Abstract
Muselmann (pl. Muselmänner, the German version of Musulman, meaning Muslim) was a slang term used among captives 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 prisoners exhibited severe emaciation and physical weakness, an apathetic listlessness regarding their own fate, and unresponsiveness to their surroundings owing to the barbaric treatment by the Nazis and prisoner functionaries.
Some scholars argue that 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 in a prone position, recalling the position of the Musulman (Muslim) during prayers.
Usage of the term in literature
The American psychologist David P. Boder assisted in identifying the term musselman when in 1946 he conducted interviews with camp survivors in Europe. He asked them to describe, spell and pronounce the word for camp inmates so emaciated that they had lost the will to live.
Primo Levi tried to explain the term (he also uses "Musselman"), in a footnote of "If This Is a Man", his autobiographical account of his time in Auschwitz:
The psychologist and Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl, in his book "Man's Search for Meaning", provides the example of a prisoner 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 captives derided him as a "Muselmann". Frankl compares this to the dehumanized behavior and attitudes of the kapos.
The testimonial of the Polish witness, Adolf Gawalewicz, "Refleksje z poczekalni do gazu: ze wspomnień muzułmana" ("Reflections in the Gas Chamber's Waiting Room: From the Memoirs of a Muselmann"), published in 1968, incorporates the term in the title of the work.
Canadian Jewish author Eli Pfefferkorn published a novel in 2011 with title The Müselmann at the Water Cooler.
Origin and alternative slang terms
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"). When prisoners reached this emaciated condition, they were selected by camp doctors and murdered by gas, bullet or various other methods.
Action 14f13
Those prisoners considered "Muselmänner" and thus unable to work were also very likely to be labelled "excess ballast" inside the concentration camps. In spring 1941 Heinrich Himmler expressed his desire to relieve concentration camps of sick prisoners and those no longer able to work.
Action T4, an "euthanasia" programme for mentally ill, disabled and other inmates of hospitals and nursing homes who were deemed unworthy of life, was extended to include the weakest concentration-camp prisoners. Himmler, together with Philipp Bouhler, transferred technology and techniques used in the Aktion T4 programme to the concentration camps, and later to "Einsatzgruppen" and death camps.
The first concentration-camp victims of this program were gassed by carbon monoxide poisoning and the first known Selektion took place in April 1941 at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. By the summer of 1941 at least 400 prisoners from Sachsenhausen had been "retired". The scheme operated under the Concentration Camps Inspector and the "Reichsführer-SS" under the name "Sonderbehandlung 14f13". The combination of numbers and letters derived from the SS record-keeping system and consists of the number "14" for the Concentration Camps Inspector, the letter "f" for the German word "deaths" ("Todesfälle") and the number "13" for the cause of death, in this case "special treatment", a bureaucratic euphemism for gassing.