The Taste of Freedom,the Smell of Captivity: Sensory Narratives of the Hungarian Camp of Bergen–Belsen

Introduction

The harsh landscape of Nazi concentration camps suggests that we must examine visual impressions in testimonies to understand better how the survivors depicted and interpreted everyday life. Although the camps were a terrible assault on all the senses, when we consider these effects, we mostly focus on the visual. This paper argues that nonvisual senses were just as dominant in the accounts of these traumatic spaces of persecution. Sounds, smells, tastes and touches were part of the impressions shared by the deportees in their narratives. I explore the significance of sensory impressions in narratives of a special group of Hungarian deportees, the passengers of the so-called Kasztner Train in the Bergen–Belsen concentration camp. ¹ Drawing on models of sensory history, I examine how sensory impressions in a specific historical context contributed to the documentation of camp life understood in the secondary literature mostly as images (based on sights). ²

I use an approach based on the study of references to sensory impressions in narratives as a means of understanding how bodily experiences are mediated. Sensory impressions are an integral part of everyday life, and our daily affairs are shaped in no small part by the need to manage our bodies in time and space. In other words, ‘we have bodies and we act with our bodies.’ ³ In historical context, certain events are associated with principal sensory signatures. As the title of Mark M. Smith's book on the American Civil War says: the battle has a smell, and the siege has a taste. Extreme situations such as wars overwhelm and harm people's sense receptors, i.e., their eyes, ears, noses, tongues, and skins. ⁴ To paraphrase the title of Smith's work, I analyze the senses in the historical and cultural context of a concentration camp.

In this essay, I suggest that narrative references to sensory impressions may not necessarily articulate ⁵ but also shape experiences of camp life. Sensory impressions are not simply a vehicle of information about the material environment. Perception – similarly to emotions – does not only signify the matter of cognitive processes or neurological mechanisms located in the individual subject but also represents an overarching cultural, social, and political phenomenon. Accordingly, David Howes claims, sensual relations are also social relations. ⁶ I investigate the social relevance of the sensory experiences recounted in the prisoner narratives in this context. Exploring sensory narratives of the camp society – what people saw, heard, smelled, tasted and touched – contributes to understanding the depiction of the attitudes and values of individuals which shaped the dynamics and patterns of social reality. I argue that the camp inmates gave meaning to the nonvisual sensory dimensions of camp life to narrate their experiences. As a result, the testimonies under examination not only mediate impressions but can also be considered multisensory representations of camp life.

The camp experiences of the diarists are based on a tradition of sensory experience in their pre-war life. The social and cultural origins of these sensory impressions are rooted in a metropolitan, middle-class existence. In the design of the nineteenth-century urban environment, residents sought to remove unpleasant, disturbing, extreme sights, noises, and smells. ⁷ In contrast, camp life brought all of these things much closer to the camp inmates, for whom it represented a radical change of experience. The sensory experiences of the camps are also so terrible because they subvert the sensory order of modern Western civilization, especially in the urban space that was the familiar milieu of the two diarists. I argue that the camp creates a new sensory regime. ⁸ The physical senses organize what is experienced in and from the camps and thus play an important role in their narrative.

Life in the camp took place in a closed space, which essentially restricted the prisoners, but also allowed for varying degrees of adaptation and survival strategies. ⁹ The use and perception of the camp space and everyday life constantly and mutually shaped each other. Despite the significant role of the senses in this extreme environment, references to sensory impressions in the surviving sources have for the most part escaped the attention of historians of the Holocaust. However, in recent years there has been a growing body of work to fill this gap. ¹⁰ The environmental history of the Holocaust appeared in the early 2010s expanded Raul Hilberg's triad of perpetrators-victims-bystanders to nature as non-human (f)actors. ¹¹ By developing this approach, Nikolaus Wachsmann suggests, ‘look at Auschwitz through the lenses of space, sense, and emotion’. He examines spatiality in a complex mixture of the natural and built environment; the positive and negative feelings; and the different sensory dimensions because – as he states – ‘all of them essential components of individual experience.’ Wachsmann points out how the individual experiences that make up the fabric of camp life contribute to the complexity of our knowledge of these places. ¹²

Research on sensory memory shows that olfactory experiences can be much more durable than audio and audiovisual memory. An odour or smell can trigger a series of events from memory. ¹³ One survivor said that years later she could not forget the feeling of finally smelling the pleasant scent of pine in Bergen–Belsen after the stench of Auschwitz, because at that time she felt human again for a moment. ¹⁴ However, all these fragmented memories are not embedded in everyday life and its contemporary narratives. Diaries present the most details and nuances of everyday life in the camp which did not seem to be important or were forgotten in accounts that were said or written decades later. ¹⁵ In the monotony of everyday life, the prisoners were attentive to small effects and impulses of the physical environment. As a female forced labourer wrote in her camp diary: ‘here the little things grow bigger in the bleakness of uneventful days.’ ¹⁶ This may have been even more true for the Hungarian Camp, where there was no forced labour so there was even less variety in the days. The survivors’ narratives under examination include references to a set of sensory phenomena which could be read as a means of expressing and interpreting the social realm of the Kasztner group, i.e., the inmates living in the Hungarian Camp. I will analyze two diaries as a case study (written by Lili Szondi-Radványi and Jenő Kolb), but I will also give other examples from surviving sources. ¹⁷ I focus on two personal accounts because they provide a much deeper context for the role of senses in the narrative of camp life and camp society. I argue that writing about sensory impressions could be explored as an important part of the narrative strategies of the diarists. ¹⁸

