Research Article |
Corresponding author: Kobi Kabalek ( kabalek@psu.edu ) Academic editor: Zuzanna Dziuban
© 2023 Kobi Kabalek.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Kabalek K (2023) “Jungle law reigned among the prisoners”: the meaning of cannibalism in the testimonies of Nazi concentration camps’ survivors. In: Dziuban Z, van der Laarse R (Eds) Accessing Campscapes: Critical Approaches and Inclusive Strategies for European Conflicted Pasts. Heritage, Memory and Conflict 3: 71-74. https://doi.org/10.3897/hmc.3.69956
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What do Holocaust survivors do when they refer to cannibalism in their testimonies? This piece argues that they do not merely describe what they have witnessed or heard of, but also ponder the boundaries of humanity. For centuries, Europeans have made references to cannibalism in various depictions for drawing the line between “civilized” and “uncivilized.” In accordance with studies that examine cannibalism in other historical contexts, I argue that in attempting to express a sense of the radical dehumanization in the Nazi camps and convey its horror, some survivors’ accounts reconstruct the appalling reality of the camps as parallels to familiar, older stories of cannibalism that take place in remote, brutal places deprived of civilization.
Cannibalism, Civilization, Concentration Camps, Holocaust, Meaning
On March 31, 2016, the British press reported the discovery of “shocking new records” in the National Archives. A letter written by the “only British survivor of Belsen,” stated that “Nazi victims were reduced to ‘rampant cannibalism’” during the concentration camp’s final days.
Rather than delving into the existing evidence on cannibalism during the Holocaust, scholars address it as an uncomfortable revelation. Some completely ignore the issue, question its very existence among Holocaust victims, or stress that it was an absolute rarity (e.g.,
Likewise, when cannibalism is mentioned in survivors’ testimonies, it is often used to indicate the most extreme expression of the Holocaust and simultaneously to articulate the impossibility of speech. Even though diaries written during the Holocaust and testimonies given after the event express their authors’ wish to record the horrific details of their persecution, they also include certain silences, especially in relation to the repellent living conditions and aspects of one’s behavior that may appear morally problematic or “distasteful” (
MN: Isn’t testimony done to let the world know the full horror of what was done to people?
SB: I don’t know. If I had been involved in cannibalism (which I did witness) I would not have talked about it on tape.
MN: Why not?
SB: It’s inhuman. It’s way beyond...
Again, the survivor describes cannibalism as the most extreme occasion and as the point in which he must stop her narrative. Yet this brief reference also gives a clue as to the essence of this boundary. It views cannibalism as a fundamental transgression of what it means to be human.
A similar insight into this boundary also emerges when survivors express an interest in delving into their experiences of cannibalism but their audience proves incapable of hearing about it. Lawrence
MOSES S.: So we got up, and we found a hand from the bombing. […] A human hand.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, a human hand.
MOSES S.: Five of us. Divided. And we were eating it. […]
MOSES S.’S WIFE: Excuse me, I think we have to finish. Too much already.
MOSES S.: Human flesh.
Langer writes of the “general disquietude and consternation among the members of Moses S.’s audience” and calls this part of the testimony “a monologue that invites no dialogue” (
Existing evidence points to the occurrence of cases of cannibalism in ghettos, various Nazi camps, as well as on death marches and transports.
“Jungle law reigned among the prisoners; at night you killed or were killed; by day cannibalism was rampant.” It was this quote from the letter of a Bergen-Belsen survivor that stirred the British press, as outlined in this article’s opening paragraph. Notably, the terror in this description is not associated with the cruelty of the SS and the author does not project the inhumanity on to the Nazi perpetrators. Moreover, this account does not describe starving inmates resorting to eating the flesh of the many corpses, who were strewn throughout the camp. Rather, it expresses grave fear of being attacked and killed to be eaten by one’s fellow-prisoners. A similar fear was recorded during the Leningrad siege (1941–1943), as rumors that gangs of cannibals were roaming the city aroused widespread panic. Leningraders dreaded to leave their children unattended or walk alone in dark alleys, although NKVD reports indicate that only one such case took place (
A sense of chaos is apparent, especially in the testimonies of survivors who spent the war’s final months in the camps that were liberated last. With the advance of the Red Army in late 1944 and the evacuation of the Auschwitz complex in January 1945, countless inmates were sent on death marches, trucks, or trains, to overcrowded concentration camps such as Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau and Mauthausen, or to provisional camps that were constructed in a hurry (
At the beginning of 1945 Mr. van Dam and a lot of co-prisoners were put aboard a ship (barge) and transported via the Donau [Danube] from Melk to Ebensee. This was the worst camp he had come to. Here chaos was complete. The prisoners [received] hardly any food at all. There was cannibalism.
Cannibalism is thus used here to articulate and demonstrate the absolute anarchy in the camp and the worst conceivable conditions. In an interview given decades later, Jacob Maestro, a Jew from Salonika, described the deteriorating situation after leaving Auschwitz in a similar fashion:
We were transported from [Auschwitz to Mauthausen and then to Melk and from] Melk to Wels. In Wels there were hardly any barracks. It was in a forest. We walked freely [in the camp], without food, without anything. And there I heard that Ebensee is even worse. Ebensee is eating corpses. [long pause]
These accounts describe the incremental increases in distance to what their authors seem to conceive as civilization. This remoteness is expressed in terms of spatiality, as each subsequent camp is worse than the previous one and the distance from human settlements grows (“It was in a forest”), but also in relation to the lack of minimal conditions and provisions (no food rations, hardly any barracks). Here, even the routine that characterized the camps one knew before, which included roll-calls, harsh discipline, and slave labor, is missing (“We walked freely”). The occurrences of cannibalism in these places thus mark the greatest detachment from “civilization” and familiar social order. This depiction corresponds with an ancient view of cannibalism, which locates it, both geographically and symbolically, at the farthest point from civilized humanity, at the peripheries of the world (
Cannibalism played a figurative role in many depictions that emerged during the Second World War. Writing in the Warsaw Ghetto, Emanuel
Kobi Kabalek (Penn State University)