Orders to Oswald Pohl concerning the treatment of German women in the concentration camps, especially young women "who can still be saved" by reeducation

SECRET
Reichsfuehrer SS.
RG/V
Field Command Post 16 November 1942 Personal Headquarters, Reichsfuehrer SS 1. To SS Lt.Gen OHL, BERLIN
Dear OHL,
The following struck me during my visit to Dachau on the 13 Nov 1942 regarding the experiments conducted there for the saving of people whose lives are endangered through exposure [Unterkühlung] in ice, snow or water and who are to be saved by the employment of every method or means:
I had ordered that suitable women are to be set aside from the Concentration Camp for these experiments for the warming of those who were exposed. Four girls were set aside who were in the Concentration Camp due to loose living, and being prostitutes, they formulate a danger of contagion. Among those four was a 21 year old girl named Ursula Kraus, who naturally was not to be set 'aside for this. Krause was a person under the care of the State [Fuersorgezoegling] and has already been sick twice with venereal disease. Nevertheless she belongs to that type of girl upon whom the attempt must be made in order to save her for the German people and for hier own later life.
In addition, I found during this opportunity that some madmen in the women's Concentration Camp had told the feminine prisoners at the time of selection of prostitutes for the Camp brothel, that those who volunteered would be released after a half year.
I order:
1. Only such prostitutes are to be selected for the Camp brothel who from the beginning can be taken for granted as not beingable to be saved for a later regulated life, judging from their pre-
115
1583—PS
vious living and bearing. Also, that we are not guilty of spoiling a person who could still be saved for the German people. Such women can only be released from the Concentration Camp if they according to their age, do not constitute a destruction to the youth, to health (by contagion), or to the public welfare and security. The money which they earn in the camp brothel shall be an old-age security for them.
2. Fundamentally, all youths who can still be saved are to be segregated from the older prostitutes in living quarters and work. A difference must be made between those who cannot be reformed, —who must remain isolated in the camps, and those who came into the camp to be reformed and can eventually be saved. The best and most ideologically inclined custodians are to be employed for the latter.
In addition, I refer to the fact that the whipping penalty as a whole but especially for women, is to be the last measure, it is only to be used
a. if all other punishment such as arrest, solitary confinement, diet of bread and water, hard labor, were of no avail.
b. in individual cases of desertion or in actual attacks, which must be inflicted for intimidating and especially exemplatory reasons. The whipping penalty is no instrument for responsible commanders or supervising custodians who are too lazy or incompetent to reeducate. In all cases in which food was stolen, the guilty one is to be placed on bread and water from 3 to 5 days as punishment for first offense. The whipping penalty is only then to be inflicted upon repeated offenses.
I ask you to personally check the conditions in the women's concentration camps. Otherwise we must feel guilty since girls who could still be saved will be ruined for always through false treatment and repeated bad company in which we placed them (exactly as is the case in the prisons and reform schools of the law).
Heil Hitler!
Your
(signed) H. Himmler
2. Inspector of the Concentration Camps, Oranienburg
Carbon copy with request for acknowledgment.
SS Lt. Col.
116