Part of the extermination apparatus, the camp hospitals served as camouflage for the destruction of prisoners who were formally registered there as patients; the records kept in the hospital offices listed falsified causes of death. Selection began in the hospitals in mid-1941, and SS physicians passed death sentences on sick prisoners who were killed by injections of phenol to the heart. From 1942, sick prisoners were also sent to the gas chambers.
As the labor requirements of the German economy increased, the camp authorities began in mid-1942 to attempt to lower the death rate, without doing anything to provide significantly improved health care. During this period, the only prisoners who received treatment in the hospital were those with the potential to return quickly to work. For the seriously ill, the hospital remained a place of extermination.
Language: Polish, German
Lecturer: Małgorzata Hałat, Halina Jastrzębska
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