Which prisoners were not tattooed in auschwitz

Slaves and prisoners of war were often branded by their owners on the forehead to prevent them from escaping. Until today, cattle owners brand their cattle as a mark of ownership. In Auschwitz, the SS camp leaders encountered a problem in late The rampant death rate of inmates was making it difficult to identify corpses once the clothing showing their registration number has been quickly removed for re-use. The tattoo became a way to assist the murderers in identifying the victims.

Some Jews remained untattooed at the request of German industrialists. Jewish women entering Auschwitz at the end of March were the first to be tattooed with four-digit numbers.

Initially, an impractical metal stamp was used, then a single needle and finally a double needle device.

The procedure lasted around 30 seconds. Lou Sokolov, the chief Auschwitz tattooist emblazoned more than , inmates, which was almost half of the camp population tattooed. His Arbeitskommando work detail , comprised men and women. Sokolov survived Auschwitz and migrated to Australia in Most survivors who were branded by the Nazis like cattle do not see it as a badge of shame; rather, they feel that it demonstrates the inhumanity of the Nazi perpetrators.

No document has yet been retrieved that sheds light on the introduction of this physical emblem, displaying in dark blue or black colours the camp serial number of the inmate. The question as to why tattoos were never imposed on prisoners of other concentration camps is unanswered.

The tattoo had three distinct functions: to mark and humiliate prisoners, to prevent their escape and to expedite the identification of corpses already stripped of their uniforms, particularly following mass killings or deaths.

Lotte arrived in Auschwitz March 28, on one of the first transports from Slovakia. After 34 months of incarceration, she was transferred to Gross-Rosen, then Flossenburg concentration camps, and finally liberated in Theresienstadt on May 8, My oldest sister, Lily, she got Erika, my second sister, , and I was the third one, He wasn't allowed to speak because the SS man was behind him with his submachine gun and so he only whispered Susan was registered in Auschwitz on August 10, after arriving on a transport from Hungary.

Then they gave us some clothes to put on and sent us to a place where there was a long table, with girls sitting behind the table and they were tattooing numbers on your arm. They had sharpened pieces of wood which they dipped into liquid and pierced my skin with lots of tiny holes to make my number My mother was tattooed after me with the next number My husband came to Auschwitz six months later and did not get a tattoo.

There were quite a few 'artists' all tattooing the large amounts of people at the same time. Not all of the tattoos looked the same. Margaret was one of the first 5, deportees from Slovakia, arriving in Auschwitz on May 1, Polish prisoners transferred to Birkenau from Auschwitz I in March were tattooed in the same way, as well as Jews arriving in the first transports. From the spring of the camp authorities ordered that incoming prisoners be tattooed on the left forearm.

Jewish men arriving in new transports were marked in this way, together with Jewish women already incarcerated in the camp.