Why would they have a hospital in a death camp?

Question

In Elie Wiesel’s book Night, the author at one point says he was in the hospital at Auschwitz.

Answer 1

Because it was a forced labor camp and not a death camp

Answer 2

Because Auschwitz had two entirely different fuctions - death camp and labour camp.

There was a huge industrial complex attached which required slave labour. Especially later in the war when labour was in short supply, a hospital was there to get the slaves back on their feet and working again. Of course, if you were going to be sick for any length of time, there were always the gas chambers waiting.

The death camp was in another part of the complex. When trains arrived, the people were paraded in front of doctors and the ones who looked like they could work went to be slave labourers. Everyone else, including the women with children, were gassed.

Answer 3

The hospitals were present to keep the prisoners able to work as long as possible. Most of the German concentration camps were work camps, abhorrent conditions and the population would get ill. If the powers that be deemed the person could get well and work some more, then they would get minimal medical treatment, rest, and extra food. Did you know that the population also ran "black markets", that there was favortism by the camp command, and it was really quite intricate. At least Buchenwald (sp?) which is acutally Auschwitz.
I hope this helps. M

Answer 4

Good question. I guess the Nazi felt quilty about not taking care of the prisoners probably in the camps. But really there were no medicines in the hosptials if there was the medicines were in short supply. Often time prisoners to sick to work were sent to the hospitals in hopes they would recuperate. Only problem was they weren't given much time to recuperate since the camp doctors would come into those same hosptials to select prisoners to die in the gas chambers. It might be strange for the Nazi to have hospitals in the camps but the Nazi didn't really want to tell the prisoners, through all of them knew, that they were sent there to be work to death.

Answer 5

there were many terrible reasons.

The first is that the camps were acknowledged as POW camps, and they needed the facilities to pose as a regular prison.

Some of the prisoners were important for them on many levels, so they tried to keep them alive,

And, it gave them a space to make every kind of medical experiment they could think of using the prisoners as subjects.

Also, the Nazi Staff needed those instalations.

The Nazis did believe that they could fool the rest of the world forever, and continue their sistematic assassination without being caught. Worse than that, they believed that this was the right thing to do for mankind.

Answer 6

Nazi doctors would do HORRIBLE experiments on the prisoners there. You name it, they probably did it. Castration, injection of dangerous fluids, etc.

If someone was really weak, they'd take them there to the "hospital" and just let the person die without any medical care.

Answer 7

the hospital was there to revive prisoners that blacked out during an interrogation, and to tend to breaking down POW that are still needed for interrogation and hold whats considered as vital info!

Answer 8

They were learning medicine on live subjects, the prisoners. They didn't treat anything, just sadistically did horrific things to people to see what not to do when treating the german people. Sad but true