Focusing on senses discovers new dimensions and layers of camp life and stimulates reflection on the Holocaust from approaches and fields such as anthropology and cultural history. Examining the ‘bodies in crises’ is not a new research field. However, this approach uncovers further details on how senses can construct social life in such sensory deprivation as in the camps developed. The diarists represent their social life as multi-sensual experiences. Everyday perception (and therefore narrative accounts of perceptions) is based on several senses interacting with one another but sometimes one of them became more decisive in one's perception. ¹⁹ Among nonvisual senses, I will first examine how Lili Szondi-Radványi depicted her acoustic impressions in the barrack, which blocked her attempts to escape the reality of the camp in her imagination but also contributed to maintaining the balance of everyday life. Concerning tastes, Jenő Kolb depicted the ‘hopeful tasting’ of chocolate powder as a sensory event that not only illustrated but shaped the narration of experiences in his diary. Finally, I also illustrate how a description of an unpleasant sensory impression (the bad smell of black mussels) captured Jenő's experience of the effects of overcrowding, corruption, captivity, and the uncertainty of freedom. To contextualize the narratives of the sensory experiences of the deportees, we must look at the background of the Kasztner group and the specific living conditions in the Hungarian Camp.

The Hungarian Camp is a complex case for the study of the relationship between sensory and social processes. Their richly documented social life and conflicts make it possible to reflect on how senses and the physical environment influence the life of this forced community. While the negotiations between the SS and the Zionist Aid and Rescue Committee (and the leading role of Rezső Kasztner) have been widely studied, the everyday life of the ‘Kasztner Jews’ remains far less well-known. ²⁰ Furthermore, Bergen–Belsen is primarily examined from the perspective of its liberation. As a result, the history of the ‘exchange Jews,’ among them the members of the Kasztner group who were evacuated before the liberation of the camp, has been neglected in the historical discourse. ²¹

The Kasztner group arrived in Bergen–Belsen on 8 July 1944. Three main factors determined their everyday life: the conditions of camp life; the camp's relative autonomy; and the social structure of the community. The circumstances of the Hungarian ‘exchange Jews’ who were treated as ‘hostages’ by the Nazis were unusual compared to the circumstances under which other – ordinary – inmates in Bergen–Belsen or other concentration camps lived. Since the prisoners’ bodies were evidence of crimes and clear documentation of the harsh conditions and cruel treatment, the Germans did not want the bodies of the ‘hostages’ to show the marks of abuse or criminal mistreatment when they were eventually released to neutral countries. Heinrich Himmler, who ordered the establishment of a collection camp for specific groups of Jewish prisoners, made it clear that the conditions should allow the Jewish hostages to be ‘healthy and remain alive.’ ²²

The SS allowed families to stay together (the women and the mothers with their children spent the night separately from the men), keep their luggage, and wear their civilian clothing. Due to this special status, the ‘Kasztner Jews’ were not in as dire circumstances as most concentration camp prisoners, considering that they did not suffer from starvation, beatings, and illnesses that led to death. The presence of the Germans was manifested mainly by the daily checks, and the SS did not use violence to discipline the inmates of the Hungarian Camp (apart from detention). Thus, the bodies of the inmates were not subjected to the same kinds of physical violence that were common for most camp prisoners, and they were not wounded because of aggression. Moreover, they were not forced to work, and they were given relatively better supply and occasionally parcels of food and medicine from the International Red Cross. ²³

In the Hungarian Camp, the underground camp economy, the black market, the culture, and social life flourished. They had a much better chance for physical and moral survival, as Terrence Des Pres expresses ‘to keep a living soul in a living body’. ²⁴ Moreover, the Hungarian Camp had a degree of internal autonomy, which meant that the Kasztner group organized their inner life. The leaders of the community established a genuine small ‘state’ behind the barbed-wire fence. As in the ghettos, the internal administration was assigned to the Jewish camp leadership, which designed a camp constitution, organizational rules, and daily agendas. ²⁵

