Content Warning: Forced prostitution, rape

The so-called "Lagergeld" – which, as can be seen here, was called "Prämienscheine" in Flossenbürg –could be used to purchase mostly foodstuffs from the kitchens of the camp and in some camps privileged prisoners could use it toget stuff from the magazine ("Canada").

The origins of Lagergeld can be found in the early years of the concentration camp system. The first camp to introduce Lagergeld was Oranienburg near Berlin in July 1933. An arrested graphics designer named Willi Lippert was forced by the SS to design a variety of Lagergeld notes, worth five, ten, and fifty pfenning as well as one mark. Prisoners could exchange the money they were arrested and brough to the camp into Lagergeld in order to purchase food from the kitchens and had to convert at least 70 pfenning from money mailed to them by their relatives.

All this worked and was designed with the example of the German prison system in mind. In Nicholaus Wachsmann's book KL – A history of the Concentration Camps he identifies the early concentration camp system as heavily inspired by both German military discipline camps – seeing as many of the architects of the CC system had first-hand experience of German military discipline camps – and the German prison system. Many of the early "wild" camps were nothing more than a cellar and a couple of SA men locking up communists they wanted to settle scores with. With many of the camps that persisted beyond the early days of the Nazi dictatorship, things like the Lagergeld, uniforms, roll call etc. were established.

The reason for this is rather simple: While in case of the Lagergeld, the Nazi authorities argued that it made escaping harder for the prisoners seeing as they couldn't pay for things with Lagergeld outside the system, the more pertinent reason behind it as well as many other procedures is to give the whole system a veneer of legitimacy. Legitimacy through procedure as well as making something seem more legitimate through making it appear like things already known or through giving it a semblance of order is a basic political technique that the Nazis knew how to apply very well. Concentration camps were sold as "protective custody", as a means to protect society from "unruly", "riotous" and communist elements who "were only intent on sowing discord and disorder in German society". What they really were, were extrajudical prisons where people were imprisoned without due process or proper procedure. Hence in order to sell the camps as a means of legitimate state violence against people who were "dangerous", they needed to appear legitimate and in line with previosuly established prisons etc. This was important not just for the public but also for the people who worked in the system. They needed to feel like they were doing rational and legitimate violence agianst dangerous enemies of the state instead of just beating up their elderly Jewish neighbour who had been forced from his home at 4 in the morning.

This was one of the purposes of the Lagergeld. The other and closely related to what could be bought with it was to hold up and maintain an unequal prisoner society. The Nazi CC system is marked in its middle and late stages by establishing a hirarchy or prisoners with different privileges. Kapos – foremen of prisoner work details – and the prisoner administration, meaning prisoners who assited the SS in administering the camp in minor ways as well as other functionary prisoners such as doctors and nurses assiting SS doctors are all examples of this unequal prisoner hirarchy. In most camps these posts were reserved for German – meaning non-Jewish – prisoners who were either communists or imprisoned as criminals, which could encompass "real" criminals but also people convicted of homosexuality and other "aberrant" behaviors.

These prisoners were put in charge of other prisoners and they could receive certain privileges, which included buying extra food with Lagergeld or buying clothes from the magazine. This was often a dire necessity for survival in the camps. Prisoners of the concentration camps had to survive on a diet of thin soup, old bread, and from time to time some butter. This in some camps amounted to as little as 700 calories per day for people who did heavy physical labor. It became a necessity to organize additional food in order to survive. This was among the primary purpose of prisoners organising themselves along f.ex. political lines: Communist prisoner organisations would collect the Lagergeld every Kapo among their members received, purchase food at the kitchens – mostly bread, marmelade, and eggs – and the distribute among the prisoners who were part of their organisation.

Similarly, they would use prisoners working in the magazine or having Lagergeld to get and distribute clothing from the magazine to prisoners, especially new arrivals in the camp. The only thing you received was shirt, trousers, wooden shoes and cap when arriving in the camp. This was, of course, not suffiecient, especially for winter so prisoners needed to organize themselves some extra clothes, which came from the clothes collected from arriving prisoners.

In some camps, the Lagergeld privileges for Kapos also included visits to the so-called "camp brothel". This is where female prisoners of the camp system were regularly forcibly raped by guards and by the Kapo prisoners who participated in the system, who were mostly the most hihgly placed Kapos in a camp. According to very wide-spread narratives, this was mostly done by prisoners with a green triangle, meaning prisoners who were imprisoned in the camps as criminals. However, this has been called into question in research lately as something that the political prisoners told about themselves after the war and because as we know now, a majority of the prisoners with the green triangle were homosexual men previously sentenced for homosexuality. On the other hand, this might tie into something a very early book about homosexual priosners in the camps mentions: Heinz Heger in his book alleges that the camp brothels were also used for a version of the SS's "conversion therapy" of homosexual prisoners in the camp, forcing them to rape the women in the brothel. This however is something that by this point in time is not very well substantiated beyond individual examples.

This, and the use of Lagergeld overall, is a perfect example of the Nazi's perfidity in their Concentration Camp System. Like so much else, from the Kapo positions to the prisoner administration, Lagergeld served to make their own victims complicit in the oppressive and violent system they had build. As one can imagine, the role and responsibility of the Kapos is something that is still very controversial and very hotly debated. Israel f.ex. had several post war trials against Kapos in the 1950s and beyond. While this is often a question of looking at individual responsibility, it also is a question of taking the system itself into account. How can you adjudicate someone using Lagergeld buying food to survive while their comrades starve next to them. Or even more difficult: How do you adjudicate someone who under the trheat of violence is forced to rape another prisoners. These are questions that are very difficult to answer and point to the terror of the Nazi concentration camp system and the horrible conditions created for its prisoners.

Sources:

• Nicholaus Wachsmann: KL – A history of the Nazi concentraion camps

• Hans-Ludwig Grabowski: Das Geld des Terrors : Geld und Geldersatz in deutschen Konzentrationslagern und Gettos 1933 bis 1945 : Dokumentation und Katalog basierend auf Belegen der zeitgeschichtlichen Sammlung Wolfgang Haney sowie aus weiteren Sammlungen und Archiven. Regenstauf 2008.

• Lance K. Campbell: Dachau concentration camp scrip. 1991.

• Christa Schulz, "Weibliche Häftlinge aus Ravensbrück in Bordellen der Männerkonzentrationslager".

• Christa Paul, Zwangsprostitution. Staatlich errichtete Bordelle im Nationalsozialismus