Hello everyone, today I want to share with you is Bruno Bettelheim's article "Individual and Group Behavior in Extreme Situations". See Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 38, 417–452 for the original text.

Hello everyone, today I want to share with you the article Bruno Bettelheim (Bruno Bettelheim) "Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations" (Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations). See Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 38 (4), 417–452. Translator: Chen Ronggang .

Translation Note: Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990) was born in a secular Jewish family. On March 13, 1938, the Austrian was annexed by Nazi Germany. The Nazi authorities sent the Austrian Jewish and political opposition to the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald, where many people were cruelly treated, tortured or killed. Two months later, on May 28, 1938, Betelheim was arrested, and he was imprisoned in both concentration camps for ten and a half months until his release on April 14, 1939. When he was in the Buchenwald concentration camp , he met the social psychologist Ernst Federn (1914-2007) and became friends with him. Betelheim was released because April 20 was Hitler's birthday, so it was the result of amnesty order . After his release, Betelheim continued to engage in psychology research, and his works mostly borrowed from his own experience in concentration camps.

Nazi German concentration camp prisoner tag

Individual and group behavior in extreme cases

I have lived in the two largest concentration camps of political prisoners in Germany - Dachau and Buchenwald. During this period, I conducted observations and material collection work, part of which will be described in this article. This article has no intention to tell the horror story of German political prisoners concentration camps. I assume the reader is generally familiar, but it should also be reiterated that prisoners are suffering there.

The prisoners were completely covered and were exposed to high temperatures, rain and cold, 7 days a week and up to 17 hours a day. They are extremely malnourished but have to work hard. Every moment of their lives is strictly regulated and supervised. They were never allowed to meet any visitors, nor did they have a pastor. They are not entitled to any medical services, and even if they are provided with medical services, they are rarely cared for by medically trained personnel.

The prisoners do not know the exact reason for their imprisonment, nor how long they will be imprisoned. Therefore, we describe prisoners as people in “extreme” situations. The terrorist acts committed in these concentration camps aroused legitimate and strong emotions in the minds of civilized people, which sometimes lead them to ignore one thing, that is, for Gestapo , terror is just a means to achieve certain goals.

Gestapo uses some excessive means to cover up their real purpose. This happens frequently in concentration camps. The people who are most capable of discussing concentration camps are former prisoners, who are obviously more interested in the “thing itself” that happens to them than in “why”. If one wants to understand the purpose of the Gestapo and the way in which these purposes are achieved, one cannot emphasize what happens to the specific individual.

According to the well-known ideology in the Nazi countries, the individual either does not exist or does not matter. Therefore, the study of the purpose of concentration camps must emphasize that none of this is terrifying behavior targeting individuals, but for the purpose and result of “cross-individuals”.

It can be said that the Gestapo tried to achieve various goals through concentration camps - torture prisoners and turn prisoners into docile groups, making it impossible for prisoners to develop any individual or group resistance; use prisoners as hostages to show them the fate of anti-Nazi people and spread terror among the groups; provide Gestapo members with a training place to educate them well, let them lose all human emotions and attitudes, and learn the most effective way to calm resistance among unprepared civilians; provide Gestapo a laboratory to give prisoners the least food and meet the minimum hygiene and medical requirements, as long as the prisoners are alive; when working hard, the threat of punishment replaces all normal motivation; in addition to hard labor, the prisoners are also separated from their families.

Due to space limitations, my article only regards concentration camps as a means of changing in prisoners, making them more useful subjects to the Nazi state. To achieve this goal, prisoners are exposed in an environment that is particularly suitable for this purpose. Given the extreme nature of the concentration camp environment, prisoners had to fully adapt themselves at the fastest speed.

This adaptation produces thought-provoking types of private, individual and group behaviors. "Private" behaviors are largely derived from the specific background and personality of the subject, rather than the experiences imposed on him by the Gestapo, although these experiences affect the generation of private behaviors. "Individual" behavior refers to those behaviors that rely more or less on individual independent development, but are obviously also shared by all prisoners. These behavior patterns are generally similar in almost all prisoners, with a slight deviation in levels, and these deviations also stem from the prisoner's specific background and personality. "Group Behavior" is a phenomenon that can only be observed in a certain group of prisoners.

Although these three types of behavior overlap and it is difficult to clearly distinguish them, this article will divide them in this way. We mainly discuss individual and mass behavior (as the title says). Examples of private behavior will also be involved. We therefore assume that the purpose of what happened in the concentration camp was to turn the prisoners into useful subjects of the Nazi state. To achieve this, prisoners are exposed to extreme situations. Based on this, our research began with prisoners’ first exposure to the Gestapo and ended with their adaptation to concentration camps.

When analyzing, we can recognize different stages. The first phase revolves around the "initial shock" and finds himself illegally imprisoned. The main activities of the second phase are the escorts entering the concentration camp and the initial experience in the concentration camp. The third stage slowly changes the prisoner's life and personality, and this process occurs step by step and continuously. This is an adaptation to the concentration camp situation.

In this process, it is difficult for prisoners to recognize the impact of what is happening. One approach is to compare two groups of prisoners, one of which has just begun its adaptation process (the “new” prisoner), and the other has been very deep (the “old” prisoner). By the last stage (Phase 4), the prisoners have adapted to the concentration camp life. This last stage has a significant feature, and prisoners seem to have significantly changed their attitudes and evaluations towards the Gestapo.

The initial shock of

In the statement, the initial psychological shock of being deprived of civil rights and being illegally detained is different from the first time the prisoner suffered from intentional and excessive torture. These two impacts can be analyzed separately. Prisoners stayed in prison for several days before being escorted to the concentration camp, where they were not physically tortured. The process of escorting to the concentration camp is the "start" of entering the concentration camp, which is often the first torture experienced by the prisoner, and is usually the worst torture he has suffered physically and psychologically. By the way, this initial torture was called a "welcome ceremony" in the concentration camp by the Gestapo.