Despite the better conditions, the ‘Kasztner Jews’ struggled with the everyday difficulties of camp life during their time spent there between July and the beginning of December 1944. When food supplies from home began to decrease and worn-out clothing provided less protection against the cold, the quality of life began to deteriorate. Even though the Hungarian ‘exchange Jews’ had more clothes, washing and drying them was a huge problem for the women. Mrs. László Devecseri says, ‘later on we never had dry stockings on our feet’, all their clothes were moldy in the suitcase. ²⁶ Another ‘Kasztner Jew’ recalls that mothers used their own bodies to dry the diapers of their babies. ²⁷ The cold also had a bad effect on the state of mind, and also the hygiene. Zoltán Moór wrote that 80 per cent of the camp did not wash after the cooler weather came. Everyone caught a cold, and went to the toilet all night, disturbing the others’ sleep. ²⁸ Moór listed the physical symptoms in his early post-was memoir: women were not menstruating, men lost 15–20 kg, and their sexual potency was virtually non-existent. ²⁹ The level of these complaints and the degree of inconvenience reported is indicative of the better conditions in the Hungarian Camp compared to the starved and abused prisoners in the neighboring sectors. ³⁰

The room for manoeuvre meant freedom to a certain degree, but camp life was nonetheless full of conflicts and quarrels. The Hungarian Jewish camp leadership and its functionaries (food carriers, camp policemen, doctors) stood at the heart of debates about who was accused of corruption and unfair distribution of common goods. Moreover, the inmates’ different prewar lives and backgrounds also resulted in friction inside the community. The social composition of the Kasztner group was the result of conscious decision-making. The transport list of around 1680 people was drawn up to represent every group of the Hungarian Jewish community. Orthodox Jews mostly from Eastern Hungary, neolog families from Budapest, Zionists, members of the Halutz movement, Slovak and Polish Jewish refugees, and runaway labour servicemen were included among those in the Hungarian Camp with the help of Kasztner. Last but not least ‘prominent Jews’ were also included: wealthy families, intellectuals, and other members of the political-societal-financial elite, i.e., the people and families who funded the whole action. Because of this mixed composition, Kasztner compared the group to Noah's Ark. ³¹ From an ideological point of view, the secular, socialist-oriented young Zionists predominated among the passengers. This is unsurprising, as the Kasztner Train was originally a Zionist rescue operation and was seen as such by the Aliyah of the organizers. ³² However, these aforementioned groups all had their own – mainly very different – interests and ideas about common life.

In the end, the SS allowed the Kasztner group to leave for Switzerland in two stages: 318 people left the camp on August 21, and others departed on December 7, 1944. ³³ The departure of the first group offered some assurance to the inmates who remained in the camp that they would soon follow their more fortunate fellows. However, the long wait which followed (three and a half months) caused insecurity, anxiety, and apathy in the community. They continued to live as prisoners of the Nazis and did not know whether the Germans would adhere to the agreement. Meanwhile, the exemption from forced labour kept the camp inmates in better physical condition, but the abundant free time and the mere condition of imprisonment were mentally demanding. They often compared their situation not to the other camp sectors, but to their abandoned homes or their desired destination: neutral Switzerland, but mostly Palestine. They were therefore constantly dissatisfied. As Mrs. László Devecseri notes in her diary: ‘We are supposed to be in an advantageous situation. For us, it is very difficult to bear.’ ³⁴

My essay is based on the diary of Jenő Kolb and the account by Lili Szondi-Radványi which was written in Switzerland some weeks after their arrival in December 1944. ³⁵ Jenő Kolb was a member of the Zionist movement Hashomer Hatzair, ³⁶ the Zionist Aid and Rescue Committee, and the camp leadership. That means he was well-informed and that his engagement with Zionism determined his worldview. Lili was the wife of the famous Hungarian neurologist and psychiatrist Lipót Szondi. The Szondi family represented assimilated Jewish intellectuals who had no religious identity or Zionist engagement. This background influenced how Lili interpreted the different episodes of camp life. Moreover, she lived in the female barrack, where life differed from life in the Zionist male barrack where Jenő was held. According to the traditional male and female roles in interwar Hungary, the men mostly discussed public life and held lectures on ideological and political questions. In contrast, in the women's barracks, where mothers lived with their children, family issues, childcare, and domestic chores were the most common subjects of everyday life. ³⁷ During the monotonous everyday life in the uniform camp environment, the complexity of sensory experiences helped the writers portray the situation of a community forced to live together. For Lili, documenting sounds became a tool to narrate her feelings and observations.

Lili Szondi-Radványi titled her memoir ‘One day in Bergen–Belsen.’ Since her thoughts revolved around hunger and cold, her account could be set to October or November 1944. We do not have to take the title literally. Rather, Lili's narrative depicts an average day, which began in the barrack in the morning and finished at night at the same place. This average day, according to her description, was framed by both visions and sounds.

