Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the socio-environmental history of the 1938 November Pogrom through the lens of a typhoid epidemic that broke out in Buchenwald, a National Socialist concentration camp. It examines the origins and effects of the outbreak on prisoners, camp personnel, and the wider community.

Paper long abstract:

The November 1938 pogroms launched against Jews in Third Reich (also known as Kristallnacht) included mass arrests of Jewish men, swelling the populations of concentration camps. In the Buchenwald camp, the rapid influx of nearly 10,000 persons, intentional overcrowding in segregated barracks, and the long-standing lack of adequate water and sewage infrastructure led to an outbreak of typhoid fever—a water-borne disease that flourishes in these conditions. Thousands were sickened, and hundreds of prisoners in Buchenwald died in just a few months.

This paper explores the socio-environmental history of the November Pogrom through the lens of this epidemic, contextualizing it within the longer history of the inadequate water infrastructure in National Socialist camps and the distinct topography of Buchenwald. Drawing on insights from social and environmental history, political ecology, epidemiology, and geology, this paper analyzes the origins of the outbreak and its impact on the camp and the communities surrounding it, as well as the responses by authorities to end it and prevent future epidemics. During the Holocaust, water was used to sustain and destroy life; it was used to hide from perpetrators and to hide crimes. By analyzing the role of the environment in the history of the Holocaust and foregrounding the experiences of victims, whose testimonies highlighted the horrible conditions they confronted in NS carceral spaces, this paper shows the importance of non-human forces like water to the Holocaust, and genocide more generally.