Re:The Economic Organization of a POW Camp
by ggm on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @04:26AM
(#33716960)
The protecting powers insisted on a per capita minimum of some things and parcels of surplus value were delivered regularly. It altered the economics. Accumulated surplus could be seized, by camp authorities or for redistribution by the prisoners self appointed authority or for "X" (escape and subversion)
Russian POWs had a different economy: they had no protecting powers having not signed the geneva conventions. As did concentration camp victims. Primo Levi wrote in "the periodic table" about stealing welding ignition bars to scrape down to size and resell as lighter flints, to survive.
Prisoners sold art and crafts. Prisoners bartered goods from the red Cross parcels for favours. There was probably a complex exchange of goods for favours, for sex, and sex for goods. Within the prisoners and with guards and wider society.
Scarcity value and exchange value and inflation were probably as distorted as in eve online.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote about labouring in a maltose syrup factory, and working to clear bodies in Dresden. Non commissioned and other ranks POW worked for cents per day, mandatory sometimes. Officers did not have to work.
Solzhenitsyn writes in "Ivan Denisovich" of the economy of the gulag. Not a POW camp but perhaps not dissimilar?
The economics of survival are complicated. Primo Levi carried lifelong burdens as a camp survivor. He's on record in "the drowned and the saved" and "is this a man" as saying to survive demanded compromises to avoid being what he calls a "musselman" fated to die sooner or later.
Russian POWs had a different economy: they had no protecting powers having not signed the geneva conventions. As did concentration camp victims. Primo Levi wrote in "the periodic table" about stealing welding ignition bars to scrape down to size and resell as lighter flints, to survive.
Prisoners sold art and crafts. Prisoners bartered goods from the red Cross parcels for favours. There was probably a complex exchange of goods for favours, for sex, and sex for goods. Within the prisoners and with guards and wider society.
Scarcity value and exchange value and inflation were probably as distorted as in eve online.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote about labouring in a maltose syrup factory, and working to clear bodies in Dresden. Non commissioned and other ranks POW worked for cents per day, mandatory sometimes. Officers did not have to work.
Solzhenitsyn writes in "Ivan Denisovich" of the economy of the gulag. Not a POW camp but perhaps not dissimilar?
The economics of survival are complicated. Primo Levi carried lifelong burdens as a camp survivor. He's on record in "the drowned and the saved" and "is this a man" as saying to survive demanded compromises to avoid being what he calls a "musselman" fated to die sooner or later.