The barracks were crowded, cold, and dark. Despite all the inhumane conditions, camp inmates spent a lot of time there, and this time was lengthened by the obligated blackouts because of the air-raid alerts. In his diary, Zoltán Moór writes about his wife who lived most of her life in bed with her two children, ‘in a dark place where the light of day never reaches for 6 months. There she spins on her axis with her two children.’ ³⁸ The periods of darkness may well have increased sensitivity to sounds, or at least so passages in Lili's narrative suggest. The daily routines and the auditory environment for camp inmates were mostly dominated by the human voice. The SS did not use any specific equipment to give orders and all information was spread by voice among the camp inmates, as well. Since all important events were indicated by shouting, focused attention was paid to human voices. Although no one in a given group hears exactly the same sound as the other members of this group, a sound event can unify people into an ‘acoustic community’ which means members of a group have similar sound experiences. ³⁹

One of the basic elements of the ‘acoustic community’ among the prisoners in the Hungarian Camp was undoubtedly the constant noise. ⁴⁰ The medley of noise generated by human activities did not cease even at night when between 150 and 180 people were sleeping in each room of the barrack. The mere structure of the big rooms of the buildings, which forced many people to share one large space, erased the experience of silence from the prisoners’ lives. According to Lili's description, all the prisoners made annoying noises, and everyone suffered from that. To escape the reality of the camp space and the crowded, noisy barrack, she developed her own mental technique:

[…] I am doing ‘fogging’ exercises. This is what I call the state of mind when I am lying with my eyes closed, without thinking about anything unrealistic, trying to pull myself out of reality, i.e., Bergen–Belsen. This was one of my spiritual prescriptions to make it easier to bear being there: to be consciously present and experience reality as little as possible. In the morning, I would lie like that for hours, sometimes only jumping out of bed at the first whistle (washing oh); in the afternoon, I would lie like this as much as possible. ⁴¹

Lili does not use her imagination and fantasy because her technique is just excluding visual reality. ‘Fogging’ means just closing her eyes. She is able to avoid seeing the others and ignore the barrack as a visual experience. ⁴² Escaping from the present is ended by a sound, the first whistle signing the time of getting up and going to wash. As a result, ‘fogging’ was a powerful method against seeing the busy life in the barrack but this did not stop the noises from reaching her.

The acoustic signatures of the morning were a determining part of her narrative. According to her ear-witness accounts, lying on the wooden bunk, she observed morning life in the barrack based on both sights and sounds: ‘I wake up. It is still dark; the rain is tapping steadily on the roof. I hear Tercsi Widrich, a sweet little angelic two-year-old girl.’ Lili was still lying in the bunk and listening to the people who had already woken up and who had started their daily routine which meant that she had to force herself to get up soon: ‘Dr. Nagy appears: He shouts “good morning Blanyi.” Blanyi tells him that breakfast is prepared in the closet.’ Then she also heard the people shouting, ‘Food Carriers to the Gate,’ which meant that coffee would soon be brought. In the end, the sound of this voice motivated her to start the day. ⁴³ This transcript confirms that, in addition to visual impressions, sounds informed Lili on the dark mornings about the events in the barracks. That was the time when in the barracks full of children and women, the men also appeared. Waking up had an additional meaning in the Hungarian Camp: the morning meeting was a crucial point for family members who had spent the night in separate barracks. Additionally, noises and sounds determined life not only in the morning but also at night:

I am sleepy, but I cannot sleep even though Vera has already gone to bed. ⁴⁴ Some people are snoring at night, some sing in their dreams, but some also cry. Bugs are biting. The toilet door squeaks every minute. Mrs. Mannhein cannot find her way home in the dark; she wakes up someone to help her get home. We hear the roar of airplanes. The babies are crying. And it starts all over again the next day. ⁴⁵

Lili listened to the cavalcade of sounds, i.e., snoring, crying, singing, squeaks, and airplanes and all the while felt the bites of the bugs on her skin. Since the individual members of the Kasztner group spent every night on the same bunk, in the same barrack, they almost always had the same people around them in the night. Therefore, some of them were able to distinguish the numerous noises and voices that were often annoying but also familiar to them. Lili can recognize and distinguish the voices not only of her daughter but also of Mrs Mannheim and her helper. Jenő Kolb created a ‘sound map’ of the barracks based on the voices and noises of his fellow prisoners: ‘At night I get to know all the sounds. Everyone breathes differently, everyone's farts can be known separately.’ ⁴⁶ During the long hours spent together, the accounts suggest that their authors listened in an increasingly focused manner and the sounds themselves became more personal. They were connected to certain persons and activities that were part of the daily routine. As a result, these noises created a stable, familiar, and recognizable acoustic micro-environment.

Lili focuses on mainly what she heard in the barracks, but living together was not only stressful because of the noise. Zoltán Moór experienced coexistence in the barracks as suffering in another perceptual dimension. For him, the forced and constant touching of bodies was the most unbearable. ‘You cannot walk in the barracks without touching people all the time. This close physical contact is a torture.’ ⁴⁷ The difference between the male and the female barracks may also have been because Lili shared her bed with her children, while the men were sleeping without their family members and had contact with the bodies of strangers.

