Lexington Books
Pages: 418
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-0-7391-7743-3 • Hardback • April 2014 • $162.00 • (£125.00)
978-0-7391-7744-0 • eBook • April 2014 • $153.50 • (£119.00)
Bettina Greiner is a German historian working at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and is coordinator of the Berlin Colloquia on Contemporary History.
Contents
Preface to the English Edition
Chapter One - Introduction
The Camp System
Internees and SMT Prisoners
Explorations
Detention Measures
Detention Experiences
Detention Memories
Chapter Two – Detention Measures
Internments
“Mobilization” and “Cleansing the Rear Area” between December 1944 and April 1945
The NKVD Order No. 00315 or the End of “Mobilization”
The Primacy of the Pacification Policy
Isolation as “Political Prophylaxis”
Soviet Military Tribunals (SMTs)
The Work of the SMTs
Functional Changes in the Camp System
The Logic of Judicial Terror
Judicial Prosecution of “Class Enemies”
“Political Purges” and the Struggle against “Deviationists”
Russian Roulette
Chapter Three – Detention Experiences
Arrest
Dawn Raids
Denounced
In Shock
In the “GPU Cellars”
Detention Conditions
Interrogations
Traitors
Verdicts
In Special Camp No. 7/No. 1 Sachsenhausen
Parallel Worlds: “Politicals” and “Criminals”
The Divided Camp Community
Daily Life in the Sachsenhausen Special Camp
Fragments
Chapter Four – Detention Memoirs
Freedom
The Closure of the Special Camps, 1950
The Combat Group against Inhumanity
The Price of Recognition
“Empty” Memory Sites
“Second-Class Victims” or Self-Imposed Isolation
A Last Attempt: The Publication Offensive after 1989-1990
“Gray” Literature
The Dependency Trap
“Documentarism” as Narrative Style
“Alternate Framings” and Other “Narrative Templates”
Self-devised Traps—Memoirs after 1989
Chapter Five – The Special Camps and Their Place in History
Internment Camps
The POW Camps of the GUPVI
The Soviet GULAG
National Socialist Camps
Notes
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index of Names
Subject Index
Author Note
This translation of a 2010 German book is a deeply sourced, sophisticated analytical study of the imprisonment of German civilians in the Soviet military occupation zone in East Germany and the German Democratic Republic between 1945 and 1950. POWs and war criminals convicted by Soviet military courts were forced to work. But over 120,000 German civilians, arrested ostensibly for denazification procedures and kept in “special” camps, were not permitted to work. . . .What purpose did these special camps serve? Greiner thinks they began as pretrial sites for suspected Nazis of minor standing and evolved into long-term prisons for unconvicted inmates. . . .Greiner reflects on changes in the historical memorialization of political captivity in Germany and warns against equating Nazi and Soviet political confinement, especially with regard to guilt and victimhood. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.
— Choice Reviews
The significant contribution of Greiner’s book lies in its focus on the individual experiences and memories of those detained. Based on memoirs and oral testimonies, Suppressed Terror carefully reconstructs the experiences of denunciation, [and] arrest. . . .Greiner has thus written an excellent and insightful book that scholars in the fields of postwar central European history and memory studies will benefit from reading with care.
— Slavic Review
Bettina Greiner’s admirable and comprehensive study of the Soviet special camps in occupied Germany is a crucial contribution to our understanding of Soviet repressive measures in Germany after World War II and their memory—and forgetting—since the Cold War. Her creative use of little-known German prisoner memoirs and accounts, combined with thorough research in Soviet and German sources on camp policies and practices, produce unparalleled insights into this revealing corner of the history of Soviet terror in postwar Europe.
— Norman Naimark, Stanford University
Bettina Greiner’s deeply researched study of Soviet secret police camps in Germany from 1945-1950 analyzes not just the Soviet policies and practices behind the ‘special camps,’ but connects them to prisoners’ experiences and the German politics of memory. Anyone interested in political violence, concentration camp systems, and the fateful entanglements of Germany and Russia/USSR in the twentieth century should consider this important case.
— Michael David-Fox, University of Georgetown
Through the careful and critical analysis of published recollections from former detainees, Greiner outlines in detail the strategies developed to attain recognition as victims. . . .Overall, her study is an important addition to the existing literature on Soviet special camps in Germany, particularly with regard to the politics of remembering.
— The German Quarterly