THE PRISONERS' HOSPITAL
In the specific camp language, the prisoners' hospital was called "Revier". This block was just the same as any other residential hut: beds full of lice, straw mattresses soaked with human excrements. The patients were unable to turn around because the beds were overcrowded. People with different illnesses were not separated. Prisoners who suffered from dysentery for example, lay in the upper parts of the plank-beds, their excrements running down on the patients below. Often, the sick persons lay together with dying and dead people. There was no medical treatment nor medicaments available. For a long time, imprisoned physicians were not allowed to work in the revier. No washing-room, water, soap nor towels existed. The food was the same for ill and healthy inmates.
The first selection in the camp hospital took place on July 28, 1941. The prisoners were subjected to a "Sonderbehandlung" (SB, "Special Treatment"). "SB" stood for the murder in the gas chambers. Selections took place, whenever the Revier was too full of men, twice a month the order came to put together transport lists for a "special treatment". The SS decided how many prisoners should be gassed, the responsible inmates ("Capos") of the Revier had to deliver the number of people. They looked for people who seemed to be too weak to go on living, wrote down their numbers and threw them out of the block the next morning in order not to let anybody disappear, the doomed received second tatoo under the inmates number: The letter "L", possibly meaning "Leiche", the German word for corpse - but this is not scientifically proved.