The day and night periods in the camp had different meanings compared to the meanings they had in the outside world. Sleep and wakefulness are phases of a biologically defined rhythm, but under extreme circumstances, they are also parts of a major struggle for activities that are an integral part of everyday life. The prisoners had to find strength to face each new day in the camp every morning, the first part of which was waking up. Terrence Des Pres draws a parallel between waking up in the camp and camp life as a whole: ‘Prisoners either got up or died; they either faced an unbearable world knowing they would have to bear it or gave up.’ Des Pres quotes one survivor who noted that he did not wake his fellow prisoner, who was having a nightmare. What kind of nightmare could be worse than waking up in a concentration camp? ⁴⁸ In this sense, returning to the daily routine after waking in the morning was recounted in the testimonies as a chance to survive. ⁴⁹

Since Lili was not able to mute the sounds of people waking up around her, the sounds did not let her escape reality. Rather, by compelling her not to stay in bed but to wake up and get up, they contributed to continuing the agenda of everyday life. On the one hand, the noise of the barracks made everyday life unbearable. On the other hand, it was linked to the daily routine. As Lili listened to the noises and conversations about everyday challenges and difficulties, she drew strength from this talk, and this encouraged her to start a new day. Those who stayed in the ‘fog’ were cut off not only from reality but also from the chance of survival. After the camp inmates had woken up, a monotonous day began for them when, according to Lili's account, everything ‘starts all over again.’ However, the general mood was not always the same. Two further factors surely improved the mood of the community, and these factors were mentioned in the accounts: good news and sweet tastes.

The descriptions of the camp menu are an integral part of the diaries and memoirs. Meals in the Hungarian Camp came from different sources: packages brought by the families, a central supply that was transferred from Hungary to the camp, and food that was distributed by the Germans, including charity packs donated by the International Red Cross. The members of the Kasztner group experienced hunger, just as the inmates of the Prisoners’ Camp did, but none of them died of starvation. This condition resulted in different attitudes to eating and being hungry, and these attitudes influenced the general mood of the community.

Since life back home was the reference point, prisoners were never satisfied with either the quality or the quantity of food. Additionally, the months spent in the camp also changed the relationship with the taste of food. Mrs. László Devecseri writes that they thought that the black bread would never slip down their throats, but months later it seemed almost ‘delicacy’. ⁵⁰ Lili recalls in her narrative that the slightest variety or tiny extra rations of food gave her an exhilarating feeling. ⁵¹ Sweets of any kind were particularly rare, and even a small taste of something sweet had a positive psychological effect on her: ‘Thank God and thanks to Erzsi Kurz, I still have some saccharin, I put two in it, but it hardly sweetens seven deciliters of bitter coffee.’ ⁵² According to Jenő Kolb, the prisoners in the Hungarian Camp were given 70 g of sugar every 20 days. He compared this amount with the eight sugar cubes that he had gotten every day when he had been a prisoner of war in 1917, and he concluded that this amount (eight sugar cubes) was almost ten times more than the portion in Bergen–Belsen. ⁵³

Jenő's wife and daughter received two pieces of ‘Mary’ candy from a member of the leaders’ families, Hanna Brandt. ⁵⁴ Mrs. Kolb cut her piece into three portions. ⁵⁵ Such episodes offer indications of the desires of camp inmates, in this case, a craving for sweets. The breaking of the women's candy into three pieces symbolizes maternal self-sacrifice and care. ⁵⁶ In addition, the account presents the inequalities among them by noting that some prisoners had access to more food and sweets. Since the families of Rezső Kasztner and other Zionist leaders received separate packages from home, they had more luxury items, such as warm clothes, cigarettes, and chocolates. They lived in a separate section of the barracks. Therefore, the others could not see what they ate, but they could smell the food they were served. According to one of the memoirs, ‘a bitter and tempting smell of bean coffee wafted daily’ from their barrack, and the ‘discontented and murmuring voices of the plebs’ spread towards them. ⁵⁷ Consequently, differences in access to food and taste have had not only physical but also social consequences.

Due to the special status of the Kasztner group, sometimes, in addition to the privileged families, most of the camp inmates were given some kind of sweets. On 26 November 1945, the Red Cross donation packages arrived at the Hungarian Camp. These packages contained sugar and 1300 boxes of chocolate powder (named Starkosan): ⁵⁸

Sunny mild weather, very good meat for lunch. Afterward, the Starkosan is distributed. Unimaginable effect. For the first time in five months, cultured taste: chocolate! Old people and children are indeed intoxicated; they eat with a spoon, dry, mixed with bread, butter, water, jam, dextrose, etc. People are undergoing a transformation. Cheerful faces, cheerful talk, optimism. We expect to leave within hours. They eat more in the evening. […]. People have chocolate around their mouths […] ⁵⁹

Jenő described the mood swings among the other camp inmates in light of their access to sweets. Since the taste of something sweet was a strong sensory stimulation, it greatly improved the general mood (Unimaginable effect). According to the diarist, sweet tastes had an effect similar to that of alcohol. Camp inmates regardless of their age became ‘indeed intoxicated’ and that triggered unusual ways of eating (such as spreading it on bread). Additionally, the taste of chocolate triggered nostalgia and desires for prewar civilized life (cultured taste) and also sparked thoughts of the future. Jenő's narrative describes sweet tastes as factors that strengthened people's conviction that they would someday be able to leave the camp (We expect to leave within hours). The man claims his account that the taste of chocolate made the promised departure for Switzerland seem ever more a realistic prospect. After the camp inmates had tasted sweets, they did not wash the traces of the chocolate powder off their mouths because that way the experience of eating chocolate remained as real as they wanted the trip to Switzerland to be. Two days later, when the chocolate powder ran out, people's moods changed from optimistic to despairing, according to Jenő. There was no news about the departure, and many people had headaches and indigestion. ⁶⁰

