Mussulmen
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A mussulman refers to an extremely emaciated person (often used to describe victims of the Holocaust). The victims often are entirely detached from the outside world. One person describes them as follows:
"While one person's response to a difficult or painful situation may be to become fanatical and give in to hatred of another group, another person's response may be to become indifferent, Mr. Wiesel commented. 'Indifference is not the beginning of the process, it is the end. If I am indifferent to you I will be indifferent to myself. Anger may be an inspiration. At the moment when you are angry you can organize a movement. If you are indifferent, however, it is finished. My suffering, and the general suffering of Jews in the Holocaust, was not just because of the Nazis, but also because of the indifference of those who logically should have been our friends, such as the bishops in England and Jewish leaders in America.'
For Elie Wiesel, who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald while his father, mother and younger sister perished in the camps, the incarnation of indifference, or one who has given in to despair, is the 'mussulmen', as certain camp inmates were called. 'A muselmann was someone who died before their time; someone who was still alive but had become indifferent to his or her fate. They no longer suffered from the beatings or from hunger. In their indifference, however, they had become their own victims." - Nancy Loevinger
This position has been critisized as being merely an extension of fascist ideology, whereby the will would prevail over all other conditions, and Nazi victims are accused of bringing about their own fate.
The opposite of this condition is represented in Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. A prisoner who decides to use up his last cigarettes (used as currency in the concentration camps) in the evening because he knows he won't last to the appeal the next morning is derided as muselmann by his inmates.
Frankl parallels this with the Kapos as another example where the desperate conditions in the camps like famine and forced labor can bring out the worst in each individual.
