The Selection Process at Auschwitz Concentration Camp: A Case Study

One of the central aspects of the concentration camp experience at Auschwitz-Birkenau was the so-called “selection,” whereby German doctors determined if a prisoner would be killed in a gas chamber or permitted to live. Most scholarly accounts of selection focus on the initial selection that took place upon a victim’s arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau when children, women with children, and the “elderly” were sent to gas chambers, and others deemed fit to work were admitted to the concentration camp. This paper examines the lesser-known internal selection process at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by focusing on a single case study from autumn 1944. This selection involved a group of approximately 2,000 boys between the ages of 11-17 who had been permitted to enter the quarantine section of the camp but had not yet been officially entered as prisoners. The boys in this limbo state were subjected to periodic selections to determine their fitness for labor at Auschwitz or another concentration camp. The criterion for the selection at the center of this study was the physical attribute of height.

Relying on over sixty postwar testimonies, this study examines the selection process from a myriad of perspectives, including from those who passed the selection as well as those who escaped this selection for death with the help of other boys and prisoner functionaries. This case study illuminates the survival strategies that prisoners employed on their own behalf and on behalf of others. It underscores the role of social networks, gender, and prisoner privilege in survival at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Finally, this paper also grapples with the methodological issues posed by writing about events using almost exclusively postwar testimonies of an event that had a public afterlife in multiple survivor communities.