Departure to Switzerland was the most common topic of conversation in the Hungarian Camp. The inmates knew nothing about how long they would be held in the camp, so rumours flew from bunk to bunk. As Alexandra Garbarini points out, for Jews during the war, reading and discussing the news and assumptions was a common experience that formed social life and interactions and influenced coping strategies. Jews interpreted the news to create hopeful narratives about the future and developed a strategy of ‘hopeful reading.’ ⁶¹ This strategy was of particular importance in the Hungarian Camp, where the stay was hoped to be only temporary and where the first group could be expected to follow them to Switzerland at any moment. ⁶²

Some of them read the news about the political and war situation in the few newspapers that they accessed, however, these articles were written according to Hungarian or German propaganda. ⁶³ Numerous survivors mentioned that writer Béla Zsolt had good connections with some of the SS guards who shared news and occasionally German newspapers with him. Based on the acquired information, Zsolt held so-called ‘news summaries’ when he informed the group and commented on the events. ⁶⁴ According to his listeners, he ‘censored’ German propaganda and emphasized promising news in order to enhance the optimism of the group; additionally, he held back the bad news. ⁶⁵ In this way, the German news was censored by the Nazis; the censored press was ‘re-censored’ with a positive attitude by Zsolt. Jenő Kolb writes about how their hunger for news became quite surrealistic. He had told someone as a joke that if he gave him a cigarette, he would offer a piece of good news in return. He was very surprised when the man indeed appeared with the requested cigarette in hand. ⁶⁶ The power of good news was expressed by the value of the item exchanged.

Every day of life in the camp for the ‘Kasztner Jews’ was full of desires and hopes. Jenő contends in his narrative that, since people had no access to reliable information, they tried to read their destinies from ‘signs’ around them and tended to draw conclusions concerning their futures on the basis of their sensory experiences. Jenő's intuitions were associated with his impressions of the changes in the weather: ‘Better weather reconciles people.’ ⁶⁷ / ‘Sunshine, warm. Everyone looks at the world differently.’ ⁶⁸ He sometimes interweaves impressions about tastes and the weather in his narrative: when the Starkosan was distributed, the weather was sunny and mild; on the morning when it ran out, however, there was ‘full winter, snow, frost, puddles frozen as bone, about minus five degrees.’ ⁶⁹ In this case, the different tastes influenced the sense of the temperature connected. ⁷⁰ According to Béla Zsolt, they never saw any birds or bugs in the camp (except for lice and fleas). Once they discovered a ladybird, the whole camp was talking about it. Even though the lunch was very bad that day, the ladybird brought ‘a pleasant excitement and even some optimism to the camp for a few moments.' ⁷¹ The inmates’ emotions, Jenő Kolb and Béla Zsolt suggest, were linked to their impressions of the world around them, and as the world around them was poor in stimuli, tiny, seemingly trivial details also caught their attention.

Since the ‘hopeful tasting’ of chocolate powder was a coping strategy, it complements Garbarini's concept of ‘hopeful readings’ of news. The constantly changing information that was given to the prisoners compelled Jews to turn to other types of sources. In order to find additional clues about their future, Jenő interpreted pleasant tastes as positive signs about their futures, presumably in part simply because they had no access to reliable news. Moreover, the narratives suggest that equal access to sweets brought the members of the camp inmates together (dreaming together about leaving), while unequal access (the privileged had better access) caused rifts in the community. In this way, the tastes not only represented social processes but also constructed them. In other words, their role was not just to show who was privileged to eat more sweets but also to fill or deepen the fault lines within the community. Camp inmates had to struggle with a lot of friction that was mainly caused by food distribution. Jenő's diary demonstrates that conflict-ridden life had its own smell in the ‘little state’ of the Hungarian Camp.

