Free will in total institutions: The case of choice inside Nazi death camps

• The issue of free will is addressed from phenomenological perspective.
• A model conceptualizing the case of choice inside Nazi death camps is presented.
• The experience of ‘selection’ represents a form of situational freedom.
• Free will and existence are interchangeable concepts: I choose – therefore I am.

Nazi death camps, as any total institutions, were designed to deny any free will or choice from inmates. Furthermore, former inmates in such extreme conditions often account for their own actions and behavior in such settings as inevitable (“I had no other choice”). This study examines the questions of free will vs. determinism in death camps from a descriptive-phenomenological perspective. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with 20 former death camp inmates. The following themes emerged from the qualitative analysis of the data: the ‘selection’ experience; ‘borrowed time’ perception; and the experience of ‘nothingness’. A conceptual model grounded in these data was developed to illustrate the inmate’s lived experience of choice in the reality of the camps. Analysis of the model indicates that under the extreme conditions of the death camp, free will and existence are interchangeable: “I choose – therefore I am”.