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The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them

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I found a copy of this book in my college library after I finished reading Shirer's "Rise & Fall of the Third Reich". I read it before a summer in which I visited both Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps. Kogon was a prisoner in the German concentration camps, but worked for many years as a medical assistant until the war ended in 1945. As a result, he witnessed firsthand the atrocities that were committed against other people. The book provides a detailed account of the organization and operations within the concentration camp. It goes into some extremely graphic detail that I will never forget while I am alive. The book also discusses at length the political and psychological elements that made the existence and the operation of the concentration camps possible. This is the part that was most interesting to me, and I think the most important part of the book. It is not a fun book to read, but I believe it gives a very deep sense of realism about the depths of depravity to which human beings can sink when all restraints are removed. If you really want to see the awful story of the inside of the concentration camps in Germany, and understand what made them possible, you probably will not need to look any further than this book.

I have seen many movies & documentaries on WW2 and the Concentration Camps, but they pale to the account in this book! Nothing I have seen is as complete as the account Kogon has written. It is by no means complete, nor can it be once you begin reading the book. One amazing fact I found is that this 'book' was Kogon's report on the camps, which he was tempted to destroy, but decided not to (thankfully!). Kogon gives you a more in-depth idea of what the state of the Nazi regime was during that time and takes you inside the Buchenwald camp. For example, in here you learn how large the SS organization became, how many of the affairs during that time they controlled, and how they grew SO large that they couldn't even tell what 1 'department' was doing from another! Though he touches on some other camps, the account is mostly on Buchenwald. As Kogol was a survivor of Buchenwald(and reading what he & others went through, that ALONE is more than a miracle!), he knew first hand what went on.
Here you get more than a first person account (though Kogon does add some accounts, which are more than disturbing), you get a more complete idea of the inner 'workings' at Buchenwald, and some other camps. To give you an idea, this is probably 1 of the only times I've heard someone tell of what happened to the Jahovah Witnesses, Gays, Gypsies, and others!
I'm learning more from this book alone than I have watching any movie on, and I'm only 1/2 way through it! Of course it is disturbing, but more than that I come away amazed more than ever of how 1 group could do what they did to others, and to the extent they went through to try to break their bodies and spirits! When I read the details of each chapter I always leave with the respect of the pains Kogon must have gone through to get all his information.
If you want a more first person account on the camps, this may not be what you're looking for. I wanted to learn more about the overall time, and what went on. For me, this book never fails and continues to educate the more I read it.

This book was required reading when I was at the University of California, Riverside, years ago. It's one of my few "required readings" that is memorable. I will make no effort to make a synopsis of a detailed and tortuous story. It has been a very long time but some of the details are burned in my mind.

Kogon was, according to his granddaughter, born Jewish but raised Catholoic. The Nazis, however, arrested him for political "crimes" long before war erupted in Europe. Until the liberation in 1945, he had the opportunity to examine the complexity and inconsistencies of concentration camp life. Prisoners were divided into different color-coordinaed categories: criminals, politicals, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses etc. Interestingly, Jews weren't categorized specifically as Jews. They were identified by Stars of David colored black, for criminal; red for "political"; pink for homosexual etc. The psychology is fascinating. Jews were stripped of all dignity. They weren't imprisoned for being Jews but because they were Jewish thieves, communists or homosexuals. No doubt, the Jewish color-coding was arbitrary and had little correlation with any actual "crimes".

The SS was essentially an external force. Buchenwald was run by the prisoners. The prisoners were divided into two warring camps--political prisoners and criminals. There was a constant struggle for position because, that group which controlled things, became the staffers of Buchenwald administrative offices. The victors in this desperate struggle replaced names of friends within there group with the names of enemies in the other group--replaced them in the execution rolls.

Still, the SS was an important factor, and Kogon was fortunate enough to make friends with an SS physician, Ding-Schuller by name. Several time D-S saved Kogon's life by placing him in the Typhus ward when Kogon's name came up for extermination. Still, Ding-Schuller was responsible for many deaths and Kogon remembers him whistling a happy tune as he went from patient to patient injecting phenol into their hearts.

D-S committed suicide which Kogon finds regrettable. He reckons he was an essentially decent man caught up in a filthy system. Kogon says he would have testified in his behalf.

I'm somewhat amazed that I can remember this much of Kogon's tale. It has been many years but the story is memorable and is a real "must" for anyone involved in Halocaust studies.

Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico

The amazing thing about this book is how Kogon (1903-1987), a Christian and a prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp, could remain so objective while surrounded by the atrocities that were taking place around him. It is as if he knew that his account would eventually form the basis for the prosecutions of responsible German authorities. In fact, it provided the structure for the Buchenwald prosecutions.

