Tattooing: Jozef Paczynski

"They checked us all, brought us to a lower level, and there everybody got a file: age, last and first name, nationality, where from, where and how many golden teeth one had, and they also asked, 'what kind of diseases does your family suffer from?' Why did they want to know all that?
"It was clear. When one died, got shot, killed, they would first look into the mouth and check for the gold teeth. And, when the information about his death was sent to his family, they would give thereason for death as the same as his father’s. I received a card – I did not know what it was – but on it was written 121. That was my camp number. Shall I show it?
"Because, at the very beginning, they did not tattoo the numbers. One carried it in his cloth. But, during the Spring of ‘43 when there was such a great mortality, everybody got a tattoo. I have here a number everybody is interested in, 121.

"Now, really very shortly, I had an incident. I got sick. I had typhoid. I was really very sick, could not walk, had a temperature of 40 C. They accepted me into the hospital. Of course, prisoners worked there; they washed me in slightly cold water and they wrote on my chest with a chemical pen. That was in Autumn 1942 – number 121. There were no tattoos then; I said, “don’t write this down on me“ and he said 'I have to, I have to.' And I know that when one died, in order to know who died – number, number."

--From an interview with Jozef Paczynski, barber at Auschwitz