The tattooing process would be very painful for many, including Elie Wiesel. Wiesel said, "I don't think anything else in my life could've been as painful as the needle they used to tattoo our skin." (Wiesel, 106) Some were not only tattooed their serial number, but also the letters, "KL." KL would stand for concentration camps. .
While Auschwitz seems like it was only for Jews because it's focused on as a Holocaust camp, they were not the only people killed here. Many groups would be mass murdered here, such as Gypsies, Poles, Russians, homosexuals, and even Jehovah's Witnesses. The separation of the groups were determined by different color of triangles. Red symbolized political, green and criminals, black symbolizes asocial, ones who possessed socially deviant behavior. Purple symbolized catholic clergy, a pink triangle was associated with homosexuals, a yellow star was symbolized for one of Jewish decent, and finally a violet triangle was a symbol for Jehovah Witnesses. .
Although there were many different camps at the Auschwitz grounds, the main one is Auschwitz I. Twenty brick buildings were set aside as prisoner quarters, which measured forty-five point thirty-eight meters by seventeen point five meters each. Number of prisoners in one block varied and depended on the overall number of prisoners at Auschwitz. One bunk that a prisoner would sleep on measured eighty cm wide by two-hundred cm long and two-hundred twenty-five cm high with three straw mattresses normally used for three. Each block contained coal fired stoves, fifteen wooden cupboards, wooden tables and several primitive stools. Sanitary facilities, only found on the ground floor, were shared and consisted of twenty-two toilet seats and urinals. There were two kinds of barrack huts which were used for housing prisoners, brick and wooden. The brick huts were built on marshy, wet soil and not made damp proof.