ILLNESSES

Psychic shock and brutal physical terror, hard and too long work with chronic malnutrition and the lack of hygiene were the reasons for most of the illnesses in the camp.

Almost every kind of infection spread through Auschwitz: Dysentery, malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, epidemic typhus, kachexia (decline of energy together with general weakness and anaemia), hunger oedema, scabies and noma abscesses, which hollowed out the jaw, perforated the cheeks like cancer and deeply gnawed the mouth. But also cuts and fractures mostly led to death..

When the prisoners did not die from their illness, they were selected for the gas chamber because they were not able to work any more. The selection either took place in the living huts or in the prisoner's hospital.