Internment in Concentration Camps and Its Consequences

282 Pages·1975·14.291 MB·English

by  Professor Dr. med. Dr. phil. Paul Matussek (auth.)

Internment in
Concentration Camps and
Its Consequences
By
Paul Matussek
With
Rolf Grigat· Hannelore Haibock . Gert Halbach· Reiner Kemmler
David Mantell· Axel Triebel· Moshe Vardy· Gesine Wedel
Foreword by
Hans H. Strupp
Translated by Derek and lnge Jordan
With 19 Figures and 73 Tables
Springer-Verlag Berlin. Heidelberg. New York 1975
Professor Dr. med. Dr. phil. PAUL MATUSSEK, Leiter der Forschungsstelle flir Psycho
pathologie und Psychotherapie in der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, D-8000 Mlinchen 40,
Montsalvatstrage 19
Professor Dr. HANS H. STRUPP, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37240, USA
DEREK and INGE JORDAN, 1495 Fisher Avenue, No. 24, Ottawa, Ontario K2C 3M9,
Canada
German Edition: Published 1971 with the Title "Monographien aus dem Gesamt
gebiete der Psychiatrie", Psychiatry Series, Band 2 - Die Konzentrationslagerhaft
und ihre Folgen - Springer-Verlag Berlin· Heidelberg· New York
ISBN-13: 978-3-642-66077-1 e-ISBN-13: 978-3-642-66075-7
DOl: 10.1007/978-3-642-66075-7
This work is subject to cOfyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is con
cerned, specifically those 0 translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, broadcasting, reproduction by photo
copying machine or similar means, and storage in data banks.
Under § 54 of the German Copyright Law, where copies are made for other than private use, a fee is payable
to the publisher, the amount of the fee to be determined by agreement with the publisher.
© by Springer-Verlag Berlin· Heidelberg 1975.
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1s t edition 1975
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data. Matussek, Paul, 1919-. Internment in concentration camps
and its consequences. Translation of Die Konzcntrationslagerhaft und ihre Folgen. Bibliography: p. Includes
index. 1. Concentration camps-Psychological aspects. 1. Title. RC451.4.P7M3313 616.8'528 74-32362
The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trade marks etc. in this publication, even if the former are
110t especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by the Trade Marks and
Merchandise Marks Act, may accordingly be used freely by anyone.
Foreword
It remained for Nazi Germany to design the most satanic psychological experi
ment of all time, the independent variables consisting of brutality, bestiality, physical
and mental torture on an unprecedented scale. What were the effects of this massive
assault on the human spirit, on man's ability to assimilate such experiences, if he
survived physically?
While the terror of the Nazi concentration camps has been indelibly engraved
in the history of Western civilization as its most shameful chapter, little systematic
study has been addressed to the subsequent lives of that minority of inmates who
were fortunate enough to escape physical annihilation and lived to tell about their
nightmare.
Dr. PAUL MATUSSEK, a respected German psychiatrist, aided by a small group
of collaborators, performed the task of identifying a group of victims (mostly Jews
but also political prisoners), who, following their liberation, had settled in Germany,
Israel, and the United States. By careful interviews, questionnaires, and psychological
tests he brought to bear the methods of sensitive clinical inquiry on the experiences
of those who dared to reminisce and who were sufficiently trusting to share their
feelings and memories with clinical investigators. It is a telling commentary that
many people, even after the passage of years, refused to respond. The study deals
not only with the former inmates' current adjustment in terms of quality of their
interpersonal relations, marriage, vocation, and outlook on life but also casts a
searchlight on their developmental history and the extent to which it affected their
ability to sustain the onslought of the concentration camp experience.
The analysis of the clinical data is sophisticated and sensitive. The results are
brought into stark relief by the case histories and verbatim accounts, and throughout
there lurk the memories of the horror to which these unfortunate men and women
were exposed for months and years. Consider two vignettes: One man said: "A per
son who has been a prisoner can only tolerate another former inmate as a marital
partner. No one else can understand what happened." A former attorney and judge
who attempted to resettle in Berlin after the war but eventually decided to emigrate
concluded: "For Jews there is no room in Germany." Like many others he found
that the end of World War II had brought only new problems: survivors discovered
that they were homeless, their families had been killed or dispersed, and their ma
terial possessions had been lost. No longer was there a place for them in their former
society: They had become "displaced persons."
