When the freight-car doors opened on the platform at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the disembarking passengers were greeted by barking dogs and guards who shouted at them to leave their luggage and parcels at the ramp. Exhausted, disoriented, and desperately hungry, the prisoners were organized into lines and marched toward the selection point. In the haste and confusion, it was nearly impossible to find or hold on to family members or friends.
A typical transport consisted of 2,000 people. In regimented columns, they marched by an SS doctor who selected who would live and who would die. With a casual point of a finger, he directed the young, the frail, and the old, as well as women with children, toward the gas chambers.
After this selection procedure, between 100 and 200 prisoners typically remained to be processed. They were brought to a building known as the “sauna,” where they were forced to forfeit their clothes and any other possessions. Naked and humiliated, they were showered and their heads and bodies were shaved by camp barbers, themselves prisoners. Immaculately dressed clerks took careful records as an identification number was then tattooed on each prisoner’s left forearm. After this process, the inmates received striped camp uniforms and wooden shoes, or else a miscellaneous garment and old shoes which had been taken from other prisoners. Once outside the building they were lined up at attention, often standing for hours before being assigned to barracks.
