17. Life meant contending with infestation
Daily life in many of the concentration camps was further degraded by the presence of rats, mice, cockroaches, lice, and other infestations – some of them seasonal – with which the prisoners were forced to contend. During the first year of operation of the labor camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau known as B-1, water was not available anywhere other than the kitchen. Without access to water, prisoners were unable to wash themselves or their clothing and the continuous damp and filthy conditions made the camp a playground for lice and other infestations. Latrines were in the open air, unscreened. Daily life for the slave laborers meant continuous exposure to contagious diseases.
For reasons perhaps only comprehensible to the SS, in 1943 they took steps to improve the sanitation facilities at the camp, even as the extermination camps were beginning to complete their deadly mission. Bathhouses and sanitation facilities were constructed at the camps. Crude toilet barracks were built, essentially giant outhouses with 58 “toilets”. Prisoners were granted privileges to use the facilities for washing themselves, but they were required to undress in the barracks in which they slept and walk to the showers naked, a daunting prospect during the Polish winter.