Westhofen

Westhofen concentration camp is fictitious, but closely based on a real camp at Osthofen, which Seghers heard about from a real-life escapee (Max Tschornicki). It is a nightmarish place, manned by SA guards who routinely (and randomly) torture the inmates. At the center of it is the “Dance Ground,” a grimly ironic name for the open square where violence becomes a performance, and where Fahrenberg assembles the prisoners to view his seven crosses (19).

However, the horrors of the camp are chiefly conveyed through hints rather than details. When Fritz Helwig visits the camp, we learn that its outward appearance masks its true nature. Fritz “had imagined Westhofen to be something hellish. But what he saw were clean barracks, a large, clean-swept square, some guards, a few clipped plane trees, calm autumn sunshine” (145). From this outsider’s point of view, clinical emptiness becomes cleanliness; the Dance Ground is a...