Suppressed Terror

Bettina Greiner is a German historian working at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and is coordinator of the Berlin Colloquia on Contemporary History.

• ContentsPreface to the English EditionChapter One - IntroductionThe Camp SystemInternees and SMT PrisonersExplorationsDetention MeasuresDetention ExperiencesDetention MemoriesChapter Two – Detention MeasuresInternments“Mobilization” and “Cleansing the Rear Area” between December 1944 and April 1945The NKVD Order No. 00315 or the End of “Mobilization”The Primacy of the Pacification PolicyIsolation as “Political Prophylaxis”Soviet Military Tribunals (SMTs) The Work of the SMTsFunctional Changes in the Camp SystemThe Logic of Judicial TerrorJudicial Prosecution of “Class Enemies”“Political Purges” and the Struggle against “Deviationists”Russian RouletteChapter Three – Detention Experiences ArrestDawn RaidsDenouncedIn ShockIn the “GPU Cellars”Detention ConditionsInterrogationsTraitorsVerdictsIn Special Camp No. 7/No. 1 SachsenhausenParallel Worlds: “Politicals” and “Criminals”The Divided Camp CommunityDaily Life in the Sachsenhausen Special CampFragmentsChapter Four – Detention MemoirsFreedomThe Closure of the Special Camps, 1950The Combat Group against InhumanityThe Price of Recognition“Empty” Memory Sites“Second-Class Victims” or Self-Imposed IsolationA Last Attempt: The Publication Offensive after 1989-1990“Gray” LiteratureThe Dependency Trap“Documentarism” as Narrative Style“Alternate Framings” and Other “Narrative Templates”Self-devised Traps—Memoirs after 1989Chapter Five – The Special Camps and Their Place in HistoryInternment CampsThe POW Camps of the GUPVIThe Soviet GULAGNational Socialist CampsNotesAbbreviationsBibliographyIndex of NamesSubject IndexAuthor 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.