The CODOH Revisionist Forum

It amazes me how most casual observers of the holocaust think that all camp inmates in every camp throughout the system was tattooed. In fact as we well know tattooing was rather strangely only carried out in Auschwitz and as far as I know not for the duration of the holocaust period.

But I would like to know about the numbering sequences and in particular the time and extent of the tattooing. Can anyone give me or point me in the right direction of a table that shows what numbers or batches were used and what dates for those numbers?

Historians claim to know all kinds of things about the origins of tattoos at Auschwitz and how the system worked. If they're telling the truth, the system was positively labyrinthine because of all the rules and exceptions. There is no consistency over time, style, device, ethnicity, numbering, etc. Nonetheless, here is my attempt to break it down.

Selection:

• "Only those prisoners selected for work were issued serial numbers". (according to USHMM)
  • This ignores that many sick prisoners transferred to Auschwitz for treatment were registered and tattooed. Many of these were specifically designated as "unfit for work or labor deployment".
  • Also many young children and infants were registered, some tattooed.
• Those prisoners who on arrival were (supposedly) selected to be gassed were not registered.
• Prisoners who were held for transit to other camps were neither registered nor killed.
• Prisoners "who were sent to the quarantine" were neither registered nor killed. (Yad Vashem)

Development of tattoos over time:

• Initially inmates had to wear clothing marked with their serial number, which was common in other camps like Mauthausen.
• Then numbers were written on the chests of patients in the infirmary so that they could be identified in death even after their clothing was removed.
  • This implies a general lack of discipline, with camp authorities being unable to prevent clothing from being stripped from the dead.
• The first tattoos were made using "a special metal stamp, holding interchangeable numbers". These tattoos should appear clean and rectangular.
  • It's unclear if this actually existed. One supposed "Auschwitz tattoo kit" was later determined to date to 1949.
• Most tattoos were made with ordinary needles. These should appear hand-drawn.

Tattoo dye:

• Sometimes black.
• Sometimes blue (Primo Levi, David Hoffman).

Tattoo location:

• Originally the left upper chest.
• Later the outside of the left forearm.
• For some who arrived in 1943, the inside of the left forearm.
• A 1944 NYT story claimed a prisoner was tattooed on his "left leg" and women prisoners "on their breasts", but this was probably just propaganda or a bad mistranslation. (Found by Denierbud)
• The Auschwitz Museum adds that "It is not uncommon for a prisoner to have the tattoo placed in a different location." Newborn infants were "given a numerical designation on their thigh."

Time and ethnicity:

• Beginning in 1941, the first tattoos were given to Soviet POWs.
• Beginning in spring 1942, Jewish arrivals were systematically tattooed, as were "very ill prisoners, predominantly Poles" transferred from Auschwitz I.
• "By the end of 1942 and the start of 1943, all newly arrived prisoners, regardless of their nationality or political affiliations, received tattoos." (Auschwitz Museum)
  • This excluded "Germans [as well as] reeducation and police prisoners" of various ethnicities, although even these had exceptions.
  • In 1944, Poles from the Warsaw Uprising were not tattooed.
  • In 1944, Jewish women from Hungary were not registered or tattooed, just held and sent to factories.
  • Jewish women from ghettoes were not tattooed.

Number series:

1. First series from May 1940 to January 1945, for male prisoners, numbering from 1 to 202,499. Some Jewish prisoners "had a triangle tattooed before or under their serial number".
   • This being the largest series, it's the one most people are familiar with.
   • According to Primo Levi, "the numbers told everything: the period of entry into the camp, the convoy of which one formed a part, and consequently the nationality." He goes on to say that there were "few left" from certain ranges of serial numbers, but since Levi was held at the subcamp Monowitz (and was a latecomer besides) he would have no awareness of the majority of registrees anyway. He was evidently only aware of this number series.
2. Second series from October 1941 to 1944, for Soviet POWs, numbering from 1 to ~12,000. Some of these "had the letters AU tattooed next to their number." Alternatively, the Auschwitz Museum says these were "issued with a letter 'R'".
3. Third series from March 1942 to May 1944, for female prisoners, numbering from 1 to ~90,000.
4. Fourth series in February 1943 for male Gypsies, beginning with the letter Z, numbering from 1 to 10,094.
5. Fifth series for female Gypsies, beginning with the letter Z, numbering from 1 to 10,888.
6. Sixth series in May 1944 for Hungarian Jews, beginning with the letter A, numbering from 1 to 20,000.
7. Seventh series immediately following that, beginning with the letter B, numbering from 1 to ~15,000.
8. Eighth series for the female Hungarian Jews, beginning with the letter A, numbering from 1 to 30,000.
9. Presumably a ninth series for females with the letter B, but few in number.
10. There is also a series for reeducation prisoners, beginning with the letter E (or EH), numbering from 1 to 9,339. Generally not tattooed.
11. And another reeducation series for female prisoners, beginning with the letter E, numbering from 1 to ~2,000. Not tattooed.

USHMM concludes by saying that "more than 400,000 prisoner serial numbers" were assigned. [EDIT: There is also a table summarizing roughly the same data in less space at the bottom of this page.]

Other inconsistencies in the tattoo process include the size of the tattoo, how long after arrival it was done (from same day to weeks later), what location in the camp it was done in (11+ locations), who the tattooists were (German officials, inmate medical staff, registration staff, random inmates who had a skill for it, or even the inmate himself), and whether or not they were optional.

Sources:
USHMM's article on this topic which substantially borrows from Auschwitz 1940–1945: Central Issues in the History of the Camp, vol. 2.
The Auschwitz Museum's podcast transcript on this topic.
Primo Levi's If This is a Man.
Plus various revisionist musings.
Both Carlo Mattogno's The Politics of Slave Labor and Healthcare in Auschwitz, which I scarcely used here, also contain valuable info concerning registration numbers.

I suppose with enough effort and source material you could drill down which specific ranges were assigned to which areas of origin, and that sort of thing. I asked Grok 4 expert to attempt this, and the tables it output seem good and useable, though incomplete. There could be errors in the table for the female series because it's not strictly sequential. Scroll halfway down the page for the tables.
https://x.com/i/grok/share/IKgisBTGpEc1UNCXpUleoRwY7

Thanks for your work and efforst in this matter Wetzelrad. The matter of Auschwitz tattooes has always intrigued me for a number of reasons including the fact that they were used only there and also that no hard evidence exists of the machinery and process of it all.

In this case I was prompted by another of these 'he perished at Auschwitz' face book stories where they talked of a young man and said he had the number 25504. For some reason I thought all numbers were 6 digits and hence the question here.

I sometimes see those posts. Someone realized that they could take every digitized photo set of an Auschwitz prisoner and spin stories out of them for social media likes, so that's what they do. Of course these stories are always copied from other social media accounts, so they could be several times removed from actual fact, but I assume they have some legitimate basis in fact since the Germans did put the inmates' serial numbers in the photos.

In the case of Kopel Polter, that number (25504) is in the photo and seems about right for that date. However, the USHMM claims he died on March 26, the GFH claims he died on March 18, and one entry on Yad Vashem claims he died on March 28. A minor difference but notable. They couldn't arrive at three different dates without being careless about history.

Naturally there is no evidence he was murdered or mistreated. You could probably learn what happened to him from the medical records, if they were freely available.

Amusingly, the Auschwitz Museum accounts on Twitter, X, and Facebook assigned that same number to a different inmate, even though the attached photo clearly shows his actual number was 22504. An obvious typo, copied and pasted multiple times. No one in the replies had the level of awareness necessary to point out this error. This tells you about how seriously these stories should be taken.