Table of Classification Symbols for Concentration Camp Prisoners - (1938-1942).

Even among those held in the concentration camps, there existed a cruel system of hierarchy, which was used not only to classify prisoners with, but to serve as a kind of institutionalized game that pitted prisoners against one another.

First and foremost, colors divided prisoners into groups based on the nature of their imprisonment: red was for political prisoners, including socialists, Communists, anarchists, and Freemasons; green was for convicts, some of whom were “kapos”, prisoners who were spared harsh treatment and physical labor by overseeing other prisoners (many kapos were later tried for war crimes alongside SS guards); blue was for emigrants, purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses; pink was for homosexuals (and other sexual deviants); finally, black was for the”work shirkers” and “asocials” (a large group including Roma, the mentally ill, pacifists, drug addicts, vagrants, and others). Colored bars above the triangle meant that the prisoner was a repeat offender. By 1937, these colors were standardized throughout all German concentration camps.  

(Other symbols used for classification can be read about here.)

According to prisoner accounts, groups would organize by color and fight against each other for better food and less work, using underhanded tactics to win the favor of their SS guards. In many cases, groups attempted to team up with their oppressors in order to gain some comforting measure of authority over other oppressed groups. According to Benedikt Kautsky, the “top” class of the concentration camps, after the SS, were the kapos, often Germans or Poles. Below them came the “middle class”, a broad group containing nurses and “junior kapos”, clerks and room leaders. In general, the most demanding work and harshest treatment was given to the weakest prisoners, while the strong (and during the earlier years of the camp, Aryans as well) received benefits and preferential treatment. And, as is probably obvious, the worst treatment and heaviest work load most often fell upon the Jews.