The reaction of prisoners after being taken to prison is best analyzed on two types of basis—the socioeconomic class they belong to and the political education they receive. These two categories obviously overlap, and they are separated only for analysis. Another important factor is whether they were previously familiar with prisons for crime or political activities. Those who had lived in prison before, or those who were expected to be imprisoned for political activities, were dissatisfied with their fate, but somehow they accepted it and regarded it as expected. The initial shock of

's imprisonment was manifested in a change in self-esteem. However, prisoners who have previously been politically educated will show stronger self-esteem. They are full of worries about their future and about what may happen to their family and friends. But despite this reasonable anxiety, they don’t feel too bad about the fact that they are incarcerated.

Those who were once imprisoned said they were happy to find that they could be on an equal footing with political leaders, business leaders, lawyers and judges in prison, who had been the initiators of their jail.This resentment and the feeling that "the superior is finally equal to me" gave them a lot of self-esteem in the concentration camp.

The politically educated prisoner regained his self-esteem as the Gestapo picked those people out as important figures for revenge. Members of different parties rely on different types of rationalization to build their selves. For example, past members of radical left groups discovered in the fact that they were imprisoned how dangerous their previous activities were to the Nazis.

In the main socioeconomic class, the lower class is almost entirely composed of former criminals or politically educated prisoners. The vast majority of non-political prisoners from the middle class account for only a minority in concentration camps, and these middle classes are the least able to withstand the initial shock.

These middle classes find themselves completely unable to understand what is happening to them. They seem to be more clinging to what they see and give them self-esteem. Time and time again, they assured the members of the Gestapo that they had never opposed Nazism. From their actions, it can be seen that the uninstructed German middle class, who was not politically educated, was in a dilemma when facing the Nazi phenomenon. Their lack of a consistent philosophy to protect their integrity as humans makes them lack a position to fight against the Nazis.

They obey the legal provisions issued by the ruling class at all levels and have never questioned these laws. Right now, the legal and law enforcement agencies they sincerely support turn to persecute them. But even now, they dare not oppose the ruling group, and they do not care about their self-esteem. They will not question the rationality of the law and the Gestapo's ideas, but will accept the Gestapo's actions and regard them as fair actions. They are regarded as the target of persecution, but they think this persecution is right because this persecution comes from the authorities. The only way to get rid of this particular dilemma is to believe that it must be a "mistake". Although the Gestapo laughed at them and many of their fellow prisoners laughed at them, these middle-class non-political prisoners still believe that all this is true.

Although the guards use these middle classes to enhance their power, they are inevitably anxious. They realize that they also belong to the same socio-economic class of society. The insistence on legitimacy by German official internal policies may be to resolve the anxiety of middle-class followers who feel that illegal acts undermine their survival basis. This farce of legitimacy climaxed when inmates in concentration camps had to sign a document stating that they agreed to their imprisonment and were satisfied with the treatment they were given.

In the Gestapo's view, this is not a farce, and they attach great importance to this document that has been signed by prisoners to prove that everything is carried out in accordance with law and order. For example, Gestapo members were allowed to kill prisoners but were not allowed to steal from them. Instead, they forced prisoners to sell their property and then "gift" to a Gestapo agency.

The greatest wish of middle-class prisoners is that their identities should be respected to some extent. What they most disgusted is being treated "like ordinary criminals." After a period of time, they involuntarily realized their actual situation. Then they seemed to disintegrate. Several suicides occurred in prison and during the escort to concentration camps, and the suicides were all middle-class. Later, members of this group acted in the most antisocial way—they deceived their companions, and several became spies serving the Gestapo; they lost their middle class characteristics, their sense of etiquette and self-esteem; they became idle and seemed to lose their autonomy; they seemed to be no longer able to form their own patterns of life, but followed the patterns formed by other groups of prisoners.

upper class members in the concentration camp should isolate themselves as much as possible. They also don't seem to accept the true situation that happened to them. They firmly believe that they are important and will be released in the shortest time. This belief does not exist among middle-class prisoners. Although the middle class also has hope of release, this hope is a group hope, not an individual hope.

The prisoners of the upper class have never formed a group, they are more or less isolated, and each has a group of middle-class "clients". Their advantage can be maintained by bringing together with these middle-class “clients” who can promise middle-class money and once they are released, they can reciprocate. The fact that many prisoners of the upper class are really released from prisons or concentration camps in a short period of time continues to ignite this hope that permeates the middle class.

A few prisoners of the top class are even indifferent to the behavior of the upper class. They have no "clients", they do not use their own money to bribe other prisoners, nor do they express any hope for their release. These prisoners are too small to summarize. They seem to look down on all other prisoners, just as they look down on the Gestapo. To endure life in the concentration camp, they seem to have developed a sense of superiority that nothing can touch them.

Another psychological logic mechanism became more obvious later on. It may also play some role in the initial stages, so I should mention it here. It seems that many political leaders in detention feel a little guilty that their job has failed. They cannot fight the Nazis more effectively, and they cannot establish solid democracy or left-class rule to prevent the rise of the Nazi regime and prevent the Nazis from defeating it. However, this guilt in these people was greatly alleviated in the concentration camp because they felt that the Nazis thought they were important enough to make the Nazis bother.

