New inmates
Those who were considered “fit for work” had to undergo a series of humiliating and demeaning procedures. First they came to the “disinfection” in a sanitary area called the “New Sauna”. There men and women together in a room had to strip off their clothes, have their hair cut off and were subsequently sprayed with water.
Then some of them were given the regular inmate clothing and were tattooed on the left forearm with the serial camp number that served as registration. They were then assigned to a certain block and work commando.
Of the Hungarian Jews who were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau around ten percent, roughly 45,000, were held as so-called “depot inmates”. They did not received the prisoner clothing and number, but rather stayed in readiness to be called to work for German companies in Birkenau.
All inmates were housed in unheated barracks, had almost no access to clean water, and thus constantly suffered from poor hygiene and a lack of clean, warm clothing. The food rations were often limited to a cup of soup and a meagre ration of bread per day. Under these conditions illnesses spread very quickly. Inmates were not treated in the blocks for the sick, but merely spared from work assignments.
And thus hundreds of thousands of prisoners died of hard labour, sickness, exhaustion and starvation.