish soil, nourishment was so calculated that an inmate was physically at an end after three to six months. Up to that time, he had been provided with a monotonous, empty and saltless diet, mostly consisting of watery soups and bread with a spread (margarine, marmelade, artificial paste), which never sufficed to bring about even a temporary feeling of satiation. The lack of fluids corresponded to the absence of nourishment, and both caused the inmates double pain: their days were filled with torturous feelings of hunger and thirst, their nights with obsessive dreams of eating and drinking.

Anyone who wanted to survive had to find supplementary nourishment. By the time a certain stage of deterioration had taken place, the inmates pounced on whatever appeared edible, including even the grass between the stones in the pavement (and several statements report instances of cannibalism). A big factor in survival was "scrounging" (in German organisieren), a concept familiar to every concentration camp prisoner. Scrounging was understood to mean clever, usually daring acts and thefts that brought in some additional food. Never, though, was scrounging practiced among comrades. Whereas in the "normal" world theft prompted by hunger is as a rule mildly punished or not punished at all, in the concentration camp the theft of bread from comrades was regarded altogether as the worst crime. Anyone found guilty of this was a goner. Several respondents describe the means by which the oldest inmate in the block killed the offender.

For the tortured, the greatest good fortune was the receipt of a package. One of them vividly describes what that meant for him:

The day we received the first package (a right that was extended only to certain categories of prisoners) was a big day of celebration for us, and the hope that we could receive others in the future was probably the decisive factor in our not collapsing physically and in enduring until the end of the war. Even now, 32 years later, I feel the unusually emotional and strong stirrings associated with the waiting at roll call until the clerk called out my camp identification number, which meant that a package from my family had arrived.

Unbekanntes Auschwitz (Unknown Auschwitz) is the title of a Polish book containing several Przeglad Lekarski studies. The studies include such unexpected subjects as concentration camp humor. In 1971 the editors sent questionnaires about this subject to approximately 400 survivors. There were 392 responses, including 60 that were "very detailed and exhaustive."

And how was the situation with "Laughter in Hell"? In 1973 the jour- nal published its findings, stating "that most of the addressees re- sponded negatively to the inquiry and mentioned no examples." But some of the survivors recalled witty songs, anecdotes, and other mate- rial that had been concocted about conditions in the camp, or even something humorous from the camp itself. In this material a big factor was the "comedy" of the SS, which could be dangerous, even life- threatening, for the prisoners if the SS engaged in their brutal jokes with them.

There was humor, however, the specific "camp humor"-sick, macabre, pathological, like the entire atmosphere from which it arose. A respondent recalled the following episode:

In the summer of 1941, we were using the so-called dray to haul the corp- ses of prisoners who had died in the camp hospital to the nearest cre- matorium. At the turn to the main entrance gate of the camp, one of the wheels came loose from the cart. The dray lost balance, suddenly tipping to one side, and the corpses fell on the ground. The overturn happened so suddenly that one of the accompanying attendants completely van- ished under the large mass of corpses. Suddenly we noticed how arms- like the arms of a breast-stroke swimmer-popped up out of the pile of corpses. Then somebody from our group screamed, "Adam, you have to do the crawl, then you'll swim your way out faster!" Although the occa- sion was so horrible, I still remember that we burst into screams of laugh- ter, and later we frequently even asked Adam how things were with his swimming skills.

Music played a similar role in the concentration camp, a topic that Aleksander Kulisiewicz dealt with at length in several long articles in 1974, 1975, 1977, and 1979. How were the "official" camp songs created, songs that had to be sung at roll calls and on the way to work? Which songs did all prisoners have to know, which songs were the cre- ation of the prisoners themselves, how was official song material changed and parodied, which satirical songs did the prisoners use to react to such events as the battle of Stalingrad? All these questions were comprehensively answered by Kulisiewicz. From the memoirs of survivors, it is known that the prisoners were starved for culture, and that they used the night (when the SS had left the camp) for discussion and recitation. Przeglad Lekarski took up this topic as well, polling 332 persons in 1972. Numerous statements were submitted, some very extensive, that served as the basis for a 1974 study, "Cultural Life in Auschwitz." Cultural expression in the camps was mainly oral. Anyone who had anything interesting to report, from a private adventure to a description of a Warsaw church in terms of art history, was highly regarded among the prisoners. And anyone who was able to recite literary works from memory always had an attentive audience.

Less frequently there was reading material-a few newspapers stolen from the writing room, papers that had served as insulation inside packages, a few books that circulated in the camp hospital. Nonetheless, people tried to muster their strength to make further education possible for others, for instance, for young prisoners who had arrived at the concentration camp after a few years of school, some of whom managed to complete the entire upper school program. In the archive and the special collections at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, one can still see other aspects of culture in the camp: pictures, drawings, sculptures, woodcarvings, poems, and prose. Several authors became extremely popular-Krystyna Zywulska, for instance, whose "Unmailed Letter to My Mother" is kept in numerous copies and variations in the Auschwitz archive:

Mother, I'm writing you today
the monthly letter that is permitted
but it's always just the same
the banal text that's so familiar
I'm healthy, I'm doing well
and thank you for your package....

Hardly any topic is missing in Przeglad Lekarski, as there are even detailed studies about camp money, postal service between the camps, and similar matters. Nonetheless, there is one great omission: the topic of language used within the camp. How did nationals from the approximately 35 countries that were represented in each concentration camp communicate with each other? What was the effect of the dominating role of German on the language conventions of the camp? Was there a jargon that was typical for the concentration camp? Were camouflage elements used in speaking?

