THE SELECTION (Page 2)
THE SELECTION (Page 2)The deportees often arrived in Auschwitz with their whole families. After they had left the trains, families and other personal relations were disconnected during the selections at the camp. Almost noone of the prisoners knew the meaning of selection until 1944
Camp physicians were determined as "experts" to pick out those newcomers who looked able to work. The selections were short, the arriving prisoners had to pass by the SS-doctors who decided in a few seconds whether one should be sent to the gas chamber or kept alive.
| In the one row, only those men and women who were determined for the camp marched on. In the other row, mostly loaded on trucks, were those unable to work - mothers with children, old, ill and weak people, sometimes people who didn't want to leave their relatives or only people who missed the other row in the chaos of hundreds of men. |  |
 | The camp selection was an organised method in order to get rid of the surplus of inmates, they were separated from the people able to work and finally killed. The first selection took place at the ramp. But those who survived that first step, were steadily endangered by further selections in the overcrowded blocks and the prisoner's hospital or the subcamps. |
The prisoners had to step forward one by one, the SS-doctors divided them into such inmates able and others unable to work. The camp commander participated within these selections, too. After this procedure, the SS registered the numbers of those inmates who were chosen for the gas chamber to avoid any escape. These selected persons were concentrated in an empty block, stayed there two or three days before being deported to the gas chambers.
The SS-doctors selected physically weak prisoners ("Muselmänner"), also prisoners with ulcers, scabies or abrasions on hands or feet. But also healthy people died. The pretences for selections were numerous.
