IV: It's all running.
Professor Knobloch, please tell me what you remember.
Your first impressions of Flossenbürg. The arrival.
You were arrested in Prague and brought to Weiden.
How did the story go from there? Why don't you tell us from here.
FK: Yes, we were hungry when we arrived in Flossenbürg.
And when we got there, all the prisoners were...standing for roll call.
And I think there were four fugitives with us who had been caught and came with us.
And when they came with us, they had to holler: "hurray, hurray, we are back again."
We went to the prisoner bath and it was very calm.
The SS man spoke in a friendly way with a prisoner, who was a Jehovah's Witness.
I don't know how I knew that he was a Jehovah's Witness.
And everything was quiet and after the bath, the leader, the kapo said "Quiet!"
And someone said something.
And he went up to him and he slugged him, knocked him to the ground.
And kicked him with his foot and all that without a word from the SS.
So what we learned in this first moment was that [the man] in this situation was a professional criminal because he was wearing a green badge and that they controlled the situation.
That the situation ...that this was self-administration, where the criminals made the decisions because...
IV: And not the SS.
That not only the SS had power, the criminals themselves had the power in these blocks.
FK: Sorry?
IV: The criminals, the green badges exercised power.
FK: Yes, that is what I meant, that the criminals were in charge and the SS tolerated it.
That was really self-administration by the criminals, yes...
IV. When you were finished in the baths, what happened...what happened to you then?
You were...did you receive a prisoner number? What happened next?
FK: They...we bathed, they shaved us, even the hair...yes, our hair and everything.
And a few months later, I was taking a walk in the evening and I bumped into something.
And it was a man hanging there.
That was after the evening roll call and it seemed to me that that man was one of the fugitives.
And our...the man that...handed out the food in the ... and afterwards brought out the dirt too.
An Austrian there said that I was so startled when I walked into the dead man.
And he laughed and laughed.
That was the atmosphere in the camp.
IV: Can you tell me a bit about the daily life in the camp?
FK: Yes...
IV: How you were housed, what the food was like, what clothes did you have...
FK: Yes...the food, I remember.
It was usually bread, in the mornings, and then the most important food of the day was a soup.
I worked in the sick barracks and Dr. Schnabel hated me.
Probably because my name was Knobloch and he got angry when he smelled garlic [knoblauch].
IV: Can you tell me a bit about Dr. Schnabel? And about your work?
You had been a medical student in Prague...
And that is why you were assigned as an assistant in the sick barracks.
Can you tell me what you did there, what your tasks were, and about Dr. Schnabel too?
FK: He was drunk a lot.
I... as a medical student...there were times when I was responsible for 75 patients.
When he was drunk, he often declared that even very sick patients were healthy when they couldn't even walk.
We had to carry them to their blocks.
And that was sad because I know for example there was block eldest who ...wouldn't let them into the block...
Even in winter he had them brought outside...and I even heard he had water poured on them so that they were dead in the morning.
So that was Dr. Schnabel...he also had friendly moments, but...that was disasterous.
IV: There was also a second doctor, Dr. Schmidt or Schmitz.
FK: Yes, he...
IV: He was a surgeon, I think, can you speak about what you experienced there?
FK: He saw that Schnabel hated me so he was more friendly to me because they were...not friends.
They were opponents... and so he was friendly to me.
But also very moody.
And...when I got typhus, it was not a surprise, since I was in recovery.
And I had to visit the beds of three levels of patients, I had to crawl onto the beds and so it was easy for me to get lice...eh...
IV: That you could get infected there.
FK: And I got infected with typhus.
So on the day that I got out, I could barely stand up, and Dr. Schmitz said: "work hard!"
It was a...I was at the tuberculosis block...don't know why, it was my Czech friends, doctors sent me from recovery to the infirmary barrack.
There were even beds there, we were covered but they put me in a place where there was warmth.
And I was...I was dying.
So they brought me to the tuberculosis block where the people often die.
