Kapo (KZ)

Kapo
A kapo leader at Salaspils concentration camp, Latvia, with a Lagerpolizist (camp policeman) armband
Location	Nazi concentration camps in German-occupied Europe
Date	1939–1945
Incident type	Imprisonment, coercion, collaborationism
Perpetrators	Schutzstaffel (SS)
Participants	SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV)
Organizations	SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, Reich Main Security Office, Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle

A kapo or prisoner functionary (German: Funktionshäftling, see § Etymology) was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp who was assigned by the SS guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks. Also called "prisoner self-administration", the prisoner functionary system minimized costs by allowing camps to function with fewer SS personnel. The system was designed to turn victim against victim, as the prisoner functionaries were pitted against their fellow prisoners in order to maintain the favor of their SS overseers. If they were derelict, they would be returned to the status of ordinary prisoners and be subject to other kapos. Many prisoner functionaries were recruited from the ranks of violent criminal gangs rather than from the more numerous political, religious and racial prisoners; those were known for their brutality toward other prisoners. This brutality was tolerated by the SS and was an integral part of the camp system.

Prisoner functionaries were spared physical abuse and hard labor, provided they performed their duties to the satisfaction of the SS functionaries. They also had access to certain privileges, such as civilian clothes and a private room. While the Germans commonly called them kapos, the official government term for prisoner functionaries was Funktionshäftling.

The origin of "kapo" is unclear. The Jewish Virtual Library claims, it is an abbreviated form of the word Kameradschaftpolizei (roughly, "comrade police force") or perhaps Kameradschafts-Polizei. It could have also come from the Italian word for "head" and "boss", capo. According to the Duden, it is derived from the French word for "Corporal" (). Pulitzer prize winning journalist Robert Dennis McFadden believes that the word "Kapo" is derived from the German word Lagercapo meaning camp captain.

Concentration camps were controlled by the SS, but day-to-day organization was supplemented by the system of functionary prisoners, a second hierarchy that made it easier for the Nazis to control the camps. These prisoners made it possible for the camps to function with fewer SS personnel. The prisoner functionaries sometimes numbered as high as 10% of the inmates. The Nazis were able to keep the number of paid staff who had direct contact with the prisoners very low in comparison to normal prisons today. Without the functionary prisoners, the SS camp administrations would not have been able to keep the day-to-day operations of the camps running smoothly. The kapos often did this work for extra food, cigarettes, alcohol or other privileges.