Lack of FoodThe daily food rations of an average prisoner were scant at best—bread made from sawdust, sausage made of mangy horses, and tea made from weeds were the norm for many prisoners. This lack of adequate nutrition led to, among other things, prisoners stealing food from the dead and—in more extreme cases of hunger—some inmates resorted to eating rotted food from the garbage, just to get some sort of nutrition.
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Starvation and Dark CellsNot everyone killed in the camps was granted the relative mercy of a semi-quick death; some were simply forced to stand in a room without food or water until they died. Sometimes used as a method of torture and sometimes used simply to send a message, Block 13 of Auschwitz became synonymous with death, as anyone who managed to survive starvation was invariably killed in another way.
But worse still were the so-called “dark cells” which contained no light and were so tightly sealed that the occupant had no choice but to slowly suffocate as they used what little oxygen they had. |
Lack of WaterThe Nazis performed many experiments on the inmates of various camps, one of which was to gauge the damage of drinking seawater. Dr. Hans Eppinger forced approximately 90 Gypsy inmates to drink nothing but seawater just to see what would happen. Severe dehydration was the answer. This dehydration was so severe that inmates reportedly licked the floors after they’d been mopped just to get a single drop of fresh water.
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