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Projects

Häftlingsmarken aus NS-Konzentrationslagern

 

“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 project represents research that builds on an ethnographic study of M. Schütz (2013) and historical-archaeological research 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 material characteristics and archaeological contexts, 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.

In particular, analyses of the archaeological contexts from which tags were recovered and the material properties of such objects are of particular interest to us, as they may reveal more information about their function within camp bureaucracy (both in specific camps and in the concentration camp system as a whole), but also about inmates' creative practices and the role of material culture in maintaining a sense of self within the terror machinery of the SS.

The existing project database (Fig. 3) was set up by the project PI in recent years and combines data on artefacts, biographical information on identified prisoners and other relevant archival sources. It currently contains over 1300 records of prisoner tags. Through this fundamental research and data collection, the use of prisoner tags in several concentration camps could be proven. To date, tags are known from the following camps:

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

A comprehensive study will now be devoted to the material composition (Fig. 4), manufacture and production technology (Fig. 5) of the tags from the Mauthausen concentration camp. Coupled with comparisons of tags from other camps, further archival research and evaluation of oral history interviews, this research aims to expand our knowledge of this ambivalent group of artefacts and thus also 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.

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Kontakt: barbara.hausmair@uibk.ac.at

Related teaching

•  Curating Mauthausen: Objects in the collection of the Mauthausen Memorial (MA seminar and practical, University of Innsbruck, teacher: Barbara Hausmair and Yvonne Burger, summer semester 2023, LVNo: 644160)
• Archaeologies of Nazi Terror (MA lecture, University of Innsbruck, teacher: Barbara Hausmair, summer semester 2022, LVNo: 644160)
• Archaeology of the World Wars (BA/MA seminar, University of Tübingen, teacher: Barbara Hausmair, winter semester 2019/20)

Literature

Burger, Yvonne. 2019. Das vergessene Lager: das ehemalige Waldlager Gunskirchen. MA-Arbeit., Wien: Universität Wien.

Hausmair, Barbara. 2016. ‘Jenseits des „Sichtbarmachens“. Überlegungen zur Relevanz materieller Kultur für die Erforschung nationalsozialistischer Lager am Beispiel Mauthausen’. In Archäologie und Gedächtnis. NS-Lagerstandorte: Erforschen – Bewahren – Vermitteln, hg. von Thomas Kersting, Claudia Theune, Axel Drieschner, and Astrid Ley, 31–45. Denkmalpflege in Berlin und Brandenburg Arbeitsheft 4. Petersberg: Imhof Verlag.

———. 2018. ‘Identity Destruction or Survival in Small Things? Rethinking Prisoner Tags from the Mauthausen Concentration Camp’. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 22 (3): 472–91. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-017-0436-z

———. 2024. ‘Camp Archaeology in Germany and Austria. A Prospective Review’. In Archäologie und Krieg, hg. von Svend Hansen und Christian Jansen, 35–55. Kolloquien zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte 28. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz-Verlag.

Klimesch, Wolfgang. 2002. ‘Veritatem dies aperit. Vernichtet – Vergraben – Vergessen. Archäologische Spurensuche im Schloss Hartheim’. Jahrbuch des Oberösterreichischen Musealvereins 147 (1): 411–34.

Loistl, Simone, und Florian Schwanninger. 2018. ‘Vestiges and Witnesses: Archaeological Finds from the Nazi Euthanasia Institution of Hartheim as Objects of Research and Education’. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 22 (3): 614–38. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-017-0441-2

Schütze, Marlene.2013. Löffel, Zigarettenetui, Erkennungsmarke – Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Analyse von Dingen aus dem Konzentrationslager Mauthausen. Univ. Dipl., Wien: Universität Wien.

Sofsky, Wolfgang. 1993. Die Ordnung des Terrors: Das Konzentrationslager. Frankfurt a. Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag.

Valley, Émile und Amicale de Mauthausen. 1950. Mauthausen: Plus jamais ça. Paris: Amicale de Mauthausen.