What was a typical day like in a concentration camp for prisoners?

Answer 1

4 a.m.: AwakeningYou are awakened by the kapo (fellow inmate appointed to special duties by the Nazis) barking at you. Hurry up! You must raise, find your shoes (but maybe somebody stole them which often means death because you'll not be able to work) and start as soon as possible the "bettenbau". From the shapeless straw mattress you'll have to make a perfect bed in a military manner, with blankets made up exactly over the straw mattress. Of course, this is nearly impossible to do and the kapo knows it. The "bettenbau" is just a good opportunity for him to beat the prisoners. In Auschwitz-Birkenau, there is no such 'bettenbau' as the beds are just tall wooden shelves.

The bed is made now, and it is time for washing. You run out of the barrack and try to reach the sanitary facility. There are only a couple of sanitary facilities for hundreds of prisoners, and you are under constant threat of the Nazis suddenly deciding to liquidate you. They would switch signs on the washroom and gas chamber door, or they would turn on poison gas instead of water in the showers. You have just a couple of minutes for washing, and the water arbitrarily switches between boiling hot and freezing cold. It is nearly time for the morning roll call, and you know the kapos will beat the stragglers, sometimes to death.

The "Breakfast":

You must have your mess-tin in hand. No mess-tin, no food. A kapo gives you approximately 10 ounces of bread and some "coffee" [see note, end of page]. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you'll receive some margarine or a thin slice of sausage with your bread. The "coffee" is tasteless. No sugar and no milk, of course. The bread you just received will be the only solid food you'll receive until tomorrow. If you have strength of will, you'll try to spare it for the rest of the day. The distribution of food is once again a good opportunity for the kapos to have some "fun". Sometimes they throw the bread in the mud, or they push you while serving the coffee, wasting it on the ground. In any case, you'll receive nothing more, and you are risking punishment for wasting food. If you are very strong, you can save your bread rations for a few days and trade them to the local 'black market' run by inmates with 'ins'.

Morning Roll Call:

All the prisoners are lined up in rows of ten on a huge bare space in the center of camp called the Appellplatz. All the prisoners must be at the roll call, including the ones who died during the night. There, poor bodies are aligned in front of you or in front of your barrack. Under control of the SS guards and officers, the kapos led by the Blockalteste (in charge of your barracks) are counting the thousands of prisoners. A mistake during the counting and everything must start again, making the kapos nervous and dangerous. During the roll call, you must stand at attention, even if it is raining or snowing. It is forbidden to move or to talk during the roll call. Your poor striped uniform, made from an incredibly rough cloth, does not protect you against the cold weather. Every day, several prisoners catch cold during the roll call and die in the following days. Some others die during the roll call itself. They were too weak to stand at attention during hours. Their bodies, as well as the deaths of the night, will be sent to the crematories after the roll call.

Move Off of the Appellplatz:

You run to join your work team. You'll leave the camp under the heavy guard of SS and kapos, always barking at you. You'll reach the yard by walk of course. Maybe you'll have to march off to the beat of the music played by the camp orchestra. Just at the gate of the camp, there is a row of SS waiting for your work team. Beatings, insults, barking again and again...

The Work:

If you are lucky, you have received a good tool, a shovel or a pickax. Otherwise, you'll have to work with your hands... and this may mean death because you'll not be able to work as fast as the guards request. The day will be long: 12-14 hours of work. The work is very hard, and often useless: to move heavy sand bags from one point to another, to extract and carry heavy stones, to dig trenches or to bore a tunnel. When it is obviously pointless and there is also bad weather such as rainstorms or hail, Kapos will be extra angry because they have to stand out there as well. Maybe you are working in a factory but this does not improve your condition of life, unless you are in a labor camp in which case the SS only patrol the factories, they don't stay there. Germans had the prisoners work in factories for the good of the war; creating ammunition (SS stayed here) or clothing for the Nazi soldiers. This is extermination by work. Everything has to be done as fast as possible, and always with insults and beatings from the kapos and the SS. If a guard thinks you are not working fast enough, you'll be beat up, maybe until you die. Don't even think about stopping for a while or even slowing down. It will be considered as sabotage and this means death.

