Hygiene of Prisoners

Hygiene problems that made killing easier

The prisoners weren't just killed by gas chambers or firing squads, but disease and bugs as well. Camps such as Auschwitz were breeding grounds for bugs like lice, fleas, bedbugs, and ticks. Some inmates were lucky enough to have their heads shaved but most just had to shake out their hair to find lice falling out by the dozens. Since the inmates in Auschwitz shared sleeping quarters with nearly 700 people, the bugs spread and multiplied.

Disease was common in the camps because of the lack of clean water and the infestation of rats and mosquitoes . Diseases like typhus and tuberculosis. Typhus was a disease characterized by purple rashes, headaches, and fever. Typhus was transmitted through rats, lice, and ticks. Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease that spread easily in the sleeping quarters. It creates growths in your lungs similar to cancer.

Shortages of everything

The death camps were similar to the ghettos in the sense that the Nazis wanted to starve and dehydrate the inmates. For most camps there was always a shortage of clean water. As well as a shortage of water, there was as shortage of food. Working prisoners would receive about 1,300 calories if they had easy jobs, and 1,700 if they had harder jobs. A typical female needs about 2000 calories a day and a male needs about 2,500. Some prisoners wouldn't receive food at all. But there was always people smuggling food risking there lives to the Nazis finding out or to starve in the camps.