Perhaps so many prisoners can better endure the lives imposed on them by concentration camps because the punishment they have to endure has freed them from most of the guilt. This sign can be found in what is often said when prisoners are scolded for any bad behavior. For example, when being scolded for swearing, fighting, or unhygienic, they almost always answer, “Living in such an environment, we cannot treat each other normally.” When being warned not to say too bad things to free relatives and friends, they answer, “This is not an objective place. When I am free again, I will act in a civilized way again and evaluate others’ behavior objectively.”

summary. It seems that most, if not all, of the prisoners try to respond to the initial shock, gathering some possible powers to maintain their severely shaken self-esteem. Members of the lower class gain some satisfaction from the fact that there is no class difference between prisoners. Political prisoners find their importance as politicians again reflected through incarceration. Members of the upper class can play a certain leadership role among middle-class prisoners. Top-level family members feel superior to everyone else in prison, just like they feel outside of prison. In addition, the initial shock seemed to ease various guilt, such as political inaction, misconduct, unreasonable slander against relatives and friends, etc. The initial experience of escorting into the concentration camp and staying in the concentration camp

After staying in the prison for a few days, the prisoners were taken to the concentration camp. During the escort, they were constantly suffering from various tortures. Many of the torture patterns depend on the fantasy of the Gestapo members responsible for the group of prisoners. However, certain torture patterns quickly became common—corporal punishment (including whipping, kicking, slapping, bayonet injury), torture for extreme fatigue (inmates were forced to stare at the dazzling light for hours, kneel down for hours, etc.). Prisoners are killed from time to time. Prisoners are not allowed to take care of their own or others' wounds. The guards forced the prisoners to beat each other. Defiling the most cherished value of prisoners (forcing them to curse God, accuse themselves of their despicable behavior, accuse their wives of adultery and prostitution).

This situation lasts for several hours and will be repeated. According to reliable reports, this "enlightenment" education has never been less than twelve hours, and often lasts twenty-four hours. If too many prisoners are taken to the concentration camp, or the prisoners come from nearby places (no long-distance escort required), the educational ceremony will be held on the first day of arrival at the concentration camp.The purpose of

torture is to break the prisoner's resistance and assure the guard that the guard is indeed superior to the prisoner. This can be seen from the facts below. The longer the torture lasts, the lower the level of violence. The guards gradually became less excited and finally even talked to the prisoners. Once a new guard takes over, new terrorist actions are started, although not as violent as it was at the beginning. Sometimes, prisoners who have lived in concentration camps are brought back with a group of new prisoners. If these old prisoners were able to provide evidence that they had lived in concentration camps, they would not be tortured.

It is difficult for us to determine what happened in prisoners during this treatment. Most of them get so exhausted that they are only partially aware of what is going on. In general, prisoners remember the details and don’t mind talking about them, but they don’t like to talk about how they feel and think when they are tortured. The few who volunteered to provide information were vaguely speaking, sounding like cunning rationalizations, just to prove that they endured the treatment of hurting self-esteem without trying to resist. Several people who tried to resist were unable to accept my interview, and they were dead.

I can clearly recall the exhaustion of a prisoner who was stabbed by a bayonet early in the escort process and was hit hard in the head. Both injuries resulted in heavy blood loss and made him drowsy. However, he clearly recalled his thoughts and emotions during the escort process. He kept thinking that people could endure so much without committing suicide or going crazy. He wondered if the guards were really tortured prisoners as they were described in the book. He wondered if the Gestapo was so simple-minded that he liked to force prisoners to filth themselves, or expected to dispel their resistance in this way. He wondered what fantasies did the guards have when choosing the means to torture prisoners?

guards do not shoot, but kill them by beating the prisoners because a bullet costs six Finneys (Pfennig, 1 Mark equals 100 Finneys), and the prisoners are not even worth that much money. This made him feel quite ridiculous. Obviously, these people (mostly even formerly influential people) are not worth that little money in the eyes of the guard.

can be seen that this prisoner can predict his future life in the concentration camp to a certain extent. The Gestapo was stupider than he expected, which made him feel a little satisfied. Furthermore, he was satisfied with himself that torture did not change his thinking ability and perspective. Looking back now, these thoughts seem to be futile, but they should be mentioned. If I were asked to summarize the main problems in the concentration camp, I would say that the biggest problem is to protect yourself. If you are lucky, you will regain your freedom, and you will be roughly the same person as before you were deprived of your freedom.

A prisoner has no doubt that he can tolerate escort and what follows, because from the very beginning he is convinced that these terrible, degrading experiences do not happen to the “he” as the subject, but only to the “he” as the object. The importance of this attitude was confirmed by other prisoners, although no one could say for sure that it had been clearly formed during the escort.

Prisoners usually use more general words to express their feelings, such as "the main problem is to survive, don't change", but they do not specify what "unchanged" means. I learned from more prisoners that what hopes to remain the same varies from person to person, roughly covering people’s general attitudes and values.

The prisoner's thoughts and emotions during the escort are very detachment (detachment). They seemed to feel that they were just trance involved in this matter. Many prisoners have this feeling of detachment, as if what happened is really not important to them. Strangely, this feeling is mixed with a belief: "It can't be true, how can this happen." Not only during the escort, but also at all times in the concentration camp, the prisoners must convince themselves that it is true, that it really happened, not just a nightmare. But they never quite succeeded in convincing themselves.

This sense of detachment is separated from the real environment in which prisoners are located, which may be considered a mechanism to protect their personality integrity. Look at how many prisoners perform in concentration camps, where their lives have no connection with their "real" lives. They even insist that transcendence is the right attitude. Their statements about themselves, and their evaluations of their own and others' behavior, are very different from their remarks and ideas outside of concentration camps.

This kind of behavioral patterns and separation of values ​​inside and outside concentration camps are so strong. This "difference between inside and outside" is one of the many "taboos" I encountered in the interview, and many prisoners did not want to touch it at all: "What I did here, or what happened to me, doesn't count at all. No matter what method is used, just let me survive here."

