Auschwitz concentration camp was a network of concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by nazi Germany during World War II. It consisted of Auschwitz I (the base camp); Auschwitz II-Birkenau (the extermination camp); Auschwitz III-Monowitz (a labor camp to staff an IG Farben factory), and 45 satellite camps.
The prisoners' day began at 4:30 am (an hour later in winter) with morning roll call. Dr. Miklos Nyiszli describes roll call as beginning 3:00 am and lasting four hours. The weather was cold in Auschwitz at that time of day, even in summer. The prisoners were ordered to line up outdoors in rows of five and had to stay there until 7:00 am, when the SS officers arrived. Meanwhile the guards would force the prisoners to squat for an hour with their hands above their heads or levy punishments such as beatings or detention for infractions such as having a missing button or an improperly cleaned food bowl. The inmates were counted and re-counted. Nyiszli describes how even the dead had to be present at roll call, standing supported by their fellow inmates until the ordeal was over. When he was a prisoner in 1944–45, five to ten men would be found dead in the barracks each night. The prisoners assigned to Mengele's staff slept in a separate barracks and were awoken at 7:00 am for a roll call that only took a few minutes.
After roll call, the Kommando, or work details, would walk to their place of work, five abreast, wearing striped camp fatigues, no underwear, and ill-fitting wooden shoes without socks. A prisoner's orchestra (such as the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz) was forced to play cheerful music as the workers left the camp. Kapos were responsible for the prisoners' behavior while they worked, as was an SS escort. The working day lasted 12 hours during the summer and a little less in the winter. Much of the work took place outdoors at construction sites, gravel pits, and lumber yards. No rest periods were allowed. One prisoner would be assigned to the latrines to measure the time the workers took to empty their bladders and bowels. Sunday was not a work day, but the prisoners did not rest; they were required to clean the barracks and take their weekly shower. Prisoners were allowed to write (in German) to their families on Sundays. Inmates who did not speak German would trade some of their bread to another inmate for help composing their letters. Members of the SS censored the outgoing mail.
A second mandatory roll call took place in the evening. If a prisoner was missing, the others had to remain standing in place until he was either found or the reason for his absence discovered, regardless of the weather conditions, even if it took hours. After roll call, individual and collective punishments were meted out, depending on what had happened during the day, and after these, the prisoners were allowed to retire to their blocks for the night and receive their bread rations and water. Curfew was two or three hours later. The prisoners slept in long rows of wooden bunks, lying in and on their clothes and shoes to prevent them from being stolen.
According to Nyiszli, "Eight hundred to a thousand people were crammed into the superimposed compartments of each barracks. Unable to stretch out completely, they slept there both lengthwise and crosswise, with one man's feet on another's head, neck, or chest. Stripped of all human dignity, they pushed and shoved and bit and kicked each other in an effort to get a few more inches' space on which to sleep a little more comfortably. For they did not have long to sleep".
The types of prisoners were distinguishable by triangular pieces of cloth, called Winkel, sewn onto on their jackets below their prisoner number. Political prisoners had a red triangle, Jehovah's Witnesses had purple, criminals had green, and so on. The nationality of the inmate was indicated by a letter stitched onto the Winkel. Jews had a yellow triangle, overlaid by a second Winkel if they also fit into a second category. Uniquely at Auschwitz, prisoners were tattooed with their prisoner number, on the chest for Soviet prisoners of war and on the left arm for civilians.
Prisoners received a hot drink in the morning, but no breakfast, and a thin meatless vegetable soup at noon. In the evening they received a small ration of moldy bread. Most prisoners saved some of the bread for the following morning. Nyiszli notes the daily intake did not exceed 700 calories, except for prisoners being subjected to live medical experimentation, who were better fed and clothed. Sanitary arrangements were poor, with inadequate latrines and a lack of fresh water. In Auschwitz II-Birkenau, latrines were not installed until 1943, two years after camp construction began. The camps were infested with vermin such as disease-carrying lice, and the inmates suffered and died in epidemics of typhus and other diseases. Noma, a bacterial infection occurring among the malnourished, was a common cause of death among children in the Gypsy camp.
Block 11 of Auschwitz I was the prison within the prison, where violators of the numerous rules were punished. Some prisoners were made to spend the nights in standing cells. These cells were about 1.5 m2 (16 sq ft), and four men would be placed in them; they could do nothing but stand, and were forced during the day to work with the other prisoners. Prisoners sentenced to death for attempting to escape were confined in a dark cell and given neither food nor water until they were dead.
In the basement were the "dark cells"; these cells had only a very tiny window and a solid door. Prisoners placed in these cells would gradually suffocate as they used up all of the oxygen in the cell; sometimes the SS would light a candle in the cell to use up the oxygen more quickly. Many were subjected to hanging with their hands behind their backs for hours, even days, thus dislocating their shoulder joints.
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