ABSTRACT
Arriving in Mauthausen has been described as landing on another planet. Once through the camp gates, humanity was abolished; such were the rites of passage. The life, to call it a life, to which the prisoners had to adapt revolved around a small number of men in authority whose personalities, if not always their names, remain engraved in the memories of the survivors. There were the SS officers, most of whom remained in their posts throughout their internment. There were the sentries and the guards, who were transient and faceless. And there were the Kapos, fellow-captives turned into captors, wielding the instrument of authority closest at hand to the hapless inmate. It was usually the Kapos whom the prisoners knew best. No SS slept in the fortress, and few SS ever entered it apart from the Rapportfuhrer and his team of NCOs. Each NCO was responsible for a Block, and it was the responsibility of the Rapportfuhrer to collect and check die reports of the NCOs. As for the SS guards in the watchtowers, they entered and left by steps mounted on the outside, not the inside, of the walls. The result was that only a few prisoners, notably the Prommenten who worked in the offices and services, came to know in detail the personalities of their tormentors. Other facts would emerge later, when some of those tormentors stood trial for their lives. In the case of the SS officers, two impressions were generally shared: they were young, well built, and physically attractive, but mentally of very limited grasp. Until National Socialism lifted them out of obscurity, Ziereis was a carpenter, Bachmayer a cobbler, Schulz a blacksmith, and Streitwieser an unsuccessful mechanic. As for their moral sense, the more depraved they were, the faster they would be advanced.