After the first group of prisoners left on August 21, the days passed, just as before, and the atmosphere was affected by the changes in the news and changes in the menu. On October 30, an unusual dish, mussel soup, was distributed. According to Jenő, it had a shocking effect. He did not like this food at all: he was bothered both by the taste and the smell of the soup. Although the meals for the Hungarian Camp were generally of better quality and variety than the meals that were served to the other prisoners, the black mussels were completely unfamiliar to the camp inmates because they had not been a common or widely known meal in Hungary. Jenő noted that the seemingly limitless quantity of mussels made people go crazy:

According to the news in the afternoon, there will be mussel soup in the evening. Quite late, in the pouring rain, fifteen barrels of black mussels are brought, boiled in onion water. Disgusting smell: vagina + chicken plucking. People go wild, they do not even know whether it is edible, they use big bowls to steal it, and they stuff their pockets. They kill for something they have never even tasted – but it is available in limitless quantities! It is very sandy, tasteless, and disgusting to me. Others suck it all night long […] the whole camp is full of the mussels and the odor of the mussels. ⁷²

Both the smell of the mussels and the reaction of the other inmates disgusted Jenő, and his perceptions of the world around him – the rain, the smells, and the tastes – are connected in his narrative. On the following day, the sight of the mussels reminded him of chicken droppings, which explains why he also mentions the smell of ‘chicken plucking.’ The origin of the other component of his olfactory experience is more uncertain. This comment has clear sexual connotations, because sexual desire and food are often described as the ‘passions of the flesh’. The diarist seems to indicate some connection between sexual and food desire – and disgust. ⁷³ This note may root in some pre-war male – rather vulgar – norms in thinking about women's genitalia. On the other hand, his mention of a vagina as something which has (in his narrative) a comparable bad smell may indicate his opinion of the barrack for women, which he found messy and dirty because – according to him – women did not pay enough attention to cleaning and washing. ⁷⁴ Since sensory narratives are culturally mediated, existing cultural values affected people's perceptions of their experiences and how they narrated these experiences. Following the traditional, gendered norms, men expected women to smell good, and male prisoners were shocked by the stench of women in Birkenau. ⁷⁵ Despite the better conditions, it was hardly simple to maintain personal hygiene in the Hungarian Camp. Lili writes about how hard it was to force herself to wash up because of the cold weather and ice-cold water. ⁷⁶

For Jenő, the filth and stench were signs of undisciplined behaviour, which also found expression in attitudes towards eating. Namely, hungry people lost their minds and their sense of self-restraint because they suddenly had access to an unlimited amount of food. Jenő depicted the people in this state as if they did not care what they were given. Even if they did not like the taste, they still struggled to get as much as possible of it. The attitude of his camp inmates to the mussels captured the experience and consequences of ‘massification’ for Jenő. He complains many times about how the other inmates allegedly lacked a sense of community and solidarity and became selfish. For Jenő, who was a member of the left-wing Hashomer Hatzair, the ‘mass man’ was the opposite of the ‘collective man.’ ⁷⁷ Zoltán Moor (who was a Zionist, too) also depicts the effects of hunger on the community in his diary. According to him, hunger eats the body, ‘it consumes it, destroys it, breaks it down, atrophies the muscles’. Hunger also destroys the soul and ‘disintegrates the social self’, and ‘breaks up the sense of community’. In his depiction, starvation has degraded people into creatures living out of and for the body: ‘People despair that the person lying next to them is not a pig, because then they could be eaten.’ ⁷⁸

The malodorous mussels were a novel kind of sensory attack against Jenő, and he seems to have interpreted them as the principal sensory mark of the decay of community norms. There are also examples of opposite effects in his diary. As with bad smells, good smells affected Jenő's mood and what he noticed around him: ‘In the evening, at dusk: the strong smell of the forest. Nature: the purple flowers at the edge of the forest. Gottesmann brings a daisy for a woman for her birthday.’ ⁷⁹ The smell of the forest and the flowers evoked in him the memory of a kind gesture made by one of his fellow inmates and a harmonious scene, which symbolized a completely different mood from the episode describing the clambering for the mussels.

Jenő also wrote of how, the next day, the traces of the mussel dinner left in the camp again filled him with a feeling of disgust, and again he condemned the behaviour of his fellow camp inmates:

There is a mountain of mussels in front of the bath, smelly like the low tide on the beach. It is enough for two carts. People scoop out the unbroken mussels, and eat them there, and then; the others are taken out and collected in a bundle: yellow-brown, like chicken shit.

Women's hut (XI/G): newborn boy wants to be breastfed and cleaned by his mother; old women attack her, won’t let her light the lamp; the peak of cruel selfishness. ⁸⁰

The metaphor of the ‘mountain of mussels’ expresses the abundance, and the comparison of the smell with the ‘low tide of the beach’ conveys the sense of a heavy odour. Figurative language is a rhetorical tool that Jenő uses to communicate the intensity of his feeling of disgust. ⁸¹ In this entry, dated October 31, the repeated encounter with the smell of mussels is followed by a description of a scene expressing a transgression against the sense of community. One could contend, given the order in which these memories are recounted, that the second memory was prompted in part by the first. In other words, the act of collecting the mussels (an act which was repulsive to Jenő) may have reminded him of an act that was repulsive to him in another way, an act that took place in the women's barracks and which in his view was a violation of the ethical norms of the community. ⁸²

