The testimony emerging from a comprehensive review of survivor accounts and historical records paints a chilling portrait of the Nazi concentration camp system, revealing that beyond the industrialized machinery of death, a deeply disturbing culture of sadistic entertainment flourished within the camps. These were not isolated incidents of brutality but a systematic component of the psychological and physical torture inflicted upon millions of disenfranchised prisoners who were stripped of all rights and reduced to playthings for their captors.
According to the detailed accounts, the guards, described as psychopaths who found use for their perverted fantasies, wielded absolute power over thousands of prisoners. This absolute authority was not merely used for control but became a source of grotesque amusement. The 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 of the most vulnerable, particularly children, stands out as the most horrific of these entertainments.
Juvenile prisoners, physically unable to protect themselves or even comprehend their situation, were subjected to unimaginable cruelty. When children cried from hunger, guards, irritated by the noise, would simply 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 them. A more agonizing form of entertainment involved murders committed in front of mothers.
Guards would grab small children by the legs, spin them in the air, and beat their heads against a wall or pillar with full force. The psychological impact was devastating; many mothers died from the shock of what they witnessed, while others went insane or completely turned gray from the trauma.
The separation of families was a standard procedure, with populations driven into territories fenced with wire. Children were torn from their mothers and, right in front of their parents, taken by the legs and smashed against the walls of houses. This was not a random act of violence but a demonstrative punishment.
Those children who, during marches or in moments of free time, attempted to steal something edible were beaten with a whip or truncheon as a public spectacle. In one children’s camp, prisoners recalled a German woman known as Frau Elsa who derived entertainment from starving children. A former prisoner, Peter Fedorovich, recounted how this woman would enter the camp where children lay on the bank and say, “If someone went with her she would start having fun.”
He described a scene where she stood holding a mug of milk, teasing him from a distance. As he moved toward her, hungry, a shepherd dog was set upon him, jumping over him and knocking him down. He never drank the milk.
The German woman was reportedly very amused by this. The cruelty extended to such a degree that when one of the kids stretched out in front of the spilled milk, he was knocked down by the shepherd dog, and Frau Elsa graciously allowed him to lick the milk from the ground.
In another camp for women and children, the main entertainment of the guards was the siren. It could sound at any moment. After the siren started, children had to run to their mothers and then quickly return back.
If a child did not have time to return, the Nazis shot both him and his mother. In one children’s concentration camp in Belarus, the Nazis came up with an entertainment called “harness.” When they got drunk, they would gather the strongest children, put them in a cart, then sit down and whip the kids to make them run faster.
Children often were forced to sing while running. If one of the children fell or stumbled, the drunken Nazis could beat him to death or shoot him right there on the spot.
Another, perhaps the most durable entertainment of the Nazis, was the so-called “walk.” To understand its essence, it is necessary to know that, as a rule, children served as blood plasma and skin donors for wounded German soldiers and officers. Naturally, after numerous blood draws, the child quickly weakened.
At some point, even German executioners in white clothes realized that nothing more could be taken away from this kid. But like any person, the children strove to survive and wanted to live. Therefore, they often asked the doctors, “Uncle or Aunt, do not send them to the gas chamber but give them a chance to gain strength in order to still be useful.”
Very often, the “uncle and aunts” gave such permission, allowing the doomed child to rest a little. But the walk was allowed in a strictly defined direction. For example, in the cellars of the Spilberg concentration camp, it was a small lawn overgrown with green grass, which in fact masked the crematorium, where the fire was constantly burning.
When a child walked across this lawn, at some point he fell down right into the rolling flames. This joke amused the executioners in white.
As for adult prisoners, the number of sadistic entertainments of the Nazis is also almost unrealistic. The most harmless was when the guards chose several people who they didn’t like, gave the commands “lie down” or “crawl.” Moreover, the command had to be executed immediately, otherwise a severe beating to death or execution followed.
