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Chapter25 Clothing and laundry problems Underwear was a catastrophe. As I already mentioned at the beginning, many inmates did not even have knickers because there were none in stock. We often wore undershirts and other underthings for weeks on end without being able to change them even once. The more inmates that were delivered, the harder it was to wash laundry. It was strictly forbidden to wash a piece of laundry, and yet it did happen secretly among those who did not want to go to ruin in filth. However, it could only be done in the summer; for then the laundry dried overnight. In the winter, however, this was out of the question. Woe were we if a piece of laundry, which someone had hung up to dry somewhere in a hidden corner, was found! We had to wear our striped inmates' garments month after month without their ever being cleaned. They were often covered in filth and slime from the outside labor, smelling like sweat and unwashed bodies. In the summer our garments were plain blue, thin, and usually faded. Often enough we stood there at the crack of dawn in the morning at the roll-call count in this insufficient clothing, with our teeth chattering. In the summer, from April to October, there was no footwear of any kind, neither stockings nor shoes. I already mentioned how the inmates suffered from this and how many sicknesses arose from it. The stockings we received in winter often had no ascertainable color anymore. But we were happy to have at least something warm on our feet. At times there was even a good, respectable pair of stockings among them. My prostitutes fought and beat each other up over the best pair. There were also, however, reasonable and content women among them who had already gotten over their dear vanity and preferred warmth to beauty. The distribution of the so rarely disbursed clean undergarments was a difficult and thankless task for me as block elder. After I had divided the laundry as much as I was able into three sizes, large, medium, and small, I passed them out to each row in whatever order they lay in. But my unruly prostitutes simply threw those items that did not suit them back again, and 171 The Blessed Abyss some even lobbed them at my head. Then the curses began. These curses were infectious, and though I so wanted to be just to everyone, I could not, much as I would have liked. Sometimes I had to call an overseer to help me with the distribution of the laundry in order to be able to accomplish my task amid all this wildness. It often happened that clean underthings, which we had had to leave tied in a bundle overnight at the foot of the cot for inspection by the SS guards, were stolen. In their place there lay on the next morning dirty, completely filthy undergarments. What was there to do but to put on, with great repulsion and disgust, this underwear of another, for there was often a clothing and underwear inspection with pursuant punishment if no undershirt or knickers could be found on one's body. Yes, my hair often stood on end over so much meanness and baseness of the prisoners to one another. It went similarlywith the distribution of stockings in thewinter. To pick up undergarments and stockings and aprons for four hundred people from the laundry room, and then afterward to deliver the dirty laundry back to the washing room in exactly the same quantity in bundles of twenty or thirty, was no small task. It caused me much irritation. But the distribution of stockings of the most various colors—black, gray, brown, cotton, and wool—was most particularly agitating. I tried to grant particular wishes. But I couldn't give everyone what they wanted, because there just weren't enough to go around, and so there were beatings and curses, even fits of rage and long faces and accusations against the block elder. I will gladly admit that some inmates had it badly. Some ofthe stockings were so short that they didn't even reach to the knee. And there were no garters to be had. Stolen strings had to help out here. Some had one long and one short stocking; others one cotton and one woolen one. Although I myself do not like to wear woolen stockings, since they easily cause itching, I took a...

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