Muselmann
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Muselmann (pl. Muselmänner, from the German, meaning Mussulman (Muslim); in Polish Muzułman) was a term used among inmates of World War II Nazi concentration camps to refer to those suffering from a combination of starvation (known also as "hunger disease") and exhaustion and who were resigned to their impending death. The Muselmann inmates exhibited severe emaciation and physical weakness, an apathetic listlessness regarding their own fate, and unresponsiveness to their surroundings.
The term possibly comes from the Muselmann's inability to stand for any time due to the loss of leg muscle, thus spending much of the time sitting or kneeling, recalling the position of the Mussulman (Muslim) during prayers.
The term spread from Auschwitz-Birkenau to other concentration camps. Its equivalent in the Majdanek concentration camp was Gamel (derived from German gammeln - colloquial for "rotting") and in the Stutthof concentration camp, Krypel (derived from German Krüppel, "cripple").
The psychologist and Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl, in his book Man's Search for Meaning, provides the example of an inmate who decides to use up his last cigarettes (used as currency in the concentration camps) in the evening because he is convinced he won't survive the Appell (roll call assembly) the next morning; his fellow inmates derided him as a Muselmann. Frankl compares this to the dehumanized behavior and attitudes of the Kapos: both are examples where the desperate conditions in the camps like starvation and forced labor can bring out the worst in an individual.
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[edit] References
- Israel Gutman, Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust, New York: Macmillan 1990, vol. 3. p. 677 (Hebrew edition).
- Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1999, pp. 25, 199-205.