Professor MATUSSEK presents evidence that in a substantial majority of survivors
the physical and psychological damage of the concentration camp experience was
pervasive and lasting, ranging from what he called "psychophysical syndrome" to
resignation and despair. In determining eligibility for compensation, physicians regu
larly underestimated the psychic damage to the victims. He explodes the notion of
IV Foreword
the "concentration syndrome" as an immutable entity; instead, the data pointed to
manifold individual reaction patterns. Of poignant significance in its implications
for the psychotherapist, the data underscored the continuity of reaction patterns and
attitudes ingrained early in life, particularly the quality of the child's relationship to
his mother as a determinant of his ability to relate to others, notably in times of
stress.
Dr. MATUSSEK'S study, despite formidable methodological and technical difficul
ties, is research of high quality. It is a fine amalgam of objectivity, clinical penetra
tion, and compassionate understanding. It is rare that a research report becomes a
deeply moving document. This book does. After I read it, I wept-not only for the
members of my own family and the millions of innocent men, women, and children
who perished in the holocaust, but also for the tragedy of man's awesome cruelty to
his fellows, a phenomenon that unhappily did not become extinct with the death
of Adolf Hitler.
Nashville, February 1975 HANS H. STRUPP
Preface to the English Edition
This book met with such an unexpectedly positive response in the German-speak
ing world that I wish it a similar success in the larger English-language family. The
events I have written about, although they belong to the past, are still very relevant
to today.
After World War II many people held the justified belief, or at least hope, that
the crimes of the Nazi terror represented the ultimate hell of man's inhumanity to
man. In certain respects this hope has been fulfilled: great wars, and above all the
systematic extermination of large groups of people, have not been seen again on this
scale. Yet cases 6f torture inflicted by one human being on another have not dis
appeared since that time. Rather, they continue to propagate, whether in the West
or in the East. Wherever an authoritarian regime feels itself threatened by its
opponents, or a nation confronted by its enemies, torture, terror and cruelty are part
of the method. One way is to put detainees in camps, which creates living conditions
resembling those in the Nazi concentration camps.
It is therefore not surprising that doctors and psychiatrists find that those who
have survived such camps show symptoms like those recorded in former concentration
camp inmates. It is thus customary to speak by analogy with the concentration
camp syndrome of the Vietnam syndrome, or in general of a survival syndrome.
Such diagnostic labels now come so naturally to the lips of many physicians that
no-one stops to ask what the syndrome actually consists of and - perhaps even more
pertinently - what were the conditions during and after the detention period that
produced it. Do all detainees have this syndrome? Must the terror have lasted for a
certain time? Which of the stress factors are the most destructive as far as they can
be measured from the late effects recorded? And finally, the important, much dis
cussed question: Has the development of personality before the detention period any
significance for coming to terms with terror in the camps?
Which factors playa part here?
This book is an attempt to answer these and similar questions, on the basis of
studies of former concentration camp inmates. Such an investigation cannot, of
course, make the infinite suffering of the past as if it had never happened. It can,
however, help people to understand the physical and mental health damage that
follows camp terror. It provides a corrective to outdated theories as well as to
ideological generalizations. In this way it serves both the sufferer and science.
Munich, January 1975 PAUL MATUSSEK
Preface to the First German Edition
Ever since the end of the last war, researchers in various fields have been trying
to discover how anybody could have survived the terror of the Nazi concentration
camps. For example, doctors were particularly interested in determining the extent
of the permanent or temporary health damage suffered by the survivors, but so far
the studies made of these problems have failed to produce any coherent results. One
important reason for this is that the cases were selected according to purely medical
criteria. The doctor examine!1 the patient either in order to treat some particular
complaint or, as more frequently bappened in the cases described in the literature,
to prepare 'a medical report for pension purposes.
