The Coercion-Resistance Spectrum: Analyzing Prisoner-Functionary Behaviour in Nazi Camps

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article presents a methodology designed to yield a comprehensive and nuanced analysis of the behaviour of prisoner-functionaries in Nazi camps: the coercion-resistance spectrum. After a short discussion of historiographical trends related to Jewish functionaries and to Jewish resistance to the Nazis, the article details this new analytical approach to these figures whose assigned tasks facilitated the administration of their camps and directly served their camps’ purpose(s). The model’s key components are the simultaneous consideration of micro- and macro-level contexts, especially of changes therein, and their alteration of the functionaries’ room for manoeuvre, which, in turn, impacted the functionaries’ course of action. Unlike Primo Levi’s “grey zone,” the metaphor that scholars often employ to communicate the moral ambiguity of prisoner-functionaries’ circumstances and conduct, the spectrum model considers these individuals’ full range of behaviour, which comprised not only acts frequently, yet improperly, deemed “collaboration,” but also conduct that thwarted German aims. To demonstrate the methodology’s application and the insights it yields, the article turns to the recruitment of Jewish doctors for their medical services and their subsequent activities in three different settings: forced labour camps for Jews (Zwangsarbeitslager für Juden) in the Warthegau, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the industrial subcamps of the Auschwitz camp network. The case studies call upon a combination of contemporaneous documents, like camp officials’ communications, and survivor accounts, including sworn witness statements and video testimonies. Given the prisoner-physicians’ position at the intersection of sickness and health, or disability and labour capacity, the application of the spectrum methodology to the study of these doctors not only facilitates the analysis and contextualization of these functionaries’ conduct, but it also yields insight into the evolution of, and interaction between, dual initiatives under the Third Reich: the exploitation of the Jewish labour force and the attempted annihilation of European Jewry.