There is another observation during the escort process - no prisoner fainted. Faint means being killed. In this particular case, fainting is not a means to protect the prisoner from unbearable pain and to help him survive in this way. Fainting can endanger the prisoner's survival, because anyone who cannot obey orders will be killed. However, once prisoners enter concentration camps, things change. Inmates who faint sometimes get some attention and are usually no longer tormented.

summary. During the escort, the prisoners were physically and mentally tortured, with the intention of seemingly to weaken all their abilities to resist the Gestapo. More importantly, these tortures appear to be to overcome the fears of Gestapo members for prisoners who are smarter, usually belonging to higher social groups. During the escort, the prisoners formed a detached state, feeling that what had happened did not really happen to them.

adaptation to concentration camps: the difference in response to extreme experiences and suffering experiences

The life experience of prisoners is explained through normal psychological mechanisms . Once experience goes beyond this frame of reference, normal mechanisms seem to be able to articulate it correctly, and therefore new psychological mechanisms are needed. The experience during the escort process goes beyond the normal frame of reference. The inmate's reaction was "unforgettable, but unreal". The dreams of prisoners show that extreme experiences go beyond normal mechanisms. Many dreams express attacks on the Gestapo members, and prisoners retaliate against them, which is a fulfillment of a desire. Interestingly, the reason why prisoners dream of revenge on the Gestapo is not because of extreme experiences, but always because of some relatively minor abuse. I have similar experience myself. The escort process will repeatedly impact in the dream. Gradually, the impact becomes less vivid and the dream eventually disappears. I was surprised to find that in my dream, the most shocking event did not appear. I have asked many prisoners if they dreamed of the escort process, but I couldn't find someone I remembered.

In other extreme cases, you can also see a similar attitude towards escort. On a very cold winter night, a snowstorm hit and all prisoners were punished and forced to stand for hours without wearing coats (they never had coats to wear). By then, they had been working in the open air for more than twelve hours and had barely eaten any food. They were threatened to stand all night. With more than twenty prisoners frozen to death, the rule collapsed. The guard's threat becomes invalid. Exposure to the weather is a horrible torture. Seeing that his friends die but he is powerless, and he is likely to die too, which creates a situation similar to when he is escorted, but today's prisoners have more experience with the Gestapo.

blatant resistance is impossible, it is impossible to do anything to protect yourself. A feeling of total indifference swept across the prisoners. They don't care if the guards shoot them. They were indifferent to the torture carried out by the guards. The guards no longer have any authority, the curse of fear and death is broken. It's like what happened to me didn't "really" happen. There was another split between the "I" that happened to me and the "I" who was completely indifferent, and the "I" was just an observer who was a little interested but didn't care.Although unfortunately, the prisoners felt no fear, so they were "happy" than before.

Some extreme situations also make the prisoners feel happy. Obviously, it is easier to bear the unfortunate experience when everyone finds themselves “on the same boat.” Because everyone believes that their chances of survival are slim, everyone feels that they are more heroic and willing to help others. This help and being helped bring people to their hearts.

Another factor is that not only did the prisoners escape from the fear of the Gestapo, but the Gestapo actually lost some strength because the guards seemed reluctant to shoot all prisoners. The prisoners were exhausted and were relieved by the end of the torture, but at the same time they could no longer feel fear. Prisoners as individuals are relatively safe, but they lose their sense of security as a unified whole.

The prisoners talked about these facts detachedly, but did not talk about their emotions and thoughts on a snowy night. The events themselves and their details are not forgotten, but no specific emotions are attached to these events. Emotions did not appear in the prisoners' dreams.

So, compared with extreme cases, individuals have a greater emotional response to other cases. For example, being beaten with a mouth will not be mentioned by prisoners because it actually triggers shame, so don't talk about it. People hate individual guards who kick, beat, and insult people far more than guards who cause serious harm to people. For the latter, people hate the Gestapo group rather than the individuals who impose punishment. Obviously, this distinction is unreasonable, but it is also inevitable.

It seems that all experiences that may occur in the prisoner's "normal" life history will provoke a "normal" reaction. For example, prisoners appear to be particularly sensitive to punishments similar to those parents may impose on their children. Punishing children is within their “normal” frame of reference, but they become subjects of punishment destroy their adult frame of reference. Therefore, their reactions are not adults but children (embarrassment and shame; violence, incompetence and uncontrollable emotions; not targeting institutions but individuals).

If the pain is great, people will more or less feel like a martyr who suffers for a cause, and the martyr will not be dissatisfied with his own martyrdom. This brings up the question - what psychological phenomena make people obey martyrdom, and what psychological phenomena that lead to others accepting martyrdom? This question is beyond the scope of this article, but some opinions related to it can be mentioned.

If a prisoner tries to protect a group, he may be killed by the guards, but if his actions are known to the concentration camp management, the entire group will always be punished more severely than it would be in the beginning. In this way, this group of people will become disgusted with the actions of the protectors, because they suffer from them. The protector cannot be a martyr.

Let’s return to the original question – why are prisoners more disgusted with the slight inferior behavior of the guard than with extreme experiences? It seems that if a prisoner is scolded, slapped, and pushed “like a child”, his behavioral patterns and psychological mechanisms will return to childhood. Like children, prisoners cannot see their own experiences in the general context of Gestapo’s actions, but instead hate individual Gestapo members. He vowed to "revenge" him, but he knew clearly that it was impossible. He could neither form a transcendent attitude nor an objective evaluation that would make him think that his pain was insignificant compared to other experiences.