These questions have unfortunately not been explored in a systematic way in postwar research about the concentration camps. Thus an important epistemological opportunity has been disregarded because the language conventions of the prisoners were a phenomenon sui generis-an integral form of speech that simultaneously served as a language of conspiratorial camouflage, a factually oriented technical language, and a jargon integrating various groups. A sociolinguistics that is specific to concentration camps could convey information about the texture of life and the unbearable suffering of the prisoners. We need it urgently, in the interest of enlightenment about what happened and the prevention of possible repetitions. In the immediate postwar era, some Polish scholars and authors have provided partial studies of the language conventions used in the camps.

Starting in 1978, and consistently since 1984, Przeglad Lekarski has published segments of an Auschwitz dictionary (Slowifik oswiecimski). In the brief introductions to the lists of words, the necessary tasks are precisely staked out. Thus, for instance, it was stated in 1984:

The language that was used in Auschwitz accurately represents in its lexical and stylistic devices the pathological conditions that prevailed in the camp. This language does not deceive. It should be investigated, and this research should be in two directions: from the aspect of linguistics, and particularly the aspect of sociolinguistics, as a general means of communication by a multilingual community in an artificially created hell.

From the normative point of view, it deals with linguistic trash (mierzwajezykowa) for the purpose of forming a pathological image. This image consists mainly of broken German and broken Polish among masses of human beings, beating and beaten, where evil was rewarded, where a subculture of the lowest origin predominated, where the question of a merciless battle for survival at least for the next day was thrust into the absolute foreground. Under the aspect of camp reality, the vocabulary that was used there is its logical product. In order to analyze this vocabulary generally, it is necessary, to the extent possible, to reconstruct, collect, order, and define. In doing so, routine lexicographical methods and other approaches can be used. Only then can specialists, ranging from social psychologists to linguists, address themselves to this topic.

Today, after 30 years, I maintain distance from the Germans.... I have no trust in them. I do not forget, and I know that all of them are like those in the camp. I believe that for centuries there has been something evil in this people.

But the issue raised by this poll did not concern the relationship to Germans but rather to former persecutors. Understandably, 65 percent of the respondents admitted to "attitudes of unforgiveness," and the answers revealed interesting details of how prisoners occasionally defended themselves even in the concentration camp. Spies were slain or poisoned; SS people and their families were infected with typhus and other diseases. Several respondents also recalled what happened during the first days following the liberation of the camp or at the end of a death march: the prisoners dealt summarily with their torturers, and the onlooking soldiers (particularly American troops are mentioned frequently) scarcely hindered them.

There is another group, almost as large, that did not want to return like for like. "I have not initiated any activity in the search for my persecutors, for I am not a vengeful person, and in addition I am a practicing Catholic." There are many such answeers, almost all in the same vein; and still others recalled with a shudder having witnessed scenes of revenge immediately after the liberation that they considered "pathological. " "Revenge-that is a terrible thing."

And, finally, many others were able to mention some persecutors by name, remembering them as "good" because of their having retained some trace of humanity. In this context "good" could be extremely relative: "Effinger, the head of the Effektenkammer at Birkenau, did not beat his women workers. And there were some who really were good because they felt the inhumanity of their situation as guards. They provided the prisoners with bread, spoke with them, consoled them, and informed them of political events and the fate of relatives."

And what else remained? In conclusion, let us select one more investigation conducted by Przeglad Lekarski; it is perhaps the most interesting and shattering one: "Behavioral Stereotypes Among Former Prisoners of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp." In 1974-1975, 108 persons were polled on this topic, 72 responded, and in 1976 the journal published an extensive report.

Anyone who reads these pages gets an impression that for many prisoners concentration camp internment never ended. They remain branded by it to the end of their lives, are torturously reminded of it by everyday things, and can no longer stop habits acquired in the camps. In this context, an interesting problem for Germans is the attitude of these people toward Germans. In Poland there was (and in milder form, there still is) an official distinction, so to speak, between the "good" Germans, the "kindred race" living in East Germany, and the "evil" Germans of the West. As we know from empirical investigations, this distinction by the Poles was never unanimous and most likely has turned into the opposite after the catastrophes of Solidarity. In any case, the ex-prisoners had their own perspective of things, and one recalled:

In connection with my work, I traveled to the German Democratic Republic for the first time since the end of the war. Even the first contact at the border-with East German customs and military officials as well as with German train personnel-awakened in me a strong, disagreeable impression. The sight of uniforms that were so similar in color and cut to those worn by the SS produced in me some kind of confused feelings of unease and fear.

Loudly spoken German, especially if expressed in a self-righteous, pompous tone, awakened in me profoundly disagreeable reactions. The speech by Wilhelm Pieck [the first president of East Germany] at the first congress of former political prisoners, which was held in the Warsaw Technical Academy, produced extremely disagreeable impressions in me. I had arrived somewhat late at the congress, was not prepared to hear German spoken, and it gave me the feeling that the ceiling was falling on my head.

Approximately 6,000 pages fill the 26 issues of Przeglad Lekarsi-Oswiecim published to date. In this overview it was neither possible nor necessary to do justice to such an abundance of material. The task was solely to introduce a unique series of special issues of a journal in its methodololical and topical specialties.

This journal should become a kind of obligatory reading for all people of good will. That will of course not happen, for relatively few people know the Polish language; and fewer and fewer people are in- terested in the set of problems relating to the concentration camps. Nonetheless, there will soon be an opportunity to gain a deeper insight into this journal, as a two-volume selection of texts, translated into German and comprising 1,000 pages, is nearing completion. Tollite et legite! Recognize the work, nature, and value of a Polish journal that is altogether worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.