Staerkebuch - memories

Schreibstube served to keep prisoners’ records and to prepare various reports for the superior authorities, which had been later sent to (RSHA). For instance at the beginning the number of prisoners (Lagerstärke) was written down 3 times a day, later, only once a day. (…)

             My daily occupation was, among other things, to write down the figures on a board located in the Schreibstube. The figures concerned the amount of currently residing prisoners including their category (nationality, type of crime). The number of women was marked separately. (…)

            Due to the fact that I was the author of the reports (Rapportschreiber) (from 1944) I had quite a lot of possibilities to move around the camp and its premises. The job was very stressful, we had to be vigilant all the time in order to avoid getting into somebody's black books. The assembly arrangement required the most difficult. In a situation when one of the block clerks made a mistake when specifying the number of prisoners in his block, everyone had to bear the consequences – the assembly dragged on.

Erwin Olszówka (no. 1141)