The Afternoon:

Slight break at noon, then the work starts again, always at inferno. The afternoon seems harder because you are hungry and you feel you are losing strength. A prisoner faints and the guards beat him up. If this poor wo/man can't rise, s/he'll be killed and you'll have to bring his/her poor body back to the camp, for the evening roll call.

Return to the Camp:

A last signaling whistle: your work team walks back to the camp, and the survivors are carrying bodies of the prisoners who died today. Once arrived in the camp, the SS are controlling your team. It's a new opportunity for them to beat, to kill.

Evening Roll Call:

All the prisoners are lined up by rows of ten. The kapos are counting the prisoners and the dead. If a prisoner tried to escape, all the prisoners will stand at attention at their roll-call place until he is retrieved. The evening roll call takes hours, sometimes even 10 hours, before it is over. The evening roll call is also the moment chosen by the SS for the punishments and the hangings. Sometimes, after a hanging, all the prisoners have to march in front of the gallows to look at the hanged prisoner, as a warning.

The Dinner:

The evening roll call is over. You run in order to receive your "dinner": a kind of "soup" (usually dishwater heated up), just like the one you received at noon. If you spared some bread, you may eat it now, with the soup. Once again, the distribution of food is an opportunity for the kapos to beat the prisoners. Some prisoners will figure out when each barracks eats dinner and get in line for several, obtaining extra rations. The kapos come and interrupt dinner, shouting "Blocksperre!'. Time to go to the barracks.

The Evening:

You return to your barrack. In no way you are allowed to leave the barrack during the night. The Blockalteste (head of the barracks) is waiting for you and your comrades. The Blockaltestes are Kapos and sometimes wear green triangles, which means "real criminals", because they got special treatment since they weren't as "bad" as the Jews. They have the right to decide who'll live and who'll die. Maybe he/she will let you rest until tomorrow morning. But, maybe she'll/he'll decide to have some "fun"--to order exercises like crawling, jumping, running until you faint. They check to make sure everyone is in bed and no one has serious diseases like typhus- which will have to be reported. Some Blockaltestes are kind and bond with their barracks, even be sad if their block is liquidated. But they are still hated by the other inmates for their privileges. Eventually, you are allowed to lie down on your straw-mattress or shelving unit. You are ten or fifteen per shelf. The barrack is not heated and there are holes in the wooden sides. If a prisoner wants to turn over in bed, all the others have to follow. You are exhausted. Sometimes, roll call is so long that you will only get two or three hours of sleep before the next day. Today, you managed to survive.

Another answer - very similar

No day was normal in a concentration camp but it would begin with the morning roll call or Appel at 4 am. Every inmate had to be accounted for and even those that died during the night were lined up for the count. No prisoner was allowed to move or speak during roll call. Violators were beaten or killed. When the count was complete, a cup of dark water and a single slice of bread served as breakfast, a trip to the latrine was allowed, and everyone was marched to their workplace. Lunch at noon was a repeat of the breakfast menu and rarely more than minutes were allowed to complete it. Work continued until 6 pm and then it was back to the Appelplatz for evening roll call, dinner and bed on a plank bunk with three or more other prisoners. Your dinner may have been a watery soup or a slice of balonga with your bread. Every day was the same. Seven days a week and 365 days a year, but few actually completed a full year of this routine.