The prisoners fell and crawled either in water, on broken glass, in manure, or on stones, and the guards standing nearby were having fun, often filming what they saw. In the Koldichevo concentration camp in the Baranovichi District of Belarus, prisoners sentenced to death before execution were forced to perform a kind of ritual which was very amusing for the Nazis. For example, according to the memoirs of the surviving prisoner Yarmukovich, nooses were always ready on the famous “Cottage of Org,” on which at least 8,000 people were hanged.
The person sentenced to death was forced to shout loudly during the day for which he was sentenced to death. Yarmukovich remembered a young man at the age of 16 who stood near an oak tree and shouted loudly, “I ran away and they caught me!” When the young man no longer screamed but began to barely whisper, he was beaten with a club until he again began to loudly yell the same words.
When the guards had enough fun, the unfortunate guy was hanged, and his body was not removed as a warning to the rest for several more days.
Today, hundreds of other entertainments of Nazi guards and wardens are known. For example, there are accounts of the hobbies of some in making lampshades and leather goods from tattooed and often plain leather that was stripped from prisoners. The infamous “Frau Lampshade,” Ilse Koch, was fond of this.
Some Nazi craftsmen even set up the production of furniture from human bones in their free time from work. The well-known executioner Irma Grese, for the sake of entertainment, would starve her dogs for several days and then set them on the prisoners, watching with laughter as the hungry animals ate the unfortunate prisoners alive. Marie Mandel, another Nazi female devil, specially organized an orchestra from female prisoners which greeted new prisoners arriving at the camp with solemn music.
Among the guards of the Jewish ghettos, one of the most popular entertainments was the so-called “raids.” Drunken Nazis would fly into the barracks, use flashlights to choose the girls they liked the most, and often immediately begin to rape them on the spot. If it turned out that the girl was a virgin, then the guards called their colleagues to the “new body” so that they could get special pleasure.
As for prisoners of war, the scope of bullying was simply monstrous. According to official data, prisoners of war in concentration camps were not fed for several days, and then they were transferred to the territory of dead animals. The Nazis were amused by this.
Prisoners of war were often used for even more creepy entertainment. Stripped to their underwear, emaciated prisoners were sent barefoot to run through a minefield. The Nazis made bets, each on their own runner, on who would win the competition by running the most.
Boxing and sports teams, on the one hand, were a monstrous entertainment, and on the other hand, oddly enough, it has also become a symbol of the resistance of the prisoners to the Nazis. The concentration camp guards, in order to hone their hand-to-hand combat skills, began to select the strongest prisoners for so-called boxing matches. This entertainment gained such popularity that it was even approved personally by Hitler.
The main idea of such fights was to demonstrate the superiority of the Aryan over non-Aryans. Obviously, the victory over the exhausted and hungry prisoner could not be considered something outstanding. However, quite often professional Nazi boxers clashed with professional wrestlers, boxers, and athletes who not only did not lose but even defeated the guards.
Later, the idea of fights was transformed by the Nazis into special tournaments organized between prisoners of different teams, which the Nazis formed on their own. Winning a fight meant life; losing meant a gas chamber. It should be noted that the guards provided their athletes with enhanced rations so that the prisoner would last the maximum possible number of fights.
However, even victory did not guarantee life. Often the camp authorities, enraged by the invincibility of the athlete, simply gave the order to execute him.
In fact, any entertainment over prisoners always contained the possibility of death, regardless of whether the guards were satisfied or not. Even though a concentration camp often was disguised as a labor and correctional camp, it was originally intended for only one thing: the mass extermination of people. These accounts, preserved through the memories of the few who survived, serve as a harrowing reminder of the depths of depravity to which the Nazi regime sank, transforming the suffering of millions into a source of amusement for their captors.
The systematic nature of this cruelty, spanning from the torment of children to the degradation of adults and prisoners of war, underscores a calculated effort to dehumanize and destroy not just lives, but the very spirit of those imprisoned. The world must never forget these horrors, ensuring that such atrocities are never repeated and that the voices of the victims continue to be heard against the silence of history.