From the book of the psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelg "The Enlightened Heart"
In it, he describes his experience as a prisoner of the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps, in which he was in 1938-1939, as well as the experience of other people who faced the system of destruction of human dignity later, when the Nazis "revealed" to their full potential.
The psychological aspect of what was happening in the concentration camps. How the Nazi system broke personalities, how individuals resisted the system and the monstrously destructive psychological field, what strategies were used and how they were deformed. In the end, personality is our strategies for adapting to the world around us, and what we are in many ways (but not in all) depends on what this world is like.
The Nazi system in 1938-1939 - the time of Bettelheim's stay in Dachau and Buchenwald - was not yet aimed at total extermination, although lives were not considered then either. She was focused on the "education" of slave power: ideal and obedient, not thinking about anything except the mercy from the owner, which is not a pity to waste. Accordingly, it was necessary to make a frightened child out of a resisting adult personality, to infantilize a person by force, to achieve his regression - to a child or even to an animal, a living biomass without personality, will and feelings. Biomass is easy to manage, not sympathetic, easier to despise, and obediently slaughtered. That is, it is convenient for the owners.
What are these ways of transforming personality into biomass?
Rule 1. Make the person do meaningless work
One of the favorite activities of the SS is to make people do completely meaningless work, and the prisoners understand that it does not make sense. Carrying stones from one place to another, digging holes with bare hands, when the shovels were lying nearby. What for? "Because I said so !".
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Rule 2. Introduce mutually exclusive rules, violations of which are inevitable
This rule created an atmosphere of constant fear of being caught. People were forced to negotiate with the warders or "kapos" (SS assistants from among the prisoners), falling into complete dependence on them. A large field for blackmail was unfolding: warders and capos could pay attention to violations, or they could not pay attention - in exchange for certain services. (The absurdity and inconsistency of many state laws is a complete analogue).
Rule 3. Introduce collective responsibility
Collective responsibility erodes personal responsibility - this is a well-known rule. But in an environment where the cost of error is too high, collective responsibility turns all members of the group into overseers one after another. The collective itself becomes an unwitting ally of the SS and the camp administration.
Often, obeying a moment's whim, the SS man would give another senseless order. The desire for obedience eaten into the psyche so strongly that there were always prisoners who followed this order for a long time (even when the SS man forgot about it after five minutes) and forced others to do it. For example, one day a warden ordered a group of prisoners to wash their shoes outside and inside with soap and water. The boots became as hard as stone, and they rubbed their feet. The order was never repeated. Nevertheless, many prisoners who had been in the camp for a long time continued to wash their shoes from the inside every day and scolded everyone who did not do it for negligence and dirt.
(The principle of group responsibility … When “everyone is to blame,” or when a particular person is seen only as a representative of a stereotyped group, and not as an exponent of his own opinion).
Rule 4. Make people believe that nothing depends on them. To do this: create an unpredictable environment in which it is impossible to plan anything and make people live according to the instructions, suppressing any initiative
A group of Czech prisoners was destroyed like this. For some time they were singled out as "noble", entitled to certain privileges, allowed to live in relative comfort without work and hardships. Then the Czechs were suddenly thrown into quarry jobs with the worst working conditions and the highest mortality rates, while cutting back on their diet. Then back - to a good home and light work, after a few months - back to the quarry, etc. No one was left alive. Complete lack of control over your own life, the inability to predict what you are being encouraged or punished for, knocking the ground out from under your feet. The personality simply does not have time to develop adaptation strategies, it is completely disorganized.
“* Human survival depends on his ability to retain a certain area of free behavior, to maintain control over some important aspects of life, despite conditions that seem intolerable … * Even a small, symbolic opportunity to act or not to act, but of his own free will, allowed me and people like me to survive”. (in italics in quotation marks - quotes by B. Bettelheim).
The most brutal daily routine constantly spurred people on. If you hesitate for one or two minutes to wash, you will be late for the toilet. If you delay cleaning your bed (there were still beds in Dachau then), you won't have breakfast, which is already meager. Haste, fear of being late, not a second to think and stop … Excellent guards constantly urge you on: time and fear. You are not planning the day. You don't choose what to do. And you don't know what will happen to you later. Punishments and rewards went without any system. If at first the prisoners thought that good work would save them from punishment, then it came to be understood that nothing guarantees that they would not be sent to get stones in the quarry (the most deadly occupation). And they were awarded just like that. It’s just an SS man’s whim.
Rule 5. Make people pretend they can't see or hear anything
Bettelheim describes this situation. An SS man beats a man. A column of slaves passes by, which, noticing the beating, together turns their heads to the side and accelerates sharply, showing with all their appearance that they "did not notice" what is happening. The SS man, not looking up from his occupation, shouts "Well done!" Because the prisoners have demonstrated that they have learned the rule of "not knowing and not seeing what is not supposed to." And the prisoners have increased shame, a sense of powerlessness and, at the same time, they involuntarily become accomplices of the SS man, playing his game.
Rule 6. Make people cross the last inner line
“* In order not to become a walking corpse, but to remain a human, albeit humiliated and degraded, it was necessary all the time to be aware of where that line passes, because of which there is no return, a line beyond which one cannot retreat under any circumstances, even if it threatens life. * Realize that if you survived at the cost of crossing this line, you will continue a life that has lost all meaning. 72488_0
Bettelheim gives a very graphic story about the "last line". One day the SS man drew attention to two Jews who were "skimmed". He forced them to lie down in a muddy ditch, called a Pole prisoner from a neighboring brigade and ordered them to bury those who fell out of favor alive. The Pole refused. The SS man began to beat him, but the Pole continued to refuse. Then the warden ordered them to switch places, and the two were ordered to bury the Pole. And they began to bury their companion in misfortune without the slightest hesitation. When the Pole was almost buried, the SS man ordered them to stop, dig him back up, and then again lie down in the ditch themselves. And again he ordered the Pole to bury them. This time he obeyed - either out of a sense of revenge, or thinking that the SS man would spare them too at the last minute. But the warden did not pardon:with his boots he stamped the ground over the heads of the victims. Five minutes later, they - one dead and the other dying - were sent to the crematorium.
The result of the implementation of all the rules
those who believed that they could not influence their position in any way - such prisoners literally became walking corpses …”.
The process of becoming such a zombie was simple and intuitive. At first, a person stopped acting of his own free will: he did not have an internal source of movement, everything he did was determined by pressure from the guards. They automatically followed orders, without any selectivity. Then they stopped raising their legs when walking, and began to shuffle in a very characteristic manner. Then they began to look only in front of them. And then death came.
People turned into zombies when they abandoned any attempt to comprehend their own behavior and came to a state where they could accept anything, anything that came from the outside. "Those who survived have understood what they did not realize before: they have the last, but perhaps the most important human freedom - in any circumstances, choose their own attitude to what is happening." Where there is no relationship of its own, a zombie begins.