Prisoners (as a group) take the same attitude towards mild pain. Not only did they provide any help, they accuse the prisoner of suffering because of his stupidity, allowing himself to be "catched" and not careful enough - in short, accuse him of acting like a child. Therefore, treating prisoners like children and causing them to fall, not only happens in the minds of a certain prisoner, but also in the minds of fellow prisoners. It should be emphasized that over time, the difference in response to small and large sufferings seems to slowly disappear.This change in response is just one of many differences between new and old prisoners.

Differences in psychological attitudes between new and old prisoners

In the discussion below, we refer to "new prisoners" refer to those who have been in concentration camps for less than one year, and "old" prisoners refer to those who have been in concentration camps for at least three years. As far as the old prisoners are concerned, I can only provide observations, but no reflective conclusions are drawn.

As mentioned earlier, the main focus of the new prisoner seems to be to maintain a complete personality and to be "intact" when returning to the outside world. All their emotional efforts point to this goal. The old prisoners seemed primarily concerned about how to live as well as possible in the concentration camp. Once they have this attitude, everything that happens to them, and even the worst atrocities, is "real" to them.

Once they reach this stage, once they start accepting everything that happens in the concentration camp as "real", the prisoners will be afraid to return to the outside world. They did not directly admit it, but from their conversations they hardly believed they would return to the outside world, because they felt that only catastrophic events ( World War and World Revolution ) could give them freedom—even so, they doubt whether they could adapt to this new concentration camp life.

They seemed to realize what was going on in the concentration camp. They realized that they had adapted to life here, and that the process was parallel to the basic changes in their personality. A once very famous German radical politician provides a strong evidence for this view. He declared that, in his experience, no one can live in a concentration camp for more than five years without completely changing his attitude, and it is impossible to be the same person he used to be. He asserted that once being a prisoner in a concentration camp became his real life, he could not see any meaning of continuing to live. He could not bear the attitude and behavior of the old prisoners, so he committed suicide when he was in the concentration camp for six years.

Of course, when facing the idea of ​​"having to spend the rest of your life in a concentration camp", different people have different opinions. Some people quickly become part of concentration camp life, and some may never. When a new prisoner is taken to the concentration camp, the "senior" will teach him something that will help him get used to. New prisoners were told that they should do everything they could to survive their initial days and not give up. The longer they stay in the concentration camp, the easier it will be to adapt. "If you can survive the first three months, you can survive the next three years."

Although the annual mortality rate is close to 20%, the old prisoners still think so. This high mortality is mainly because a large number of new prisoners did not survive in the first few weeks of the concentration camp. They either disdain to adapt to life here to survive, or they are not able to do so. How long it took a prisoner to stop thinking that life outside the camp was real, largely depending on the strength of his emotional bond with his family and friends.

Many people have publicly longed for regaining freedom. Later, people can learn about the change in attitude from some signs. They plan to find a better position in the concentration camp, rather than trying to rebuild connections with the outside world, avoid getting involved in family and affairs of the outside world, and focus all their interests on events that occur in the concentration camp.

I once told some old prisoners that I am not surprised that they are no longer interested in the future life of the outside world. They also admit that they can no longer imagine their life outside the concentration camp, they can no longer imagine that they can still make decisions freely, and be able to take care of themselves and their families. We can not only observe their shift in attitudes towards the family and the outside world in old prisoners. Compared with new prisoners, old prisoners have different hopes for future life, and their degree of return to babies is also different. When discussing these differences between new and old prisoners, huge individual differences should also be kept in mind.

Changes in attitudes toward their own family and friends

New prisoners are usually those who receive the most letters, money and attention. Their family tried every means to free them.However, they have been accusing their families of not doing well enough, betraying and deceiving them. If they receive a letter about how their families are running for their release, they may cry, but in the next moment, they may learn that their families have sold their property without their consent, so they start to swear. They cursed their families, feeling that their families must think they were "apparently dead." In the prisoners' private world before, even if only minor changes have occurred, they will have an amazing effect of moving the whole body. They may have forgotten some of their close friends’ names, but they will be very sad once they learn that these friends are dead.

This ambivalence of new prisoners towards relatives and friends seems to stem from a mechanism mentioned above. They really long to return to the person they left, a desire so strong that they fear any changes (how little) that occur during the time they leave. They wish their worldly possessions were safe and sound, even though they were of no use to them at this moment.

It's hard to say whether this desire to stay the same is due to their realization of how difficult it is to adapt to a completely changed family situation, or because they have found some magical way of thinking—if the world I lived in in the past hasn't changed, I won't change either. Through this way of thinking, they can try to resist the feeling that they are “changing”. Their intense reaction to family changes corresponds to the changes they are taking place.

What makes them angry may not only be the "change" itself, but also the changes in the internal status of the family brought about by changes. Their families have always depended on them to make decisions, and now they are the ones they need to rely on. This makes them feel like they are dependent. They lost the opportunity to become the head of the family again. But in their desire, despite their absence, the family structure remains unaffected.

In fact, although most families are very good at family members in concentration camps, serious problems arise. In the first few months, they spent a lot of money working to free prisoners, which often exceeded their ability to bear. They begged the Gestapo members to release their relatives, which was a rather unpleasant task, but they were repeatedly told that it was his own fault to be imprisoned by the prisoner. Later, it was difficult for family members to find jobs themselves because some family members were suspected. Their children are having all kinds of troubles in school. They are excluded from public relief. Therefore, they are dissatisfied with having family members locked up in concentration camps, and this dissatisfaction becomes a natural thing.

Their relatives and friends no longer have much sympathy for them, because the vast majority of Germans have formed certain defense mechanisms for concentration camps. The Germans cannot stand living in a world that is not protected by law and order. So, there is actually a slow alienation process between the prisoners and their families, but in the case of the new prisoners, the process has just begun. The question is, how can they blame their families for the changes that have happened to themselves and who is the culprit of all this?

