While reading about Auschwitz, I found myself constantly wondering about the guards. Our class has had limited experience with the camp guards. We know about their uniforms, from Cynthia Ozick's "The Shawl." In both Maus and Night, the main characters had much more contact with their Kapo's than with the actual guards. In Maus 2 there was a section where Vladek described a common trick of the guards: they would throw a prisoner's hat far away, tell him to get it, and shoot him for trying to "escape". For this they would receive a bonus and vacation. This speaks to the status to which Jew's where held in Nazi Germany: Guards what feel no remorse about killing a Jew for a little time off. However, Vladek talks about one guard who returned from the crematoria visually disturbed. I found myself wondering about how the SS got guards to work at the camps. It is hard to imagine a situation where a man could live in such conditions, even if he was "outside the fence." After doing some research, I found out that the guards lived in an environment that simulated a real town. There was a movie theatre, a grocery store, and a sports club. Maybe several factors made german SS soldiers want to be camp guards. There were nice facilities, an opportunity to exercise extreme aggression, an opportunity to make the "inferior" race suffer, and extreme riches. According to PBS, there was a section of Auschwitz called Canada, after the country which was supposed to have unbelievable riches. This was a section of the camp where all the riches that prisoners brought to camps were kept. Supposedly, Guards could pilfer immense wealth from this section of the camp. So was a position at Auschwitz desirable for a young SS soldier?
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It does seem like being an SS soldier has its advantages, if not a lot. If you think about it this way, being an SS guard shows your status to everyone around you, including your friends and family. It might have been considered an "honorable" position. With Hitler in power, many youths wanted to be recognized and display their loyalty to their leader. Being a soldier serving its country is most likely the best solution. Not only that, like you said, they gain a lot of personal wealth. They have an abundance of food along with a huge amount of prisoners to toy with. They can exert their power easily and also gain some money along with it. After all what is more enticing than power? Although it might be a small position with little power, we have to remember that they held tremendous power over the Jews. They alone can determine many lives. With such a power readily available, I wonder who wouldn't take up such an offer?
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