Answer 2

it sucked better still... Jews not immediately selected for extermination faced a living death in the concen-tration camp. which also included non-Jewish inmates, many of them opponents of the Nazi regime. The SS, who ran the camps, took sadistic pleasure in humiliating and brutalizing their helpless Jewish victims. In 1946, V. Pfeffer. a Jewish Survivor of Majdanek concentration camp in Poland, described the world created by the SS and Nazi ideology. You get up at 3 am. You have to dress quickly, and make the "bed" so that it looks like a matchbox. For the slightest irregularity in bed-making the punishment was 25 lashes, after which it was impossible to lie or sit for a whole month. Everyone had to leave the barracks immediately. Outside it is still dark - or else the moon is shining. People are trembling because of lack of sleep and the cold. In order to warm up a bit, groups of ten to twenty people stand together, back to back so as to rub against each other. There was what was called a wash-room, where everyone in the camp was supposed to wash - there were only a few faucets - and we were 4,500 people in that section (no. 3). Of course there was neither soap nor towel or even a hand-kerchief, so that washing was theoretical rather than practical . . . In one day, a person there came a lowly person indeed. At 5 a.m. we used to get half a litre of black, bitter coffee. That was all we got for what was called "breakfast." At 6 a.m. a headcount (Appell in German). We all had to stand at attention, in fives, according to the barracks, of which there were 22 in each section. We stood there until the SS men had satisfied their game-playing instincts by "humorous" orders to take off and put on caps. Then they received their report, and counted us. After the headcount - work. We went in groups - some to build railway tracks or a road, some to the quarries to carry stones or coal, some to take out manure, or for potato-digging. latrine-cleaning, barracks or sewer repairs. All this took place inside the camp enclosure. During work the SS men beat up the prisoners mercilessly, inhumanly and for no reason. They were like wild beasts and, having found their victim, ordered him to present his backside, and beat him with a stick or a whip, usually until the stick broke. The victim screamed only after the first blows, afterwards he fell unconscious and the SS man then kicked at the ribs, the face, at the most sensitive parts of a man's body, and then, finally convinced that the victim was at the end of his strength, he ordered another Jew to pour one pail of water after the other over the beaten person until he woke and got up. A favorite sport of the SS men was to make a "boxing sack" out of a Jew. This was done in the following way: Two Jews were stood up, one being forced to hold the other by the collar, and an SS man trained giving him a knock-out. Of course, after the first blow, the poor victim was likely to fall, and this was prevented by the other Jew holding him up. After the fat, Hitlerite murderer had "trained" in this way for 15 minutes, and only after the poor victim was completely shattered, covered in blood, his teeth knocked out, his nose broken, his eyes hit, they released him and ordered a doctor to treat his wounds. That was their way of taking care and being generous. Another customary SS habit was to kick a Jew with a heavy boot. The Jew was forced to stand to attention, and all the while the SS man kicked him until he broke some bones. People who stood near enough to such a victim, often heard the breaking of the bones. The pain was so terrible that people, having undergone that treatment, died in agony. Apart from the SS men there were other expert hangmen. These were the so-called Capos. The name was an abbreviation for "barracks police." The Capos were German criminals who were also camp inmates. However, although they belonged to "us," they were privileged. They had a special, better barracks of their own, they had better food, better, almost normal clothes, they wore special red or green riding pants, high leather boots, and fulfilled the functions of camp guards. They were worse even than the SS men. One of them, older than the others and the worst murderer of them all, when he descended on a victim, would not revive him later with water but would choke him to death. Once, this murderer caught a boy of 13 (in the presence of his father) and hit his head so that the poor child died instantly. This "camp elder" later boasted in front of his peers, with a smile on his beast's face and with pride, that he man-aged to kill a Jew with one blow. In each section stood a gallows. For being late for the head count, or similar crimes, the "camp elder" hanged the offenders. Work was actually unproductive, and its purpose was exhaustion and torture. At 12 noon there was a break for a meal. Standing in line, we received half a litre of soup each. Usually it was cabbage soup, or some other watery liquid, with-out fats, tasteless. That was lunch. It was eaten - in all weather - under the open sky, never in the barracks. No spoons were allowed, though wooden spoons lay on each bunk - probably for show, for Red Cross committees. One had to drink the soup out of the bowl and lick it like a dog. From 1 p.m. till 6 p.m. there was work again. I must emphasize that if we were lucky we got a 12 o'clock meal. There were "days of punishment" - when lunch was given together with the evening meal, and it was cold and sour, so that our stomach was empty for a whole day. Afternoon work was the same: blows, and blows again. Until 6 p.m. At 6 there was the evening headcount. Again we were forced to stand at attention. Counting, receiving the report. Usually we were left standing at attention for an hour or two, while some prisoners were called up for "punishment parade"-they were those who in the Germans eyes had transgressed in some way during the day, or had not been punctilious in their performance. They were stripped naked publicly, laid out on specially con-structed benches, and whipped with 25 or 50 lashes. The brutal beating and the heart-rending cries - all this the prisoners had to watch and hear.