Prisoners were punished so much that they had to endure so hard that they could not accept any blame. They feel they have made up for any shortcomings in their past relationships with family and friends. In this way, they don't have to take any responsibility and feel no guilt. Therefore, they are more likely to hate others and even their own family because of their own flaws.

This feeling of atonement for all sins has some real basis. At the beginning of the establishment of the concentration camp, the Nazis detained their most important enemy in the concentration camp. Soon, there were no important enemies in society because they were either dead, in prisons and concentration camps, or had immigrated.

However, the Nazis still needed an institution to threaten opponents of this system. Too many Germans are beginning to feel dissatisfied with the system. Incarceration of all these people would disrupt the operation of industrial production, and maintaining industrial production was a primary goal of the Nazis.Therefore, if a group is dissatisfied with the Nazi regime, a few members of this group will be "selected" and then taken to concentration camps. If the lawyer is restless, hundreds of lawyers will be sent to the concentration camp; when the medical community seems to have rebelled, the same situation will happen to the doctor, etc.

Gestapo calls this collective punishment "action". This new system was first put into use between 1937 and 1938, when Germany was preparing to begin annexation of foreign countries. In the first "action", only the leaders of opposition groups were punished. This makes people feel that it is not dangerous to be affiliated with a rebel group, because only leaders are threatened. Soon, the Gestapo revised the system, which could put different classes in danger. This new system can not only spread terror among the members of the group, but also punish and destroy the entire group, not necessarily just the leaders of the group (although prisoners are never told the exact reason for their incarceration).

Gestapo interviews with prisoners to get information about their relatives and friends. During these interviews, prisoners sometimes complained about their incarceration, while the more important Nazi enemies were at large. They were told that as part of this group they had to suffer. It’s just that they are not very lucky, but if their fate does not teach this group a good lesson and make this group perform better, then they will meet everyone in the group in the concentration camp.

Therefore, the prisoners sincerely believe that they are atonement for other members of the group, but outsiders cannot see this way. Therefore, prisoners originally thought that they represented their own group and had the right to receive special attention from the outside world, but did not receive such attention, which increased the prisoners' resentment towards the outside world.

But even when complaining and accusing, new prisoners always like to talk about relatives and friends, their place in the outside world, and their hopes for the future. Old prisoners don't like to talk about their family and old friends. When they talk occasionally, they are in a very distant tone. They like to receive letters, but that doesn't matter to them, partly because they have lost contact with the events in the letter.

To some extent, old prisoners realized that they might have a hard time finding their way back. But there is another reason. The old prisoners were full of hatred for all those who lived outside the concentration camps - they "enjoy life, but we died here." In the minds of prisoners, this external world that continues to live as if nothing had happened is composed of people they had known, their relatives and friends.

However, this hatred is also very depressing among old prisoners. Just as they forget to “love” their relatives, they lose the ability to “hate” them. They learned to point a large number of attacks at themselves so as not to have too much conflict with the Gestapo, while the new prisoners still point their attacks to the outside world and point to the Gestapo without surveillance.

The old prisoners did not show too much emotion and could not have a strong feeling for anyone. Old prisoners do not like to mention their former social status and activities, while new prisoners like to talk big. The new prisoners seem to try to support their self-esteem by letting others know how important they have ever been, and these things remain very important to them. The old prisoners seemed to have accepted their frustration, and anything was so brilliant compared to the situation they were in.

Hope for life after freedom

is closely related to prisoners’ beliefs and attitudes towards their families. Here, prisoners have many individual and group dreams. If the overall mood of the concentration camp is not too depressing, indulging in dreams is one of their favorite pastimes. There are obvious differences in the dreams of new and old prisoners. The longer the prisoners are in the concentration camp, the less their dreams are in line with reality, so that the hopes and expectations of old prisoners often resort to eschatology or Messianic forms—which is consistent with their expectations that only events like the apocalypse can free them.

They will have some ideas, imagine the upcoming world war and world revolution. They believe that in this imaginary upheaval, they will at least become the future leaders of Germany, even if they are not the leaders of the world. This will make them feel that everything is worthy of suffering. These grand expectations coexist with their future vague private lives. In their dreams, they will certainly be future political leaders, but they are not quite sure whether they will continue to live with their wives and children. The cause of these dreams may be that they seem to feel that only a high public position can help them regain their status in their families.

The hopes and expectations of their future lives are more in line with reality. Despite their openly ambivalent attitude towards their families, they never doubted that they would continue to live with them, as they did when they left. They also hope to continue their public and professional lives in the past.

According to our definition, the adaptation mentioned so far is more or less an individual behavior. Changes discussed in the next section - "returning infant behavior" is a group phenomenon. I think this happens to all prisoners. Furthermore, while prisoners do not interfere with other people’s dreams or attitudes toward their families, they (as a group) express their power to those who are not sociable. They accuse those who are unwilling to rely on the Gestapo like their children for threatening the safety of the group. This accusation is not unfounded, because the Gestapo always punishes the group for misconduct by individual members.

Return to infant behavior

Inmates formed some behavior types with characteristics of infancy or early youth. Some of these behaviors develop slowly, while others are immediately imposed on prisoners. The intensity of these behaviors increases over time. Some of these more or less infancy behaviors have been discussed, such as ambivalence towards the family, despair, and finding satisfaction in fantasy rather than appealing to action.

