Political prisoners took over important positions as "prisoner functionaries" until liberation.

The prisoner functionaries sometimes numbered as high as 10% of the inmates.

Finally, even block leaders, detachment commanders, three prisoner functionaries and a civilian employee stood trial.

To strengthen camp cohesion, the Communist kapos made sure that prisoner functionaries were from every country.

Certain administrative duties in the concentration camps were given by the SS to "prisoner functionaries".

Prisoner functionaries were used by the SS as auxiliary police in a "divide-and-conquer strategy".

The prisoner functionaries were in a precarious hierarchy between their fellow inmates and the SS.

Kapos were prisoner functionaries selected by the SS to supervise their fellow prisoners.

Prisoner functionaries were used to push the prisoners to work harder, saving the need for paid SS supervision.

Prisoner functionaries could often help other prisoners by getting them into better barracks, getting them assigned to lighter work.

While the Germans commonly called them kapos, the official government term for prisoner functionaries was Funktionshäftling.

They were assisted by a cadre of Jewish inmates known as Kapos, who were prisoner functionaries.

the SS man or prisoner functionary who had filed the punishment report,

prisoner functionaries, who had to carry out the sentence,

Kommandos that were charged with construction tasks were overseen by prisoner functionaries known as Kapos.

Prisoner functionaries were spared physical abuse and hard labor, provided they performed their duties to the satisfaction of the SS guards.

Other rooms were used for camp administration, such as the camp Gestapo, the commandant's offices and a room for prisoner functionary use.

Nonetheless, as prisoner functionaries, they had a certain mobility and freedom of action, which they used, in whatever means possible, to preserve the lives of other prisoners.

Willi Bleicher and Robert Siewert, prisoner functionaries, took care of Zweig's welfare.

Of particular concern for them was Förschner's practice of selecting prisoner functionaries almost exclusively from among the camp's German-Communist inmates.

Also called "prisoner self-administration", the prisoner functionary system minimized costs by allowing camps to function with fewer SS personnel.

Similarly, the SS had racial criteria for the prisoner functionaries, one had to be racially "superior" to be a functionary.

Under Egon Zill, for example, prisoner functionaries, such as the Lagerälteste, were instructed to deliver some 30-40 violations daily to the SS.

Subordinate to him, was the Arbeitsdienstführer (an SS-Unterführer) who was responsible for assembling and superivsing the "internal command", the prisoner functionaries.