We wished to avoid the sources of error associated with such preselection, and we
therefore tried to find a sample of ex-inmates of concentration camps which was as
random as possible. It took us years to interview a sufficient number of such people.
Not only is the psychiatric literature on late injuries based on cases which were
selected for the purpose of pension appraisal, it is also restricted to clinically relevant
findings. This has meant that "peripheral phenomena", which are more difficult to
study, have been ignored. But it is precisely sum phenomena that are emphatically
stressed in the reports some ex-inmates have published on their own experiences. In
the course of their long drawn-out pension procedures these people have come to
feel misunderstood because psychiatrists have devised a variety of diagnostic labels
without coming to grips with the problems currently suffered by the ex-inmate.
We have therefore tried to study the effect of incarceration on certain areas of
existence, such as interpersonal contact, marriage, occupation, and Weltanschauung,
quite independently of any psychiatric diagnosis.
Finally, we wish to drawn attention to the theoretical implications of our study.
It was not our intention to add a new and unproven theory to the many others on
the maracter and consequences of extreme stress. Instead, by using statistical methods
to analyse the material we wished to establish a series of hypotheses or to test the
relevance of certain assumptions and theories.
At this point we would like to thank the ex-inmates without whose cooperation
this study would not have been possible. They did more than just sacrifice their time
- quite often the old memories which were resurrected by the interviews imposed
a severe strain on these people.
I must also thank the many persons who have participated in this project in one
way or another over periods of months or years, on either a full-time or part-time
basis. Special mention should be made of the persons who between 1958 and 1962
conducted the interviews and collected the data in Bavaria, Israel and New York.
In the face of considerable difficulties and repeated refusals by ex-inmates to
cooperate they managed to bring together all the material used in the present study
Preface to the First German Edition VII
(Dr. RUBEN KOHEN-RAz, Dr. STEFAN GEROLY, Dipl.-Psych. AMREI HALBACH, Dipl.
Psych. GERT HALBACH, Dr. MARIE KALAU VOM HOFE, Dr. LISELOTTE KOHLER, Dr.
KARL-HEINZ MANDEL, Dr. VIKTORIA MICKANS, Dr. MOSHE VARDY). I am also grateful
to Dr. LUDWIG BARTH, Dipl.-Psych. GISELA BERTULIS, Dipl.-Psych. ROLF GRIGAT,
Dipl.-Psych. HANNELORE HAlBOCK, Dipl.-Psych. GERT HALBACH, Dipl.-Psych. REINER
KEMMLER, Dipl.-Psych. DAVID MANTELL, Dipl.-Psych. AXEL TRIEBEL and Dipl.-Psych.
GESINE WEDEL for their invaluable and enthusiastic assistance in evaluating the
interviews and compiling the manuscript. It is only possible to name a few of these
people as co-authors on the title page, but this should not be taken to mean that
the work the others performed was in any way less important or necessary. Although
the individual contributions are difficult to assess, each person has played a decisive
part in shaping the final form of this book, and I am much indebted to them.
Finally, it remains for me to express my thanks to Herr TROBERG, who at the
time in question was President of the Regional Indemnification Office (Landes
entschadigungsamt Bayern) in Bavaria, and also to his deputy, Herr MEIER. Without
their friendly cooperation we would never have obtained the documents needed to
put together the random sample which we were after.
