ABSTRACT
Much has been said of the impact on the prisoner's mind on the day of arrival, when he passed through the Effektenkammer on his way to the disinfection room and the quarantine Block. The SS would sit behind a long row of tables, with prisoners serving as their assistants. At the first table the incoming prisoner would surrender his identity cards; then at the next his money; then his ring, watch, medals, and other valuables; then the rest of the contents of his pockets, including letters and photos; then the contents of his bags; then his clothes and his shoes. Clothing included all bandages; if a man was wearing a hernia bandage he might also be told to jump. 1 He had now reached the end of the line, naked and bereft of everything. Next came the Scherraum. The survivor Juan de Diego attests to the shock felt by the incoming prisoner as the Friseur took hold of his penis and shaved his testicles with a scalpel which might well be notched, while the Green Kapos would make fun of any prisoner wi th a small organ. 2 Then the showers, with the Kapos as well as the SS on hand to administer the first breaking-in. The shower treatment, said another survivor, was to reduce the prisoners to the level of a flock of frightened sheep. 3 The water would alternate from scalding to freezing, and if a prisoner were to break away the Kapos would beat him on the skull with their cudgels. After this he would enter the quarantine Block, where there were no bunks but only palliasses on the ground. These were filled with wood cuttings which were rarely changed, so that the cuttings were reduced to dust. Rations in the quarantine Block were reduced by half, in accordance with three principles: that those who do not work have less need to eat; that it helped to instil despair; and that the reduction helped to accelerate death's progress among the dying. The quarantine period generally lasted a week to ten days. The prisoner would then enter his prescribed Block. Every Block was divided into two sections, Stube A to the left on entering and Stube B to the right. Between the two Stuben were the living quarters of the three privileged Prominenten (the Blockaltester, the Blockschreiber, and the Blockfriseur), while on each side of them was the washroom of the respective Stube. Accommodation for the rest consisted of wooden cots on three and sometimes four levels, with less than half a metre between levels. The lower bunks were infected with the dirt and dust from the palliasses above, which fell into the mouth and eyes of those below. Those above had to clamber up over the others, and at reveille, when the prisoners lingered in sleep, those at the top were more likely to receive the blows of the Kapos than those at the bottom. Those at the top had the advantage that their bunks were inspected less thoroughly than those below, but they also suffered the disadvantage that in winter the cracks in the wood allowed the melting snow to enter from the roof, and the blanket was always damp. A prisoner dying in an upper bunk might well soil the bunks below; at such times it was not uncommon for the others to bang his head against the bedpost until he succumbed. 4