Kogon spares no one in his descriptions, including himself. He acknowledges that he and others only survived by providing services essential to the running of the camp, that is, they collaborated. Who of us would not have done the same?

Buchenwald was the camp where Elie Wiesel was imprisoned, together with his father. When his father called his name at the time of his own death, Elie out of fear, failed to go to his side. Again, who of us would not have done the same?

The difference between Kogon and Wiesel and the rest of us is that they had the courage to publicly admit their failings.

Like another reviewer, I was particularly impressed by Kogon's observations on how gays, gypsies, the mentally ill, and Jehovah's Witnesses were singled out for special abuse. Jehovah's Witnesses, who refuse to recognize any governmental authority, particularly infuriated the Nazis, even more so when they went to their deaths still honoring their God. Since reading this book, I have always treated them with respect when they show up at our door selling their publication, the Watchtower.

After Buchenwald was liberated, Dwight Eisenhower had the foresight to have U.S. Army photographers photograph the camp and its prisoners in detail so that nobody could ever deny that the Holocaust took place. This book serves very much the same purpose.

Wikipedia has an extensive article about Kogon that is worth reading. Interestingly, it fails to mention this book.

Eugen Kogon, the author or this book, was a left-wing political prisoner at Buchenwald concentration camp. Throughout this book, he praises left-wing political groups. He even equates the Allied bombing of Hiroshima with the Nazi concentration camp system (p. 5). Nevertheless, he provides invaluable insights into this system. (My father had been an inmate at Gross Rosen and then Dachau). Many of Kogon's descriptions are very graphic, and the sensitive reader would do best to avoid this book.

A common feature of the Nazi concentration camps was forced labor under appalling conditions. Kogon writes: "The stone carriers on these details--mainly Jews, Russians, and Poles--were often compelled to run the gauntlet, staggering under their heavy loads. The most notorious of the SS `punchers' were always ready for such a `pastime'. Of 181 Poles who arrived at Buchenwald on October 15, 1939, more than half of them perished in this way within ten days." (p. 89).

In some instances, the Poles were actually treated worse than the Jews. Kogon comments: "In 1938-1939, the Jews, chiefly those of Vienna, had been forced to sign over their houses and property to Nazis and their creatures. The `sales prices' ranged down to ten marks! In the case of the Poles an even simpler procedure was adopted. They received no payment whatever. They were simply notified that they and their families had to leave their homes. To refuse to give the required signature was tantamount to suicide." (p. 188).

Ironic to the later Nazi project of destroying the European Jews, the Nazis apparently did not do a systematic search for Jews in the concentration camps themselves. Kogon writes: "Many Jews, especially if they were not German, lived in the camps unrecognized--i. e., the SS never identified them as Jews." (p. 185). And persecutions of those of partial Jewish descent was relaxed with time: "At a later day, `quarter Jews' and `half-Jews' were in part `aryanized' and no longer wore the yellow triangle. For most of those affected it was already too late." (p. 185).

Horrific "scientific" experiments were performed on the prisoners. For example, new malarial vaccines were tried on Polish Catholic priests incarcerated at Dachau, and this caused serious losses among them (p. 151). In addition, "At the Dachau concentration camp in 1942 and 1943 abscesses were artificially induced, in order to test the efficacy of allopathic and homeopathic drugs. The subjects were chiefly Catholic clerics and Poles." (p. 162).

Serious attempts were made by the Nazis to perfect mass-sterilization methods, and numerous prisoners were subject to heinous experiments in this regard (pp. 157-161). This demonstrates that Nazi plans for genocide of large numbers of peoples besides Jews (e. g., the Slavs) had in fact gone well beyond the talking stage.

The homosexuals incarcerated in the Nazi concentration camps have been magnified by modern gay-rights groups into some sort of systematic Nazi persecution of homosexuals. In actuality, the number of homosexuals incarcerated was relatively small. Furthermore, there were usually extraneous reasons for even this incarceration. Kogon writes: "It included individuals of real value, in addition to large numbers of criminals and especially blackmailers. This made the position of the group as a whole very precarious. Hostility toward them may have been partly rooted in the fact that homosexuality was at one time widespread in Prussian military circles, as well as among the SA and SS, and was to be mercilessly outlawed and erased. The Gestapo readily had recourse to the charge of homosexuality, if it was unable to find any other pretext for proceeding against Catholic priests or irksome critics. The mere suspicion was sufficient." (p. 37).