Furthermore, according to Jenő's account, it turned out later that another instance of abuse took place on the ‘night of mussels’. The food distributors were given more potatoes than the rations set for them: ‘If I think back to that night of mussels, the corruption of the whole corrupt system and the whole camp is revealed. […] Word around the camp that fantastic business is going on among the distributors’. ⁸³ The SS delegated their power in a limited way to selected inmates, who functioned as camp, block, and barrack leaders and were in charge of implementing the orders given by the SS. ⁸⁴ Despite the special circumstances of the Hungarian Camp, which included limited autonomy, Jenő felt the leaders and their allied functionaries were corrupt and did not serve the interests of the community. Because of the growing hunger, food distribution was the most adversarial issue. Instances of abuse, Jenő contends in his account, went beyond individual cases of fraud or theft or an illegal request for extra portions. They involved corruption on a central and institutionalized level. For him, the ‘mussel night’ meant a low point in both his physical and mental condition. He was so disappointed that he decided to resign from his all positions and retreat into passivity. Even the changes in the weather frustrated him: ‘Bad weather, darkness, judgment.’ In the end, Jenő did not actually withdraw from camp life. He continued to work as a member of the camp leadership because of new news about their upcoming departure. ⁸⁵

The diarist was disgusted by the smell of the mussels, which for him became the sensory signature of ‘massification’ and corruption. However, he might have had other problems with this food. The mussels did not come from the packages brought by the families or the central supply, which was brought from Hungary, or even from the charity packs provided by the International Red Cross. The SS distributed them, and they probably came from the North Sea. The German origin of the food might be one other reason for his negative attitude. Additionally, this episode indicated that the food brought from Hungary, which was intended to last for a much shorter period of time, had significantly decreased by the end of October. As a result, the mussels symbolized the insecurity of the prisoners’ plight and the difficulties they faced in their efforts to maintain some hope for freedom. On October 6, Jenő wrote that ‘people's anxiety is increasing, and their moral behaviour is deteriorating rapidly.’ ⁸⁶ In his narrative, an oppressive sense of apprehension and despair, which were consequences of people's lack of discipline, the abuse of power by the camp leadership, and the uncertainties concerning the prisoners’ eventual fates, settled over the camp like the smell of black mussels.

The concentration camp experience can be described as an assault on the body. The intellectual and moral behaviour of the prisoners was subordinated to their physical needs under extreme circumstances, where everything centred around the need to satisfy the body. ⁸⁷ However, one cannot reduce the relationship between the body and the concentration camp to the violent atrocities inflicted by the SS. Rather, we can approach the narratives of the experiences that the camp inmates had with regard to their bodies as the sources which touch on many different perceptions. The narratives composed by two camp inmates suggest that the extreme environment made them sensitive to small shifts and changes, whether they were positive or negative (or both at the same time like the noises of the morning). These perceptions influenced their characterizations of different patterns of social life and the varying attitudes of individuals. I argue that small processes and changes in camp life were shaped by changes in sensory impressions.

The camps destroy the physical foundations of the civilized self that has been developing since the end of the nineteenth century. As part of this, it imposes on individuals unpleasant and extreme sights, sounds, tastes, and touches that affected all camp inmates. This is why perception can play a decisive role in some narratives of the deportees. Lili writes about the practices she has developed to attempt to remove the disturbing sights and sounds of the crowding barrack. In her earlier life, her sensory impressions were linked to her home environment and her family members. In comparison, she was forced to look into the daily lives of many families in the camp and perceived them with all her senses. To decrease the negative effects of camp life, she tried to partially recreate the conditions – or at least its traces – in which she lived before the war. Jenő Kolb associate from his sensory experiences with the phenomenon of mass society. Sensations are given social and political meaning in his narrative in which the sensory traditions of modern civilization and mass society conflict. As a result, the experience of the senses has a social-historical relevance in his explanation.

The Hungarian Camp is considered a special camp sector, but its study from the perspective of sensory history can also contribute to a better understanding of the experiences of camp inmates and forced communities more generally. For the ‘Kasztner Jews’, senses were less connected to death than in the Prisoners’ Camp but the harsh and inhumane environment triggered the sensory receptors in all camp environments. The narratives of everyday life in the Hungarian Camp demonstrate how crowded barrack life can burden the senses. Every member of this community was displaced from the private and social environment of their former lives, and they were deprived of the comforts of their homes. The question is how the dismantling of the civilized, Western image of human beings in the camps or other sites of persecution became the basis for a radical change in the culturally encoded sensory order. In the camp, they had to submit to a new social ordering of senses. In this context, reality had a sound, hope had a taste, the corruption had a smell.

Several testimonies and examinations prove that preserving cultural identity helps survival. In the camps, singing was common, performances were organized, religious people prayed, and others wrote diaries and poems. Because of the cultural embeddedness of senses, attachment to the pre-war sensory environment was part of this survival strategy. Not only a song, or a poem but also a pleasant taste, which was a reminder of life before deportation and interment, helped the prisoners remember that beyond the borders of the camp, civilized life may well have survived. Clinging to the sensory experience of modern, civilized women and men can be seen as a survival reaction. As long as the camp inmates struggled against unpleasant smells, sounds, tastes, and touches, and insist on the good sensory impressions (the cultured taste of chocolate), they maintained their cultural integrity.