Hot baths, three meals a day, a rich entertainment program and no worries about tomorrow. If you believe Goebbels' secretary, Brunhilde Pomsel, the Nazis imprisoned in former extermination camps after the war led a pretty good life. Especially compared to the previous death factory "tenants".
After the war, the liberated extermination camps were by no means empty. The People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, Lavrenty Beria, decided that since the Germans had already prepared the appropriate infrastructure, it would be a sin not to use it. Under his order, in August 1945, the Soviet special camp No. 2 was established on the site of the former Buchenwald concentration camp.
Mainly the Nazis came to him - both war criminals and passive participants in the horror that Hitler prepared for Europe . Prisoners in Buchenwald were almost completely isolated from the outside world. Moreover, many have not returned to it - they died of exhaustion, disease and malnutrition.
Happiness in misfortune
However, from the memories of Brunhilde Pomsel, who reports her life and career in the Third Reich in the pages of the book “German Life. I was Goebbels' secretary ”, a completely different picture of the everyday life of Nazi interns emerges. She admits that at times in captivity she even ... had a good time.
Of course, the mere forced isolation, first in Buchenwald and then in Sachsenhausen and in the Soviet-occupied factory in East Berlin, was not particularly attractive to Brunhilde. She wished she had escaped from the propaganda ministry in time . However, she admitted that she was lucky in misfortune. Ultimately, she found herself in a much better situation than the war prisoners of the camp, and even her countrymen, who were free!
If you believe the stories of Brunhilde Pomsel, the post-war prisoners of the Buchenwald camp did quite well there - especially compared to the previous "tenants" of this death factory.
Unlike the Germans, who avoided internment, she did not have to worry about unemployment, which was common at that time. She spent her time talking to other female prisoners. They were all well aware that they had little to complain about. The prison canteen served three meals a day and warm water ran from the bath taps . And although the conditions were perhaps not luxurious, compared to the reality of the camp just a few months earlier, the prisoners were in a comfortable situation. In the book "German Life. I was Goebbels' secretary. ”Pomsel says:
(...) hook number 47 was mine. And when I was taking a shower, my clothes were cleaned and hung under the same number in another room (...), where it was always warm. (...) then I felt sick, as I imagined that in the same place that we were always looking forward to, (...) the same devices were used to release gas in order to kill Jews .
Interestingly, in the camp she had no idea what actually happened during the war. She found out about the true size and nature of the Nazi crime only after she was released from captivity.
"I had nice moments"
Meanwhile, in Buchenwald, she lived blissfully ignorant and eagerly indulged in entertainment that made her monotonous everyday life a little more colorful. The Nazis already arranged a real theater here with a stage and a canal for the orchestra. After taking over the facility, the Russians put it in order and resumed its activity. As Brunhilde recalled:" they took away the violins and flutes from the people, brought them to the camp and put together a wonderful orchestra ". She even played the lead role in the play "The Model Schoolgirl", written by one of the prisoners.
The curiosity is based on the book “German Life. I was Goebbels' secretary ”published by Bellona.
How did this relate to the experiences of other Nazi interns? Did Goebbels' secretary staunchly innocent characterize the typical fate of Soviet prisoners by describing her life? Or maybe she was just extremely lucky? The accounts of other inmates who spent the years after the war in post-Nazi buildings adapted to the needs of the new regime do not sound so rosy anymore.
The temporary prisons established in the territory of the former Third Reich and liberated Poland became in 1945 a "home" for hundreds of thousands of Germans, variously involved in the activities of the Nazi terror machine. Not everyone was allowed to be released. How many Nazis interned died - according to many, well deserved - deaths in the places of execution that they had built a few years earlier? Hard to say. Brunhilde Pomsel was fortunate enough not to become one of them . She only died decades later in a retirement home, aged 106.
Source:
Trivia is the essence of our website. Short materials devoted to interesting anecdotes, surprising details from the past, strange news from the old press. Reading that will take you no more than 3 minutes, based on single sources. This particular material is based on:
- B. Pomsel, T. D. Hansen, German Life. I was Goebbels' secretary , Bellona 2018.
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