A kapo or prisoner functionary was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp
who was assigned by the SS guards to supervise forced labor or carry out
administrative tasks in the camp. Also called "prisoner self-administration",
the prisoner functionary system minimized costs by allowing camps to
function with fewer SS personnel. The system was designed to turn victim
against victim, as the prisoner functionaries were pitted against their
fellow prisoners in order to maintain the favor of their SS guards. If they
were derelict, they would be returned to the status of ordinary prisoners and be
subject to other kapos. Many prisoner functionaries were recruited from the
ranks of violent criminal gangs rather than from the more numerous political,
religious and racial prisoners; those were known for their brutality toward
other prisoners. This brutality was tolerated by the SS and was an integral
part of the camp system. Prisoner functionaries were spared
physical abuse and hard labor, provided they performed their duties to the
satisfaction of the SS guards. They also had access to certain privileges, such
as civilian clothes and a private room. While the Germans commonly called them
kapos, the official government term for prisoner functionaries was
Funktionshäftling. Etymology
The origin of "kapo" is unclear. The Jewish Virtual Library claims, it is an
abbreviated form of the word, Kameradschaftpolizei,, or perhaps
Kameradschafts-Polizei. It could have come from the Italian word for "head"
and "boss", capo. According to the Duden, it is derived from the French
word for "Corporal". System of thrift and manipulation
Concentration camps were controlled by the SS, but day-to-day organization was
supplemented by the system of functionary prisoners, a second
hierarchy that made it easier for the Nazis to control the camps. These
prisoners made it possible for the camps to function with fewer SS personnel. The
prisoner functionaries sometimes numbered as high as 10% of the inmates.
The Nazis were able to keep the number of SS personnel who had direct contact
with the prisoners very low in comparison to normal prisons today.
Without the functionary prisoners, the SS camp administrations would not have
been able to keep the day-to-day operations of the camps running
smoothly. The kapos often did this work for extra food, cigarettes, alcohol or
other privileges. At Buchenwald, these tasks were
originally assigned to criminal prisoners, but after 1939, political
prisoners began to displace the criminal prisoners, though criminals were
preferred by the SS. At Mauthausen, on the other hand, functionary positions
remained dominated by criminal prisoners until just before liberation.
The system and hierarchy also inhibited solidarity among the prisoners. There
were tensions between the various nationalities as well as between the
various prisoner groups, who were distinguished by different Nazi
concentration camp badges. Jews wore yellow stars, other prisoners wore
colored triangles pointed downward. Prisoner functionaries were often hated
by other prisoners as Nazi henchmen and were spat upon. While some barrack
leaders tried to assist the prisoners under their command by secretly helping
them get extra food or easier jobs, others were more concerned with their
own survival and to that end, did more to assist the SS.
Identified by green triangles, the befristeten Vorbeugungshäftling or "BV"
kapos, were called "professional criminals" by other prisoners and were
known for their brutality and lack of scruples. Indeed, they were selected by
the SS because of those qualities. According to former prisoners, the
criminal functionaries were more apt to be helpful to the SS than political
functionaries, who were more apt to be helpful to other prisoners.
From Oliver Lustig's Dictionary of the Camp:
Vicenzo and Luigi Pappalettera wrote in their book The Brutes Have the Floor
that, every time a new transport of detainees arrived at Mauthausen, Kapo
August Adam picked out the professors, lawyers, priests and magistrates and
cynically asked them: "Are you a lawyer? A professor? Good! Do you see this green
triangle? This means I am a killer. I have five convictions on my record: one
for manslaughter and four for robbery. Well, here I am in command. The world
has turned upside down, did you get that? Do you need a dolmetscher, an
interpreter? Here it is!" And he was pointing to his bat, after which he
struck. When he was satisfied, he formed a Scheisskompanie with those selected
and sent them to clean the latrines. Domination and terror
The SS used domination and terror to control the large camp populations with
just a few SS guards. The system of prisoner functionaries was a "key
instrument of domination" in the concentration camps and was commonly
called "prisoner self-government" in SS parlance.
The camp rules, constant threat of beatings, humiliation, punishment and
the practice of punishing whole groups for the actions of one prisoner were
psychological and physical torments on top of the starvation, and physical
exhaustion from back-breaking labor. Prisoner functionaries were used to push
the prisoners to work harder, saving the need for paid SS supervision. Many kapos
felt caught in the middle, being both victim and perpetrator. Though kapos
generally had a bad reputation, many suffered guilt about their actions, both
at the time and after the war, as revealed in a book about Jewish kapos.
Many prisoner functionaries, primarily from the ranks of the "greens" or
criminal prisoners, could be quite brutal, especially when an SS guard was
around, in order to justify their privileges. They also played an active
role in the beatings, even killing fellow prisoners.
One non-criminal functionary was Josef Heiden, a notorious Austrian political
prisoner. Feared and hated, he was known as a sadist and was responsible for
several deaths. He was released from Dachau in 1942 and became a member of
the Waffen SS. Some functionaries were personally involved in the mass murder
of other prisoners. Beginning in October 1944, reichsdeutsch criminal
functionaries were sought out for transfer to the Dirlewanger Brigade.
Ranks of functionary The important functionary positions
inside the camp were Lagerältester, Blockältester and Stubenältester. The
highest position that a prisoner could reach was Lagerältester. He was placed
directly under the camp commandant, had to implement his orders, ensure that the
camp's normal daily routines ran smoothly and satisfy the superior
regulations. The Lagerälteste had a key role in the selection of other prisoners
as functionaries, making recommendations to the SS. Though dependent on the
goodwill of the SS, through them, he had access to special privileges, such as
access to civilian clothes or a private room.