Munich, January 1971 PAUL MATUSSEK
Contents
Chapter 1 Study Methods. . 1
I. Obtaining a Representative Sample of Persecutees . 1
II. Collecting the Data . 3
III. Processing the Data . 9
Chapter 2 Stresses Imposed by Concentration-Camp Incarceration 11
Outline of Problem 11
I. Worst Experiences 11
II. Stress Characteristics 14
1. Work Situation 15
2. Severity of Camp Conditions. 18
3. Duration of Persecution and Incarceration 20
4. Extermination of Relatives 22
5. Physical and Mental Disorders 23
6. Reason for Persecution . 25
7. Age 27
8. Sex 28
III. Adaptation to Concentration-Camp Conditions. 30
1. Reasons for Survival as Recalled by Inmates 31
2. Personality of the Inmate and his Adaptation to the
Concentration Camp Situation 33
Chapter 3 Late-Appearing Damage to Health . 40
Outline of Problem . 40
I. Late Injury Following Incarceration 43
1. Healthy Persons . 43
2. The Results of Medical Examinations and Psychological
Interviews . 47
3. Illness Dimensions in the Case of Injury Suffered by Ex-
Persecutees . 50
Summary 58
II. Genesis of the Illness Syndromes 59
1. Sociological Characteristics 60
2. Persecution Stress 64
3. Developmental Influences of Childhood and Adolescence 67
Summary 69
x
Contents
III. Compensation for Injury to Health 71
1. Influences not Dependent on Illness 72
2. Dependence of the Amount of Pension on the Type of
Disorder 78
Summary 80
Chapter 4 Psychiatric Diagnoses . 81
Outline of Problem 81
I. Examination and Compensation. 81
1. Selection Criteria for Psychiatric Examination 81
2. Problems of Diagnostic Classification . 84
3. Persecution-Relatedness of Psychiatric Illnesses. 87
II. Experience-Reactive Syndromes. 89
1. Experience-Reactive Syndromes and Complaint Patterns 89
2. Symptom Patterns and Genesis of Experience-Reactive
Syndromes . 93
3. Dimensions of the Psychic Complaints. 96
Summary 98
Chapter 5 Basic Forms of Psychic Disturbance . 99
Outline of the Problem . 99
1. Manifestation and Genesis . 101
II. Psychic Disturbances and Reasons for Survival 113
III. Symptom-Free Survivors of Incarceration 114
Summary 117
Chapter 6 Contact with Fellow Humans and Society. 119
Outline of Problem . 119
I. Dimensions of Interpersonal Contact and Experience. 120
1. Ability to Cope with Society. 120
2. Attitude to Fellow Human Beings 123
3. Feeling of Belonging to Society . 125
4. View of Own Position in Society 129
II. Types of Contact in the Various Groups of Persecutees 132
1. Sex-Specific Differences 132
2. Age-Specific Differences 133
3. Reasons for Persecution 134
4. Country of Origin . 135
5. Country of Residence . 137
III. Influence of Earlier Periods in Inmates' Lives 137
1. Stress of Persecution. 138
2. Developmental Influences of Childhood and Adolescence 139
Summary 141
Contents XI
Chapter 7 Occupational Reintegration Following Incarceration . 143
Outline of Problem . 143
I. Problems of Reintegration. 144
1. Choice of Occupation 144
2. Occupational Progress Patterns 146
3. Standard of Living 148
4. Premature Disability 148
II. Occupational Success and Failure 150
1. Measuring Occupational Success . 150
2. State of Health 153
3. Age 156
4. Psychic Disturbances 160
5. Handling of Aggression 161
6. InterpersonalRelationships 168
III. Influence of Earlier Phases in the Inmates' Lives 171
1. Persecution Stress 171
2. Developmental Influences of Childhood and Adolescence 173
Summary 177
Chapter 8 Marriage and Family 181
Outline of Problem 181
I. Family Relationships of Ex-Persecutees 182
1. Harmony of Family Life 182
2. Differences between the Groups of Persecutees 184
3. Contact Outside the Family 185
4. Psychic Condition 186
5. Persecution Stress 187
6. Developmental Influences of Childhood and Adolescence 188
II. Types of Marriage of Former Persecutees . 189
1. Marriages that Remained Intact. 190
2. Second Marriages after the Inmates' Release from the
Camps 195
3. First Marriages Following Release from Incarceration 197
Summary 201
Chapter 9 Weltanschauung and Concentration Camp Incarceration. 202
Outline of Problem . 202
I. Ideology and Faith 204
1. An Ideological Priest 204
2. A Believing Priest 207
3. Differentiating Characteristics 210
II. Peculiarities of Ideological Personalities 211
1. Pre-Incarceration Period 212