Admission and Treatment in the Prisoner Infirmary
“In every hospital an effort is made to make sick people well again. The hospital of the IG camp Monowitz had merely the task of repairing tools.”[1]
The outpatient clinic of the prisoner infirmary (HKB; Häftlingskrankenbau), established in the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp in 1942, was in operation in the evening, after work ended. After evening roll call, inmates who were sick or injured could join the long line of those waiting to be admitted. The prisoners stood outdoors in any wind and weather—there was no waiting room. Anyone who was declared an Arztvormelder (a patient presenting a medical concern) by the clinic’s male nurses in the evening had to show up again the next morning, right after reveille, to be definitively accepted or rejected after superficial examination by a doctor. Rejection meant “block rest,” that is, the prisoners were sent back to their barracks and were not required to march out to work that day. Rest was not guaranteed them, however; often they were called upon to do work inside the camp.
Admission to the HKB meant a shower, a shave, and assignment to the appropriate ward of the infirmary. Intake was done with the prisoner barefooted and naked, and his bowl and spoon, like all other possessions, had to be handed over. The orderlies could earn extra income by selling these items. After admission, the patients received a shirt and trousers from the HKB’s stocks. The guidelines for admission to the HKB were determined jointly by the SS and I.G. Farben; generally, only those “whose recovery does not take more than 2 weeks”[2] were supposed to be admitted to the hospital. Most patients received only outpatient treatment within the scope of the extremely limited potential.
Infirmary admission and the granting of a few days of rest was a difficult proposition by itself. Once prisoners overcame these obstacles, the hospital stay was not devoid of risk: For one thing, the SS conducted selections there when the percentage of patients was too high. For another, prisoners with diarrhea, for example, might be admitted, but not many survived the treatment, which consisted of one or two days of fasting.
The prisoner physician Dr. Stefan Budziaszek (Buthner) frequently performed abdominal surgery and hernia repairs, after he had helped set up and equip an operating room. Budziaszek also conducted “show operations” in front of SS doctors.
Skin diseases and ulcerous inflammations usually were treated with simple ointments, which often had no effect. Highly contagious diseases usually led to selection and murder of those afflicted. The diseases endemic to the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp resulted from malnutrition, leading for example to edema and diarrhea, and from impaired resistance and inadequate clothing, leading to coughs and sneezes of all kinds and infectious diseases like diphtheria, typhus, or scarlet fever. Some diseases required surgical treatment. Also common were injuries due to inadequate protective gear at the construction site, exhaustion, or corporal punishment. In addition, the prisoner physician Dr. Robert Waitz observed various diseases appearing in epidemic form, depending on the season: In summer, many suffered from diarrhea
Often it was the orderlies, the male nurses, who were responsible for treatment; the senior physician made his morning rounds, assisted by one or two orderlies. The patients had to make their way to him; he did not come to the bed. In the evening, there was another brief check-up round. In between, the meal, the camp soup, was distributed in three shifts. Once a patient was halfway restored, he was released, often prematurely, and sent back to work in his still-weakened state. Generally he was put in a new block, and the first thing he had to do was scrimp and save his rations again to buy another spoon.
(SP; transl. KL)