PUNISHMENTS

Many things caused punishments in the camp. Beside the official prohibitions, there was a multitude of informal orders. Many prohibitions were deliberately vaguely formulated so as to let the guards define irregularities arbitrarily. A further method was to pose standards that nobody was able to fulfil. It was impossible, for example, to arrange the straw matress without wrinkles. A special nasty trick was to impose two rules which excluded each other. Whatever the inmate did, could be seen as wrong: Dirty shoes caused punishment because they were against the order of tidiness. But on the other side, clean shoes were an indication of an aversion to work, of somebody who did not work.

Punishments were barbarian and often similar to a covert death penalty. There were official punishments such like the "Strafkompanie" (Punishment Company) - hard work in jogtrot, also in the evening and on weekends, torture through Capos or SS - , being imprisonned in the so-called "Stehzellen" (cells were people could not sit because they were too narrow) or in "Dunkelzellen" (cells without any light), long lasting motionless standing in any weather close to the entrance gate or on the roll-call ground, being flogged or bound on piles.

A punishment on the so-called "Prügelbock" looked as follows: the victim's legs were squeezed in a trestle, two other prisoners held his arms and an SS-guard or Capo hit the delinquent with a truncheon or a whip while he had to count the strokes loudly.

At the so-called "Pfahlbinden", the prisoner's arms which had been twisted on his back were bound on a pile; his feet could not touch the ground anymore..