ABSTRACT
Camp inmates were degraded and debased to a subhuman level by omnipresent death and disease, starvation and beating, torture and terror, impermanence and impotence, atomization and loss of individuality. Omnipresent death, terror, torture, starvation, and equal tribulations helped break and degrade Jews and other camp inmates. They—and the subhuman condition to which they brought their victims—fertilized the absolute corruption of victims and of the SS. On both sides of the barbed wire—though more on the inside than the outside—one essentially human and common, and ordinarily often beneficial, emotion moved people to the absolute corruption which comes from too great a loss of respect for almost, if not all, others, but which probably comes most from too great a loss of self-respect. That emotion was hope.
