The Quarantine Huts

Theoretically, the Quarantine Huts were intended to prevent the spread of diseases in the camp. Their actual role was to break any inner resistance on the part of newly arriving prisoners. Nobody told them what they were allowed to do and what was forbidden, there was no written camp order. Whoever was unable or unwilling to accept these new life conditions, was immediately thrashed or slayed. Primitive equipments, the overcrowded huts, mud and dirt all over, no possibility for personal hygiene and the everlasting terror influenced the souls of the inmates very destructively, especially those who spent some time in the Quarantine Huts close to the mass-extermination plants. Concerning food, the new prisoners were also treated worse, they received less nutrition than "older" camp inmates.

The Quarantine Huts were centers of systematic pauperization and misery, where the SS wanted to exhaust the people. Those areas were extermination camps within the KZ.

The few prisoners who were released from the camp, also had to pass the Quarantine Huts. If the SS-doctors did not consider the condition of these people as good enough, they had to stay longer in the Quarantine. If they finally did not recover, they finally had to stay in the camp. Many of them never saw their release.