Prisoners Hospital block 20 in Auschwitz I - memories
When in October 1941 I found myself in the camp’s hospital, block 20 was the contagious diseases block. Patients of the ward suffered from Durchfall (diarrhea), erysipelas, tuberculosis. There was no typhus yet. Block 20, as a closed one, was fenced with wires. Pots with food were carried from the kitchen to the wires, where we picked them and carried inside the building. In that period none of the wards had beds. The sick laid in the sickrooms on paper pallets with a bit of sawdust spread on the floor. Blankets, under which they laid, looked more like rags. The overcrowding was horrendous. (...) Every morning there were 60-70 deceased on average; they died during the night from natural causes. After dragging the bodies out to the corridor and writing the numbers down, I had to report the deceased to the Schreibstube (...)
Despite the fact that there was an orderlies’ room (Pflegestube in block 20, the room 7a, for most of the time I lived in patient room no.3. At the end of the room, from the side of block 9, under the window, there was my bed and a table, which was the Schreibstube of the block. As the recorder of block 20, I kept the file of the block, the Record Book of the patients of Block 20, as well as the daily count book of the block (Stärke) and made reports.
Most of the entries in the Record Book of Block 20 were written by me. In various periods the prisoners helped me with keeping the book up to date: Goryczko, rev. Szwajnoch and Długocki.
Stanisław Głowa (no. 4661)
The most difficult task was to defend the sick from orders, harassment and destruction caused by the physicians and non-commissioned officers of the SS (...)
The ambition of the inmates was to rescue as many patients as possible from the selections for the gas chamber and to cleverly outsmart the SS authorities. The selections for the gas chamber were held periodically, usually when the hospital, especially the contagious disease ward, was full. You could figure out that such an action was being prepared by remarks and behaviour of the physician or the non-commissioned officers of SS. If they appeared more often and asked more eagerly about the headcount, the needs of the hospital, one could expect nothing good.
In such situation weak patients who still could stand on their feet were discharged by us and told that they would be admitted again in the future. (...) The rest was instructed how to behave before the selection: not to complain to the SS physician about their condition, to demonstrate a lot of strong will, and even if the patient was very weak, to find some energy for a short while and remain in standing position, pretending to be in the best condition possible.
During the selection the inmate-physician had to present the patients to the SS physician and provide him with the diagnosis and the condition of the patient. Depending on their courage and cunning, the inmate-physicians outsmarted the SS in various manners. They either provided false information on the disease, concealing the inconvenient diagnosis, or that the disease lasted shorter, alternatively presented optimistic prognoses. Seriously endangered patients were kept hidden from the SS physician’s eyes. It was done in such a way that at the time of the selection someone from the staff carried them away from the patient rooms that had not yet been inspected to those rooms where the inspection had already taken place. Regrettably, not all of the patients could be saved, nor the selections could be put to an end.
Władysław Fejkiel (no. 5647)
The sick and those during the hospital treatment, even in the period of convalescence, were chosen during so-called selections to be murdered with phenol under the pretext of epidemic elimination, especially of typhus. (...)
The trudging procession of a few dozen people, wearing only shirts and clogs, covered, head included, with shreds of blankets, grimly drifted by between blocks 21 and 20. They entered block 20 through the side entrance. The grim corridor of the contagious diseases station was separated with a long curtain. There they waited for their turn in a row. Behind the curtain there was the treatment room, where they were brought in.
The small room no. 1 of block 20 was modestly equipped. There were two stools, a small table with flasks made of laboratory glass with pinkish liquid inside, 20 cm3 syringes, long puncture needles, rubber gloves and talc. The windows of the room were half-painted white. (...) The sentenced to death were called one by one. The long waiting line in the dim corridor decreased steadily, while in the baths the pile of disjointedly thrown dead bodies rose. (...)
All the prisoners murdered with phenol got a false death certificates with a false medical diagnosis.
Stanisław Kłodziński (no. 20019)