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These Germans were so police-harried and document-conscious
that they continued to be uneasy unless we looked at their personal
papers. They forced their papers upon us to prove that everything was
in order.
I have never seen a people so paper crazy. They hugged to
their bosoms birth certificates, military records, military passes, travel
passes, discharge papers, baptism records, Aryan records, marriage records,
pension records, pay records, work records, health records; in
short, records to prove that they were alive and that perhaps they had a
right to be alive.
They also carried letters, snapshots, and family mementos.
It was amusing to observe this addiction to paper, especially paper
signed and stamped officially, until one realized that this was the behavior
of slaves 'who worshiped bureaucrats. In the German Polizeistaat
paper was sacred, paper spelled security.
It was not until later, when I
was in Buchenwald and saw heaps of human bones-and-ashes in one
corner of the camp and carefully preserved records of the victims in
another corner, that I understood a strange truth about the Germans that
they had no compunction about burning human beings but that
they would not burn paper records.
Saul K. Padover.
Harper's Magazine, 1946
that they continued to be uneasy unless we looked at their personal
papers. They forced their papers upon us to prove that everything was
in order.
I have never seen a people so paper crazy. They hugged to
their bosoms birth certificates, military records, military passes, travel
passes, discharge papers, baptism records, Aryan records, marriage records,
pension records, pay records, work records, health records; in
short, records to prove that they were alive and that perhaps they had a
right to be alive.
They also carried letters, snapshots, and family mementos.
It was amusing to observe this addiction to paper, especially paper
signed and stamped officially, until one realized that this was the behavior
of slaves 'who worshiped bureaucrats. In the German Polizeistaat
paper was sacred, paper spelled security.
It was not until later, when I
was in Buchenwald and saw heaps of human bones-and-ashes in one
corner of the camp and carefully preserved records of the victims in
another corner, that I understood a strange truth about the Germans that
they had no compunction about burning human beings but that
they would not burn paper records.
Saul K. Padover.
Harper's Magazine, 1946
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