Concentration camp inmates used the term muselmann to describe a prisoner who was in the final stages of physical and mental deterioration. Muselmaenner were people who had lost the desire to survive, and had only weeks or days remaining to them. In the eyes of guards and prisoners alike, they were already gone. In death camps, guards selected them for the gas chambers; in other camps they just allowed them to die. Other prisoners in the camps, who feared the same fate for themselves, tended to shun the muselmaenner and reserve their support for people who could inspire hope and vitality in return.
Also known as “the living dead,” the muselmaenner personified the unthinkable humiliation and hopelessness which the inmates of Nazi camps endured during World War II.
