English translation of original document

Report by the Social Democrat Gerhart Seger on SA leaders of the Oranienburgconcentration camp, 1933 1Since the establishment of the camp the Kommandant was Sturmbannfüher Schäfer 2from Oranienburg, He had been a police officer cadet, but had not been accepted as apolice officer under Severing. 3He then worked as a minor bank official and, on theside, was active as organizer and leader of an SA Sturmbann. In this capacity hebecame Kommandant of the concentration camp set up in the area of SA Standarte208.Schäfer is a veritable underling of a person. His hatred of Social Democrats isboundless. He enjoys practicing it by insulting helpless prisoners, who of course haveto stand to attention in front of him, in an obscene manner. Schäfer did not often lethimself go to indulge in physical maltreatment by striking, but he was all the moregenerous with the imposition of disciplinary punishment: confinement in a dark cell,postal and visitors' bans and detailing to penal squads [...].Sturmbannfüher Krüger from Trebbin was, until October, the chief sadist of theOranienburg camp. Employed by the Secret State Police he held interrogations inRoom 16; he has the two dead from Anhalt on his conscience, probably even more.One is reluctant to put on paper the full scale of this 30-year-old SA leader's crimes of1 Gerhart Seger (1896-1967), a Social Democrat. He fled from the Oranienburg camp in December1933.2 Werner Schäfer, the Oranienburg camp’s first commandant.3 The Social Democrat Prussian Minister of the Interior until 1932.

unbridled raving sadism, of physical ill-treatment and moral torture of the prisoners[...]. Krüger felt especially strong when there were National Socialist visitors towhom he could present us. Like a self-important tamer in a small touring circus hewould then stride around the camp, summoning the "VIPs" of the camp andintroducing them to the visitors with vile remarks. "Just look at these shepherds!This here is another overfed burgomaster of the SPD! This Jewish swine here openedhis filthy trap against our Führer!" and other insults of this kind - and the prisoneralways had to stand at attention and let himself be abused in silence! In October, forreasons not accurately known to us prisoners, Krüger was removed; first he wastransferred to the Blumberg branch camp as a kind of "honorary detainee" and then hewas completely dismissed and sent home, as was reported by visitors from Trebbin.But the "tradition" of Room 16, that he created, continues to exist.The person continuing it is Sturmführer Stahlkopf, 4 who already was a keenparticipant in all crimes in Krüger's day. While Krüger had a certain daredevilbrutality, Stahlkopf is the type of the creepy particularly infamous sadist, whosecharacter has a downright unimaginable vileness. The abysmal meanness of this manis perhaps best revealed in an episode that took place on the day before my escape.A married prisoner is called to Room 16 for interrogation. Stahlkopf asks him; "Howlong have you been in custody?" "Six months", the prisoner answers. "So who isf...ing your wife back home?"A special peculiarity of Sturmführer Stahlkopf was that at night, when he was slightlydrunk, he would collect prisoners from the dormitories in order to beat them or to put4 Hans Stahlkopf, an SA guard.

them through some drill in the courtyard. This he did above all with the unfortunatemembers of the so-called Jewish company, which existed for a while and to which theformer leader of the Social Democrat Party in the Prussian Diet Ernst Heilmann 5 hadbeen detailed during his stay in the Oranienburg camp.Original document source: Gerhart Seger, Oranienburg: Erster authentischer Berichteines aus dem Konzentrationslager Geflüchteten (Karlsbad: Verlagsanstalt Graphia,1934), 27-31.English translation and copyright by Ewald Osers5 Ernst Heilmann (1881-1940), a leading SPD politician, arrested in 1933, killed in the Buchenwaldcamp in 1940.