Prisoner tags from Nazi concentration camps

“To be dispossessed of one’s own name is among the most far-reaching and profound mutilations of the self. It documents the termination of one’s previous life history. … The number signified the metamorphosis of the individual into an element of the mass, the transformation of personal society into the serial society of the nameless.” (Sofsky 1997, 84)

 In Nazi concentration camps, one of the most fundamental attacks on victims’ identities and personhood was the replacement of a person’s name with a number. The numbering procedure was part of registration in all concentration camps and one to which deportees were subjected after often days-long, catastrophic transports. In many survivors’ memories registration is recalled as a harrowing act of identity destruction and a fundamental denial of one’s humanity. Prisoner numbers played a crucial role in the administration of KZs. The numbers were typically sewn onto prisoners’ clothes, or in the extreme case of Auschwitz tattooed onto victims’ skin.

However, no known SS records explain why in some concentration camps the numbers were additionally issued on metal tags. Yet, preserved artefacts from various camps (Fig. 1), post-war exhumation records (Fig. 2) and – though very few – survivors’ testimonies attest to their existence, pointing to a role as additional means to control the inmates. Among the currently known metal tags, however, there is also a significant number of items that were clearly handmade by prisoners, displaying iconography such as dates, initials or decorations that suggests that these objects were important assets for self-assertion and resistance against dehumanisation.

This research builds on an ethnographic study of M. Schütz (2013) and historical-archaeological pilot-study of prisoner tags from the Mauthausen concentration camp by B. Hausmair (2018). It seeks to comprehensively explore the materiality of dehumanisation but also resistance in Nazi camps by studying the tags, their object biographies, their change of meaning during different stages of Nazi rule and in different camps, and their transformation into objects of identification and memory since the end of the Nazi regime.

Häftlingsmarken aus NS-Konzentrationslagern

Die bestehende Projektdatenbank (Abb. 3) wurde in den letzten Jahren von der Projekt-PI aufgebaut und vereint die Daten zu Artefakten, biografische Informationen identifizierter Häftlinge und andere relevante Archivquellen. Derzeit enthält sie über 1300 Datensätze von Häftlingsmarken. Durch diese Grundlagenrecherche und Datensammlung konnte die Nutzung von Häftlingsmarken in mehreren Konzentrationslagern nachgewiesen werden. Bisher sind das folgende Lager:

• Auschwitz
• Buchenwald
• Dachau / Allach
• Flossenbürg
• Groß-Rosen
• Majdanek
• Mauthausen
• Neuengamme
• Sachsenhausen

Gemeinsam mit dem Mauthausen Memorial und dem Lern- und Gedenkort Schloss Hartheim bereiten wir aktuell eine umfassende Studie vor, die sich den Fundzusammenhängen, der Materialzusammensetzung (Abb. 4) sowie der Herstellung und den Fertigungstechniken der Marken (Abb. 5) aus dem Konzentrationslager Mauthausen widmen soll. Besonders interessieren uns hierbei die archäologischen Kontexte, aus denen Marken geborgen wurden, sowie die Materialeigenschaften und Herstellungsspuren verschiedener Marken, da diese mehr Informationen über die Funktion innerhalb der Lagerbürokratie von Mauthausen liefern können, aber auch Einblicke in kreative Praktiken der Häftlinge und die Rolle der materiellen Kultur für den Erhalt des Selbstwertgefühls innerhalb des Terrorapparats der SS.

Coupled with comparisons of tags from other camps, further archival research and evaluation of oral history interviews, the planned project aims to expand our knowledge of this ambivalent group of artefacts within the KZ-system and thus to contribute to the memory of the victims of the Nazi regime (Fig. 6).

Acknowledgements

In the course of this research, many concentration camp memorials as well as archives and museums dedicated to the memory of the victims of National Socialism have granted access to their collections, archival materials and knowledge. Photos of prisoner tags from private family collections and/or information about prisoner tags and the biographies of associated inmates were sent to us by committed individuals or relatives of people who were imprisoned by the Nazis. These insights are invaluable to the project and we thank all those who are supporting our endeavours.