The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp

The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp

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This work, a prize winner when published in Germany in , is derived from the author's postdoctoral thesis.

Network of Terror: The Nazi Concentration Camps | www.farmersmarketmusic.com

In it Sofsky sociology, Univ. He does not attempt to explain how or why the Holocaust happened and for the most part focuses on the concentration camps rather than the extermination centers. Rather, Sofsky patiently shows how virtually everything in the camps, from their physical layout to the use of time to the categorization of prisoners, was a way of exercising and consolidating absolute power over an increasingly dehumanized prisoner population.

An important study; recommended for academic and large public libraries. Simultaneously a sociological analysis of the concentration camp and a theoretical discourse on the nature of absolute power, this study provides a "thick description" of the Nazi concentration camp system.

He argues that the concentration camp was a closed site of absolute power where prisoners were subject to surveillance, classification, discipline, conditioning, and death, accompanied by the ever-present threat of arbitrary and deadly violence. The SS achieved absolute power through the complicity of "aristocratic" prisoner-functionaries who used their privileged positions to exploit--and often kill--their fellow inmates.

However, Sofsky never forgets that the SS exercised complete control over the camps and bore ultimate responsibility for the degradation and killing of human beings. Given his acknowledgment that women's camps had lower death rates, Sofsky might have included gender as a specific analytical category. The lack of an index is puzzling.

Highly recommended for specialists, and scholars interested in theories of power. Thank you for using the catalog. Princeton University Press, [].

Concentration camps -- Germany -- History. World War, -- Concentration camps -- Germany.

Network of Terror: The Nazi Concentration Camps

Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects. In the spring of , the world was shocked by the published photographs that had been taken in Bergen-Belsen and other camps during the war. Today we know that about two million people were killed in the Nazi concentration camps, which were a central instrument of the persecution and terror that characterized the Nazi regime. Auschwitz, more than any other camp, however, has come to symbolize the concentration-camp system—and, to a great extent, has become synonymous with the Holocaust itself.

Although an impressive amount of books and articles has been published on the subject of the concentration camps over the last few decades, a new, noteworthy wave of research has recently appeared in various countries and particularly in Germany. Some of the results of this research, which, in many respects, indicate a more complex picture than before, were included in the two volumes following an international conference in Weimar in November Orth, whose two books are based on documents from twenty-nine archives, has done an enormous amount of work in integrating information from mountains of books and articles.

She is trying to argue in a most empirical manner, and her style is — although she is a good writer — as exact, even strict, as possible. The history of the concentration camps is one of relentless horror, crime, and pain; however, according to Orth, the functions changed over the years.

Reviewed by Christian Gerlach

This was a result of the changes made by the top SS officer in charge of the camp system and changes with regard to the main victim groups. The idea of educating the camp inmates, who, from a biological-racist perspective, were considered as having been born with defects, lost some importance. The number of Jews in the camps increased in November , after the nationwide pogrom, but remained limited when many of them were released.

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People from the occupied territories, where many new camps were established, soon became the majority of the prisoners: The camps were transformed into a part of the German-occupation terror and into places of organized, direct mass murder. In early , there were about 80, prisoners System , p. This fact contributed to far higher death rates among the prisoners. From late on, the number of Jews held permanently in the concentration camps increased again. In every period of change in the camps' purposes, there was also a modified institutional structure, as well as a change in the top SS staff Konzentrationslager - SS , p.

It is a great achievement that Orth gives much more weight to the war period, when the number of prisoners and victims was expanding, than to the pre-war years. Three-quarters of her book about the concentration-camp system refer to wartime, and one-third is only about the years when there were up to , prisoners , including sixty pages on the death marches.

The death marches have recently become one important focus of international research about the camps, as documented by major contributions in the last volume of this journal. This subject is presently attracting the attention of many researchers. Apart from their institutional history, the main point of the debates about the camps is, of course, the mass murders.

The order of terror : the concentration camp

It is clear that violence, torture, and murder were part of the system from the beginning. However, the main victim groups, scope, and character of the killings changed more than once, too. The first systematic mass killings, as defined by Orth, began in April , and lasted until Orth only briefly discusses the deportations of more than one million Jews and their immediate extermination in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and to Majdanek, because most of these people never actually became prisoners of a concentration camp.

There was no major contradiction, because, according to Orth, the ideology related to the Jews while the power politics was concerned with the non-Jews System , p.

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There are sections dealing with the history of the camps, the ordering of space and time, the social structures, labor and work, and the death factories. There are few personal accounts, but the facts remain harrowing and disturbing to r This books presents a sociological study of the system of the camps. There are few personal accounts, but the facts remain harrowing and disturbing to read, particularly the latter chapters on the forced labor, selection and murder of the prisoners.

I have visited Auschwitz-Birkenau - the appalling truth is hard to comprehend even when you see it with your own eyes.

This is an important book, to be read and not forgotten. So the poor victims trample over one another, one person climbs over the next. The higher they are, the longer it takes for the gas to reach them I can see infants, children and the aged at the bottom, the stronger men are lying above them. There they lie, their limbs intertwined, their bodies lacerated from scratches, bleeding from the nose and mouth.

Nonetheless, the men of the Sonderkommando often spot their relatives among the bodies. Jul 15, Graham added it.

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This book was so good. It helped me to do a project and now I read it just for fun. I loved it so much it is scary.

I have read other books like this one, but they didn't help me as much like this one. The other books weren't very interessting to read for fun, this one is. You should read it because it is the best book in the world. Fabian rated it really liked it Jan 04, Robert Archer rated it really liked it Sep 04, Alexandre Firmino rated it really liked it May 26, Mike Hayden rated it it was amazing Oct 02, Carol rated it it was amazing Aug 23, Katie Gauntner rated it liked it Jan 13, Matt rated it liked it Jun 22, Philippe rated it really liked it Dec 04, Neil Strandberg rated it really liked it Apr 07, Ana rated it really liked it Jul 05, Felicita rated it liked it Jan 05, Jeffrey rated it it was amazing Jan 16, Puhrekidoll rated it really liked it Apr 17, Jessica Foster rated it really liked it Jun 22,

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