The Blockältester had to ensure that rules were followed in the individual
barracks. He or she was also responsible for the prisoners in the barracks. The
Stubenälteste was responsible for the hygiene, such as delousing, and order of
each room in a barracks. The Blockschreiber was a record-keeping job,
such as keeping track at roll calls. Work crews outside the camp were
supervised by a Vorarbeiter, a Kapo, or Oberkapo. These functionaries pushed
their fellow prisoners, hitting and beating them, even killing them.
Prisoner functionaries could often help other prisoners by getting them into
better barracks, getting them assigned to lighter work. On occasion, to get
them removed from transport lists or even get them new identities in order to
protect them from persecution. This assistance was generally limited to the
prisoners in the functionary's own group. The prisoner functionaries were
in a precarious hierarchy between their fellow inmates and the SS. This
situation was intentionally created, as revealed in a speech by Heinrich
Himmler. "The moment he becomes a Kapo, he no
longer sleeps with them. He is held accountable for the performance of the
work, that they are clean, that the beds are well-built. [...] So, he must drive
his men. The moment we become dissatisfied with him, he is no longer
Kapo, he's back to sleeping with his men. And he knows that he will be beaten
to death by them the first night." —Heinrich Himmler, June 21, 1944
In National Socialist racial ideology, some races were "superior" and others
"inferior". Similarly, the SS sometimes had racial criteria for the prisoner
functionaries, sometimes one had to be racially "superior" to be a functionary.
The group category was also sometimes a factor. A knowledge of foreign languages
was also advantageous, particularly as the international population of the
camps increased and they preferred a certain level of education.
An eager prisoner functionary could have a camp "career" as an SS favorite and be
promoted from Kapo to Oberkapo and eventually to Lagerältester, but he
could also just as easily run afoul of the SS and be sent to the gas chambers.
Prosecution of kapos The Israeli Nazi and Nazi Collaborators
Law of 1950, most famously used to prosecute Adolf Eichmann in 1961 and
Ivan Demjanjuk in 1986, was originally introduced with the principal purpose of
prosecuting Jewish collaborators with the Nazis. Between 1951 and 1964,
approximately 40 trials were held, mostly of people alleged to have been
kapos. Fifteen are known to have resulted in convictions, but only
sketchy details are available since the records were sealed in 1995 for a period
of 70 years from the trial date. One person was convicted of crimes against
humanity, which carried a mandatory death penalty, but the sentence was
commuted to imprisonment. A small number of kapos were prosecuted
in East and West Germany. In a well-publicised 1968 case, two Auschwitz
kapos were put on trial in Frankfurt. They were indicted for 189 murders and
multiple assaults, found guilty of several murders, and sentenced to life
imprisonment. During the Stutthof trials in Gdańsk,
Poland, which took place in 1946 and 1947 for the prosecution of the Stutthof
concentration camp personnel, five kapos were sentenced to death citing extreme
brutality. Four of them were executed on 4 July 1946, and one on 10 October 1947.
One Kapo was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment and one acquitted and
released on 29 November 1947. Significance
Historian Karin Orth writes, "There was hardly a measure of the SS so perfidious
as its attempt to delegate the implementation of terror and violence to
the victims." "The concentration camp system owed its
stability in no small way to a cadre of kapos, who took over the daily
operations of the camp, relieving the SS personnel. Thus, absolute power was
ubiquitous. Without the delegation of power, the system of discipline and
supervision would have promptly disintegrated. The rivalry over
supervisory, administrative and warehouse functionary jobs was, for the
SS, just a welcome opportunity to pit groups of prisoners against each other
and keep them dependent. The normal prisoner, however, was at the mercy of a
dual authority, the SS, who often hardly seemed to be at the camp, and the
prisoner functionaries, who were always there."
—Eugen Kogon, concentration camp survivor
Usage after 1945 This role has been described in many
books, among them Primo Levi's If This Is a Man, and Viktor Frankl's Man's
Search for Meaning, the latter treating it from a psychiatrist's standpoint. It
is also mentioned in Elie Wiesel's autobiography Night, and in Art
Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus II, and is featured in the Gillo Pontecorvo
movie Kapò. The term has also been used to describe
Jews who are viewed as having internalized anti-Semitism by other
Jews. See also
Belsen Trial, the Trial of Joseph Kramer and 44 others
Orli Wald, Lagerälteste at Auschwitz, called the "Angel of Auschwitz"
Robert Siewert, kapo at Buchenwald Trusty system
The Counterfeiters a film which features several kapos, in various camps.
Footnotes References
Further reading Revital Ludewig-Kedmi, Opfer und Täter
zugleich? Moraldilemmata jüdischer Funktionshäftlinge in der Shoah. Psyche
und Gesellschaft. Book expanded from a doctoral dissertation about the moral
dilemma faced by Jewish kapos in the Holocaust. Psychosozial Verlag, Gießen
ISBN 3-89806-104-3 External links
Sebastian Dregger: Die Rolle der Funktionshäftlinge im Vernichtungslager
Auschwitz – und das Beispiel Otto Küsels.
Abschnitt aus dem Bericht der Auschwitzflüchtlinge Alfred Wetzler und
Rudolf Vrba über F.