It is difficult for us to determine whether these behavior patterns were intentional by the Gestapo, but it must be related to it. The prisoners were tortured in the same way that a cruel and tyrannical father tortured a helpless child. It should be added here that prisoners are also degraded by the baby environment, such as being forced to dirty themselves and excretion is strictly regulated. Excretion is the most important and most often discussed in detail. During the day, prisoners who want to defecate must obtain permission from the guard. It seems that people are going to have a new sanitation education. The guards seemed happy to have the power to allow or not allow access to the toilet (the toilet was very inadequate).

guards have this kind of fun, and prisoners like to go to the toilet for a while to rest, avoiding whipping from supervisors and guards. But prisoners are not always so safe, as combative young guards even like to interfere in prisoners while they go to the toilet. Prisoners use names that only children will use, and are not allowed to use the usual titles of the middle and upper class in Germany. On the other hand, they must call the guard in the most respectful way.

Prisoners live just like children. They lose their sense of timeline and cannot plan for the future. They can only focus on the happiness and satisfaction in front of them so that they can get greater satisfaction in the near future. They cannot establish persistent object relationships. Friendship develops as quickly as friendship breaks. The prisoners will be like early teenagers, and say they will never look at each other again, and will never talk to each other again, but will become close friends in a few minutes.

Inmates talk big about their previous achievements, how they successfully deceived the foreman or guard, and how they ruined their jobs. Like children, people are not frustrated or ashamed at all when they know they have lied about their abilities.

Another factor that causes prisoners to return infant behavior is forced work. New prisoners are especially forced to do meaningless work, such as moving heavy stones from one place to another and moving them back after a while. Sometimes, they are asked to dig holes in the ground with bare hands (although tools are available).They hate this meaningless work (although it doesn't matter whether the work is useful or not). They feel demeaned when they are forced to engage in "childish" and stupid labor. When their work produces something useful, they like harder work.

There is no doubt that the work they do and the abuse they have to endure in the Gestapo caused their "disintegration" as adults. I had the opportunity to interview several inmates who had lived in prison for several years before being taken to the concentration camp, some of whom were in solitary confinement. Although they are not large and cannot be summarized, the time spent in prison does not cause such personality changes here. The only thing that prisons and concentration camps have in common with regard to the behavior of returning infants is that both prisoners are prevented from satisfying their sexual desires in a normal way, which ultimately leads to their fear of losing their masculinity. In concentration camps, this fear adds weight to other factors that are unfavorable to adult behavior and promotes the development of children's behavior.

The final adaptation to concentration camp life

When a prisoner changes his personality and accepts the Gestapo values ​​as his own, he reaches the final stage of adapting to the concentration camp environment. There are several examples of this acceptance.

Gestapo believes (or pretends to think) that these prisoners are the scum of the world. They insist that no one is better than anyone else. One of the reasons for adopting this attitude may be to impress the young guards trained in concentration camps-they need to think that they are superior to even the most outstanding prisoners, and that the Nazi enemies are now subdued and need not take them to heart.

Even a slight opposition to the Nazi system will lead to the elimination of all those who dare to oppose it, and the degree of opposition is not important. Occasional conversations with these guards show that they really believe there is a Jewish capitalist world conspiracy against the German nation, and those who opposed the Nazis are involved and should therefore be eliminated, regardless of who the person is. Therefore, we can understand why they treat prisoners with the most despicable behavior.

The guards and prisoners constantly interfere in privacy, and the prisoners find themselves in desperate situations. Therefore, their aggression is accumulated. The new prisoner vents himself in the way of the outside world. But slowly, the prisoners accepted new expressions of verbal attacks, and these terms definitely came from their previous vocabulary, but from the Gestapo, very different vocabulary. They imitate the Gestapo's verbal attacks and then their physical attacks, a step that takes several years. In some cases, they try to win the Gestapo's favor in this way, but more often because they think it's the best way to treat each other in concentration camps.

All prisoners who have lived in concentration camps for a long time will imitate the attitude of the Gestapo, which was originally the attitude used by the Gestapo to fight against "unqualified prisoners". New prisoners have brought difficult problems to old prisoners. They complained about the unbearable life in the concentration camp and the difficulty of adapting, which put new pressure on the old prisoners. Individual bad behavior endangers the entire group. Therefore, a new prisoner who cannot bear the pressure will become a burden to other prisoners.

In addition, the weak are the ones who are most likely to become traitors. Generally speaking, the weak usually dies in the first few weeks of a concentration camp. Therefore, old prisoners sometimes help get rid of the unqualified person, imitating the Gestapo ideology in this way, making it a part of their own behavior. The old prisoners therefore showed a tough attitude and formed themselves according to the example set by the Gestapo to treat other prisoners the way they did.

In fact, the old prisoner took over the Gestapo attitude. Old prisoners eliminate the weak for self-protection. Like the Gestapo, they tortured the weak for several days and slowly killed them. Old prisoners who agree with the Gestapo will not only imitate this offensiveness, but will also take some parts of the Gestapo's old uniform for themselves. If they can't do this, they learn to sew their uniforms to look similar to the guardian's uniforms.However, prisoners will pay a huge price for this imitation, and the Gestapo will try hard to punish old prisoners for sewing uniforms. When asked why they did this, they admitted that they like to make themselves look like a guard.

's recognition of the Gestapo did not stop at imitating their appearance and behavior. Old prisoners also accepted their goals and values, even if they seemed to be contrary to their own interests.

Even those who have ever received a good education will come to this point, which is really shocking. American and British newspapers often report on cruel acts committed in concentration camps. The Gestapo punished prisoners for these stories, which was in line with their policy that whatever a member or a former member did would be punished, and these stories must have stemmed from the former inmate’s report. In discussing the incident, the old prisoners insisted that foreign journalists and newspapers should not interfere with German institutions and expressed disgust with journalists who tried to help them.