i got all this frm the site belowhttp://teacher.sduhsd.net/mmontgomery/world_history/totalitarianism_ww2/pfeifer.htm

Answer 3

Life in Concentration Camps

Upon arrival, all the inmates had to undergo a 'selection' procedure which identified their group. Healthy and strong men formed one group, while women, children and elderly were put into another. This horrendous practice torn the families apart, as the soldiers particularly aimed at separating the people of the same family. People would be then stripped off their valuables and an identification number would be tattooed on their forearms. This snatched away the identity of the victims and left them as nothing more than a mere inmate, at the mercy of German soldiers.

These groups would be then sent to their respective barracks, which hardly offered conditions worth living. They were made to sleep on the bunkers with straw mattresses which were often infested with lice and other rodents. The day for the inmates, would normally begin at the crack of dawn. They would be made to stand up for hours together, for their roll calls. When the roll call was finally over, they were served a breakfast of a slice of bread, ground-up acorns and water. The midday meal consisted of a soup of potato peels and beet, while the dinner was just another slice of bread. People resorted to eating grass and roots in order to survive.

The group of healthy and strong individuals was made to do hard, laborious job throughout the day. They were beaten inhumanly if they failed to perform their daily tasks or made an error. The treatment to the inmates varied depending upon the purpose for which the camp was set up. However, none of the concentration camps believed in giving humane treatment to the inmates, the torture was more or less similar in all the camps. In extermination camps like Auschwitz, people were killed in gas chambers or bullets were fired through their body. The dead would be given an unceremonious farewell by burying them in a large gravel or dumping them in trucks and transporting them to crematoria.

Concentration camps during the Holocaust, dehumanized the inmates in every possible way. If they escaped the gas chamber, there was always a bullet waiting to be drilled through their body. If not, death would still be lurking around the corners of the shady barracks in the form of some disease. Starvation and physical exertion would kill most of the people in the concentration camps, even before they were 'picked' for the mass extermination.

__________

Note that the only camps that carried out routine selections on arrival were Auschwitz and Majdanek as they were the only ones that combined the functions of a concentration camp and extermination camp.

Answer 4

-Get up

-Roll call

-Breakfast

-Woman do work ( Either Clothing, Sowing or Moving metals

-Meal time

-Bed

It was like that or woman was gased or shooted to death during the day

Answer 5

This included digging huge ditches for the Germans, shelling peas for the officers, stonework , mines, ETC

It often depended on what job specialization they told the Nazis they had. Some people had to work in the quarry, on farms, in the kitchen, or in factories.

Answer 6

At Auschwitz, as in other concentration camps, the order of the day was strictly established. Prisoners spent over ten hours per day working, and the rest of the time was taken up by long roll-call assemblies, lining up for food rations or a place in the latrines or the washroom, removing dirt and pests from clothing, and disinfection.

Answer 7

Prisoners were to wake up at 3:00 a.m. every morning. They were to get up quick and make their beds like a matchbox. if not done as asked they would be beatin

Answer 8

Figure it out dummies