A man helped me there, I couldn't stand up, he helped me.
An older man, who had been castrated for homosexuality, supposedly from the Messer Solingen family.
He helped me and...a short time later he died.
IV: Could you tell me more about Dr. Schmitz.
He also conducted operations...what else did he do as a surgeon in the camp?
FK: Yes, well...he carried out unnecessary operations.
And I think, both the doctors did operations, as far as I recall.
And once a young patient came in with stomach pain and the doctor said: "This is the second time you are here. Operation."
And he said "Billroth-2 is the ... best for the stomach"
As far as I know he was executed. Yes?
IV: You too were a doctor and psychiatrist your whole life.
FK: What?
IV: You were a psychiatrist your entire life. Professor of Psychiatry.
FK: Why did I...
IV: When you think back on this moment, on these doctors.
How would you categorize them from their psychological structure?
What do you think, what kind of doctors were they that worked like that?
FK: Yes... what I think of their mental state? Yes?
IV: Yes.
FK: I think what is important is...the influence of the whole atmosphere, that turned more or less normal people into criminals.
And that was not just with the two of them, but with masses of people in Germany.
Even religious people, who if they didn't protest, were lured into committing crimes.
There were exceptions, for example an SS man who was very humane and...
But these people let themselves be seduced into criminal situations that the state...created.
IV: How were you personally, mentally, in this situation.
CM: Yes.
IV: Yes? One moment, We'll say in a moment -
IV: How did you manage? You were in a rather privileged situation in this barrack...sick barrack.
But you witnessed these crimes.
This death, you were also sick, close to death.
How did you manage mentally in this situation?
FK Mentally...full of hope that I would see my wife again.
Of course that didn't happen.
My first wife was Jewish and I tried to rescue her, through marriage.
Her parents died just after we married, on the same day, probably in the gas.
And I rescued her for a year.
She died about a half year after we were arrested.
And we...we were arrested because we helped our Jewish friends live illegally in Prague.
They didn't prove anything, but I was dangerous to the Reich since I had married a Jew.
IV: And they separated you from your wife after your arrest.
FK: Yes, of course. She went to Bohemia..what was it called?
And...yes, and then to...Auschwitz...and she died the same year.
She was very...healthy and athletic....but she died.
IV: And so you went directly from Prague via Weiden to Flossenbürg...your wife...
FK: Yes...I was in prison for a quarter of a year in Prague and then to Flossenbürg.
And I stayed there til the end.
IV: Do you recall the liberation?
What happened? You were there up to the end.
FK: Yes, well, uh.. it was...the...
There was a lot of shooting close to the camp.
And then we went to the...uh..gate and the American cars were there and a soldier, with...gum...
IV: Chewing gum.
FK: {Laughs} Yes...and didn't say anything...and the people were very...very...neutral..the people were very happy.
But afterwards some of them...died...it was typhus and other illnesses.
IV: More than 30,000 prisoners died in Flossenbürg.
FK: Yes.
IV: Do you have any idea how you managed to survive?
FK: What helped me?
IV: What helped you and how you managed to survive.
FK: The best thing was having hope and of course...it helped that my mother was able to send some food.
And I even...had food that could make me fat...I ate very modestly.
And the most important thing was that I recognized the power of the group in the camp, the murderous and saving force of the group.
And this was reflected in the theory of my psychothereapy, the integrative psychotherapy.
IV: Could you say a few more words about that?
What the power of the group meant or the murderous brutality of the group in Flossenbürg.
FK: Yes, yes it was...it was always people who hurt themselves and...
On the one side was groups, mostly from the same country.
And on the other side were people who..although they didn't want it, did things that made the others not friendly but hostile.
Were so individual, so isolated that they didn't get any help from others and the help from others was so important.
Yes, it is "self-defeating behavior".
Don't know...different in German..it means that without meaning to you do something that makes others act unfriendly.
IV: I am not sure how that is translated.
FK: What?
IV: I am not sure how to translate that.