I asked more than a hundred old political prisoners: "If I were lucky enough to go abroad, should I tell the story of the concentration camp so that the civilized world would know?" I found that only two people said without reservation that everyone who fled Germany should do their best to fight the Nazis. All others wanted a revolution in Germany, but they did not agree with the interference of foreign forces.

When old prisoners accept the Nazi values ​​as their own, they usually do not acknowledge this, but instead go to find some rationalization of explanations to explain their behavior. For example, prisoners collect waste in concentration camps (because Germany lacks raw materials). When someone pointed out that they were doing this to help the Nazis, they reasonably explained that by saving waste, the German working class also became richer. When building buildings for the Gestapo, they debate whether they should be well built. New prisoners support destruction, while most old prisoners support building. Their reason is that the new Germany will use these buildings. Some people pointed out that the revolution must destroy the Gestapo's buildings, and at this time, they settled for the second best, saying that a person should do all his work in any case. Most old prisoners have realized that they must be able to convince themselves that work makes sense or they cannot continue working for the Gestapo, so they must make themselves believe in the meaning.

During the process of counting prisoners twice a day, some old prisoners were satisfied and stood upright, which can only be explained by the fact that they had fully accepted the Gestapo values ​​and regarded them as their own. The prisoners are proud to be as tough as the Gestapo. This sense of identity with the perpetrator even reached a certain level-old prisoners imitate the guard's amateur activities. One game that the guards played was to see who could tolerate being beaten for the longest time without complaining. The game was imitated by old prisoners, as if they were beaten up and not enough.

Gestapo often enforces meaningless rules that originate from a guard's sudden whim. These rules are usually forgotten once they are made, but there are always some old prisoners who will continue to follow these rules and try to enforce them against others long after the Gestapo forgets them.

For example, once, a guard was checking the prisoner's clothing and found that some people's shoes were dirty on the inside. He ordered all prisoners to wash their shoes inside and out with water and soap. The treated shoes become as hard as stones. This command was executed only once, and many prisoners did not even execute it when they received the command. Despite this, there are some old prisoners who not only insist on cleaning the inside of their shoes every day, but also cursing everyone who doesn't do so, saying that they are absent-minded and dirty. These prisoners firmly believe that the rules set by the Gestapo are ideal standards for human behavior, at least in concentration camps.

Most old prisoners "coexist peacefully" with the Gestapo's values, and also involve racial issues - although racial discrimination is incompatible with their values ​​before they are brought to concentration camps.They agree with Germany's "Living Space Theory" (Lebensraum), believe that the German nation needs more living space, and they believe in the superiority of the German race. It should be emphasized that this is not the result of Gestapo's publicity, and Gestapo does not intend to incorporate them.

In addition, the Gestapo insists that prisoners should be stopped from expressing their feelings anyway. The Gestapo seemed to believe that after they were tortured, they no longer defeated prisoners with values, but only fear. But among the old prisoners, we can observe another situation that shows that they are willing to accept the Gestapo practices that are absolutely impossible to come from publicity.

It seems that since their baby attitude towards the Gestapo has been restored, they hope that the strong father image should be fair and kind. They divided the Gestapo with positive and negative emotions, and all positive emotions were concentrated on a few officials who were quite high in the hierarchy of concentration camp managers. They insist that these officials hide a sense of justice and rationality under the harsh surface—they think that these officials really care about prisoners and even quietly help them. Some people say that the reason why these officials helped them silently was because they could only show their expressions in that position.

These prisoners are eager to find reasons for their opinions, which is very sad. The prisoner also compiled a legend for this - one of the two officers inspecting the barracks wiped the dirt from his shoes before entering the barracks. This may have been just a subconscious action, but was interpreted by the prisoner as an objection to another officer.

There are many problems with old prisoners obeying and identifying with the Gestapo, but not all. Some old prisoners also need extraordinary courage when they are not afraid of the Gestapo.

Finally, I should emphasize again that this article is a preliminary report and is not exhaustive. I think concentration camps are not just places where the Gestapo retaliates against the enemy. The concentration camps were the main training ground for young Gestapo soldiers who were going to rule and manage Germany and even all conquered countries. The concentration camp was also the lab of the Gestapo, where it developed methods not only to turn free and upright citizens into gloomy slaves, but also to embrace the values ​​of their masters in many ways. Prisoners still think they are following their life goals and values ​​when in fact they have accepted the Nazi values ​​as their own. The extreme situations encountered by prisoners who have lived in concentration camps for several years also occur in a minor form to German residents. This could also happen to the residents of the occupied countries if they cannot form organized resistance groups. This system seems too powerful for individuals to break its control over emotional life, especially many groups have already accepted the Nazi system.

If a person acts as an individual, it seems easier to resist the pressure from the Gestapo and the Nazis. The Gestapo seemed to know this and therefore forced all individuals to join the group under their surveillance. To this end, the authorities have introduced a hostage system and a joint-coordination system (punishment of group members) that do not allow any individual behavior to deviate from the group standard (regardless of this standard). The authorities also do not allow any form of separate activities.

The main goal of these practices is to develop a child-like attitude in the group and a dependence on the leadership will like children. The most effective way to break this influence seems to be to form a democratic resistance group composed of independent, mature and self-reliant people, each member should support all other members in their resistance. Without such a group, it seems difficult to avoid the ruthless pressure from the Gestapo and the Nazi system, and it is inevitable that the slow process of disintegration of personality will be avoided. The concentration camp was the Gestapo laboratory, which disintegrated not only the free people, but even the most enthusiastic opponents of the Nazi system. Therefore, all those interested in understanding the impact of the Nazi system should study it to help the unfortunate person become autonomous and independent.