Interestingly, the concentration camps included some semblance of normal living in the form of sports, theatre, musical bands, etc. (pp. 125-130). All this took place within sight of or within hours of someone being tortured and murdered. Engaging in such diversions was not, of course, a sign of disrespect for the dying and dead. This sheds light on comparable behaviors elsewhere. Holocaust films have shown Poles engaging in normal activities, such as Sunday worship, shopping, etc., while the Jewish Ghetto was being burned by the Nazis. This has been misrepresented as Polish callousness to Jewish suffering. It was no such thing. Comparable to the diversionary activities in concentration camps, it was an attempt to carry on a semblance of normal living under the conditions of German terror.

A book that focuses on the horrors of the holocaust.... something that many feel is a taboo topic. However, this book does it well, and doesn't hide anything. Sometimes it's better to know the truth than to be sheltered. If you're interested in this area, I highly recommend it.

This book is about how the Nazi's were trying to perfect the practice that centuries of civilizations before them had stumbled thru - "What do you do with the perceived undesireables (ethnic cleansing) or your conquered foes?" The people that had somehow "risen" to the top of Hilter's Germany were allowed to inflict all kinds of heinous acts upon their victims. Although I am appalled at what was done, I'm amazed at how anyone believes that this is any different than what conquerers had done to those they conquered throughout history up until now? Does recording or documenting it makes it worse somehow? I've read in the Bible about when defeating a village they killed everything - people, animals, and burnt everything to the ground. Is this somehow better or worse? All I really know after reading this is that the survivors of these kinds of things are by far stronger people than I believe I ever could be!

After the liberation of Buchenwald Eugen Kogen was driven to the schloss that had once belonged to Balder von Sirach, the head of the Hitler Youth, by a team of U.S. Army SCHAEF psychological warfare soldiers where he wrote this turgid atrocity tale. Kogen writes:

"In order to dispel certain fears, and to show that this report [that is what he calls The Theory and Practice of Hell ] cannot be construed as an accusation against certain prisoners who held dominant positions, I read it aloud, at the beginning of the month of May 1945, as soon as it was down on paper, lacking only the last two chapters out of a total of twelve, to a group of fifteen people, who had been members of the clandestine government of the camp,[6] or who represented certain political alignments among the prisoners. These persons approved its accuracy and its objectivity. Present at the reading were:

Walter Bartel, Communist from Berlin, president of the international committee in the camp.
Heinz Baumeister, Social, from Dortmund, who for years had been a member of the Buchenwald Secretariat; second secretary of Block 50.
Ernst Busse, Communist, from Solingen, Kapo of the prisoners' infirmary.
Boria Banilenko, head of Communist youth groups in the Ukraine, member of the Russian committee.
Hans Eiden, Communist, from Trier, first camp elder.
Baptiste Feflen, Communist, from Aix-la-Chapelle, washhouse Kapo.
Franz Hackel, Left independent, from Prague. One of our friends, without position in the camp.
Stephan Heymann, Communist, from Mannheim, member of camp information office.
Werner Hilpert, Centrist, from Leipzig, member of the international committee in the camp.
Otto Horn, Communist, from Vienna, member of the Austrian committee.
A. Kaltschin, Russian prisoner of war, member of the Russian committee.
Otto Kipp, Communist, from Dresden, assistant Kapo of the prisoners' infirmary.
Ferdinand Romhild, Communist, from Frankfurt am Main, first secretary of the prisoners' infirmary.
Ernst Thappe, Social, head of the German committee.
Walter Wolff, Communist, head of the camp information office." (Page 20-21)

This statement, in itself, is enough to render suspect the entire testimony: "In order to dispel certain fears, and to show that this report cannot be construed as an accusation against certain prisoners who held dominant positions in the -- camp... " Here Eugen Kogon avoided reporting anything accusatory against the Haeftlingsfuehrung (inmate government); rather, he harbored grievances only against the SS. No historian could ever accept that. On the contrary, one is justified in thinking that in this way he has paid a debt to those who got him his privileged positions in the camp and that he has chosen to defend those with whom he had common interests, as well as himself, before the public.

The fifteen persons listed who passed judgment on his "accuracy and objectivity" are suspect. They are all Communists or fellow-travelers, and if, by chance, there was an exception, he could only be under obligation to the others. The list is made up of the highest functionaries of the Haeftlingsfuehrung of Buchenwald who, naturally, are likely to share Kogon's point of view.

Such titles as "president" or "member" of this or that "committee" are meaningless because they awarded these titles to themselves at the time of the camp's liberation and afterwards. Paying little attention to the notion of "committees" then, these fifteen persons were only too happy to find in Eugen Kogon an artful pen who freed them from responsibility for their actions in the eyes of posterity.

Kogen was a purportedly a Christian Socialist and a propagandist on the U.S. Army SHAEF payroll. He was a witness at the trial of Ilsa Koch and had a long career after the war as a Holocaust lecturer and author of another book on the mechanics of the gas chambers