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This article describes a typical day in the Auschwitz–Birkenau concentration camp – the largest symbol of the Holocaust and Nazi genocidal crimes. The content is for educational and historical documentation purposes only, based on testimonies of surviving prisoners, SS documents, and post-war historical studies. It is not intended to gratuitously shock, glorify violence, or downplay crimes.
A Day In The Most Brutal Nazi Concentration Camp | Auschwitz–Birkenau
General Background
Auschwitz–Birkenau (Auschwitz II) was the largest and deadliest extermination camp in the Nazi concentration camp system. From 1940 until its liberation by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, approximately 1.1 million people were murdered there, over 90% of whom were Jews from across Europe. The camp complex included Auschwitz I (the main camp), Auschwitz II-Birkenau (the main extermination camp), and over 40 subcamps of forced labor.
A typical day at Auschwitz–Birkenau was a combination of brutal forced labor, starvation, disease, torture, and mass death.
4:00–5:00 AM: “Appell” – Roll Call
Prisoners were awakened by whistles or banging on doors.
They had to immediately line up outdoors, regardless of weather (winter as cold as -20°C or summer heat).
Roll call could last 2–4 hours. Anyone who could not stand straight, fell, or died during roll call was beaten or dragged out of line.
Many died during roll call from exhaustion or freezing.
5:00–6:00 AM: Labor Assignment And “Breakfast”
Prisoners received a small piece of bread (about 200–300 grams) and some thin soup (usually just water with a few rotten vegetables).
They were then divided into “Kommandos” (labor units) to go to work.
Work included: digging ditches, hauling stones, construction, working in weapons factories, or meaningless tasks designed solely for torture (such as moving rocks from one place to another).
Throughout The Day: Forced Labor And Torture
Labor lasted 10–12 hours per day, with almost no breaks.
SS guards and “Kapos” (prisoners given supervisory authority) regularly beat prisoners with whips, sticks, attack dogs, or guns.
Anyone weak, who fell, or did not work fast enough was beaten to death on the spot or sent to the “infirmary” (in reality, a place for medical experiments or waiting to die).
Women and children were usually assigned lighter work, but it was still extremely harsh (working in factories or sorting belongings of murdered victims).
Evening: Second Roll Call And “Dinner”
Approximately 6:00–8:00 PM: Second roll call, again lasting hours.
Prisoners received “dinner”: some thin soup and occasionally a small piece of potato.
They were then allowed to go to their “blocks” (cramped wooden barracks, no beds, only wooden shelves). Each block held hundreds of people packed together, full of lice, rats, and disease.
Daily Death – The Extermination Mechanism
On a typical day at Birkenau:
Hundreds died from starvation, exhaustion, and disease (dysentery, typhus, tuberculosis).
“Selektion” (selection) occurred regularly: SS doctors (such as Josef Mengele) selected prisoners to be sent to the gas chambers or kept for labor.
The gas chambers at Birkenau could kill thousands per day using Zyklon B.
Bodies were taken to crematoria that operated continuously, with black smoke rising into the sky day and night.
January 27, 1945: The Allies Enter
When the Red Army entered Auschwitz–Birkenau on January 27, 1945, they found:
Approximately 7,000 surviving prisoners (mostly the weakest, left behind because they could not be moved).
Thousands of corpses lying everywhere.
Warehouses filled with victims’ belongings (shoes, glasses, hair, suitcases…) still intact.
Crematoria still warm and bone ash not yet removed.
The Soviet Army described it as “hell on earth” that humanity had never witnessed before.
A day at Auschwitz–Birkenau was not just forced labor but a combination of physical and psychological torture and a systematic extermination mechanism. Hundreds of thousands died simply because they were deemed “unworthy of life” under Nazi racial ideology. The Allied liberation of the camp on January 27, 1945, revealed to the world the horrifying scale of the Holocaust – an unforgivable crime.
January 27 each year is designated by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Main sources:
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum – official documents and surviving prisoner testimonies.
“If This Is a Man” – Primo Levi (Auschwitz survivor).
“Survival in Auschwitz” and other survivor memoirs.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and Yad Vashem – records on Auschwitz.
Red Army reports upon liberating the camp (January 27, 1945).