Auschwitz

The lines moved into the place were a procedure called "Selection" took place. The ones who could work were not killed at this time, but the women, children, and others that couldn't work were gassed. The prisoners that were to work, had their clothes taken, heads shaved, got sterilized, and were given black and white striped clothes to wear. In the forced labor camps, the average life time was only a few months. Some of the prisoners that couldn't react or move became what was known as Muselmann. A dreaded part of camps was the Appeal, or roll call. In this, prisoners were sent out into the cold night after a hard day of work, and lined up. Anyone that fell to the ground was shot or gassed. One more of all the bad work chores was the Sonderkommando. Dong this meant that you burned the bodies of the dead prisoners in the creamatoria. Tattoos were given to the prisoners on their right arm as an easier way of registration. ! Not all of the earlier prisoners had this tattoo, but the regiterd number of prisoners was 405,000. The daily routine in the complex differed in each camp, but the basic routine was the same. They: woke at dawn, cleaned their areas, morning roll call was taken, they walked to the work site, worked for long hours, had to wait in lines for food, then walked bback to their bunks, block inspection was done, and then evening roll call was taken. There were also people who got picked for medical experiments. The best known docter at Auschwitz was Josef Mengele. His experiments were mostly done on twins and dwarfs. He did lots of things that had to do with seeing how ling it would take a person to die if you do this or that. He also did experiments that had to do with cutting off body parts, and reattaaching them to different parts of the body. By January 20th, 1944, the population of the Aushwitz complex had reached 80,839. That number rose up and up as the monthes past an! d more prisoners came.