Daily Life and Conditions in Auschwitz

Working day looked like this.

5:00 AM, wake up, make beds, dispense coffee.

6:00 AM, roll call, work groups assembled, leave for work.

12:00, lunch break.

12:30, return to work. 6:00 PM, end of work, return to camp.

9:00 PM, lights out.

Their clothing was sufficient to protect them from the harsh European winter.

In this photo, you can see they had long coats, boots,

earmuffs, and headwear.

Prisoners were worked hard, and for any acts of sabotage, they

automatically received the death penalty.

But they were not subjected to the constant shelling, rifle fire,

mines, grenades, bombing, or partisan attacks

that German soldiers at the front were suffering day and night.

According to the Auschwitz information brochure, prisoners received from

1,300 up to 1,700 calories per day, while most of the

German population was only getting 900 calories per day.

In this scene, we have accurately reproduced the daily

food rations for

prisoners in Auschwitz.

For breakfast, each prisoner received half a liter of

coffee, and for dinner, a

liter of vegetable soup. Supper consisted of 300 to

350 grams of bread, 30 grams of margarine, 20

grams of sausage, and herbal tea or coffee.

According to the German doctors in the camp, the food was sufficient but

not balanced. And towards the end of the war,

even though the camp had its

own vegetable gardens, food became very scarce, and some

prisoners did suffer badly from malnourishment.

However,

the following photos were taken by the Allies at the liberation

of

Dachau.

Neither the adult prisoners nor the children looked to be undernourished

or starved.

In Dachau, just behind the fake gas chamber called

Dusjbad, or showers, the tourist finds the real gas

chambers. These chambers were used to disinfect the clothing and

belongings of the prison inmates with the intention of keeping them

healthy. Obviously designed by German engineers,

these

chambers have metal doors with double locks, special pumps to take

in and expel any pesticides or hot steam

without injuring any personnel.

Nobody has ever claimed that these chambers

were used to gas people.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was built on marsh ground.

Large drainage ditches had to be dug around the camp.

With the groundwater level only around 30 centimeters below the surface,

underground burials were impossible because of the danger of

poisoning the drinking

water.

But the wet ground was the perfect breeding environment for

insects and

vermin.

Fleas and lice spread sickness like wildfire throughout the camp,

and by the end of the war, the Germans had registered the deaths of

74,000

prisoners from typhus. Around 800 meters

towards the back of the camp is a very large building the inmates

called the

sauna.

This building also housed dozens of gas chambers designed to save the

lives of the prisoners.

All prisoners arriving in Birkenau were first taken to the sauna building,

where they had their hair cut. They were showered and registered, checked by a

prison doctor, and given a prison uniform.

Sick prisoners were immediately sent to the camp hospital.

Their clothes were then put into one of the many fumigation units and cleansed.

These units, much like the ones in Dachau, were obviously carefully

designed by engineers and built to typical German perfection.

Most chambers had metal doors with multiple locks and piping to carry the

pesticides in and out of the chambers without danger to the

workers.

Not only clothing was cleansed here, but also bedding and mattresses.

Although most units in the sauna used hot air to fumigate clothing and

mattresses, some units in other buildings used Zyklon

B.

It is evident by these scenes that the Germans went to a lot of

trouble to ensure the health and safety of the prisoners working here.

Had the Germans not installed these massive fumigation units, the death

toll in the camp could have gone into the hundreds of thousands.

As in Dachau, these chambers were never used to harm humans,

but to save lives.

Even before World War I, Zyklon B was used widely in

the United States and Europe as a fumigant and pesticide.

Health authorities throughout the world used large amounts of it to rid

ships and buildings of vermin such as rats, fleas, and

lice.

It is a very dangerous chemical and must be handled very carefully.

The smallest spark could set off a fire or even a violent

explosion.

Where the gas comes into contact with a metal or

concrete surface, it tends to liquefy and permanently blend with the

surface, giving it the typical dark blue coloring

known as

Prussian blue.

After fumigation, which can take up to twenty-four hours in

a room heated up

to twenty-six degrees, the rooms must be aired for a minimum of

ten hours.

Special clothing such as an air-breathing unit, special suits, and

gloves are necessary to stop poisoning through the skin.

Gas masks may only be used for ten minutes.

Smoking is forbidden.

This protective clothing was not available in Auschwitz, so if

thousands of dead bodies lay in gas-filled rooms, it was

impossible to get them out again.

For this video, we interviewed a number of people who had

spent the war

years in one or more of the camps. For example, Tatiana T.,

brought as a teenager to Auschwitz from the Ukraine.

In nineteen forty-five, with the Russian army advancing across

Poland,

Tatiana left Auschwitz with the German guards for Bergen-Belsen in Germany.

Today, Tatiana still lives in the SS barracks in

the Auschwitz Stammlager.

And Martin, taken as a Polish prisoner of war to

Dachau.

Martin, who still visits the camp every day,

took us on a tour of

Dachau and showed us photos of his liberation in nineteen forty-five

by the Americans.

Neither Tatiana nor Martin remember any gas chambers in Auschwitz or

Dachau.

The testimony you are going to hear is that of Mr.

Yehoshua Rosenblum,

who claims to have been working in the Auschwitz gas chambers as a member of a

Sonderkommando.

Mr. Rosenblum's testimony is accepted by officialdom

as being a typical and true account of the horrors of the

alleged gas chambers

in Auschwitz.

We ask you to listen very carefully to this testimony because we will then show

you

the real and the fake gas chambers in Auschwitz and Dachau,

and you may then decide for yourself if Mr.

Rosenblum's testimony fits the facts.

The

people went in laughing and asking where they

were,

and we had to remain silent and

not tell them what was about to happen to them.

And after the last person had gone in,

they shut the door from the outside.

Then immediately,

two SS men

ran up

and climbed up on ch-