Auschwitz pool

Swimming Pool, Auschwitz Camp, June 1996. ‘Inmates from Auschwitz and surrounding camps enjoyed swimming and sunbathing beside the pool on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Although not as popular as sports like soccer, some competition was organized where inmates from different countries of origin, and different camps, raced in individual and relay events.’ Above photo and caption from www.air-photo.com

Marc Klein, a detainee, recalls the swimming pool at least twice in his recollections of the camp. In an article entitled 'Auschwitz 1 Stammlager' he wrote:

The working hours were modified on Sundays and holidays, when most of the kommandos were at leisure. Roll call was at around noon; evenings were devoted to rest and to a choice of cultural and sporting activities. Football, basketball, and water-polo matches (in an open-air pool built within the perimeter by detainees) attracted crowds of onlookers. It should be noted that only the very fit and well-fed, exempt from the harsh jobs, could indulge in these games which drew the liveliest applause from the masses of other detainees (De l'Université aux camps de concentration: Télmorgnages strasbourgeois, Paris, les Belles-lettres, 1947, p. 453).

In his booklet Observations et réflexions sur les camps de concentration nazis he further wrote:

Auschwitz 1 was made up of 28 blocks built of stone laid out in three parallel rows between which ran paved streets. A third street ran the length of the quadrangle and was planted with birch trees, the Birkenhaller intended as a walkway for the detainees, with benches; there also was an open air swimming pool (booklet of 32 pages printed in Caen, 1948, p. 10; its text is a reproduction of the author's article published in Etudes germaniques, n° 3, 1948, pp. 244-275).

Another wartime Jewish detainee like Marc Klein and R. Weil, confirmed, in a short testimony written in 1997 entitled "Une Piscine à Auschwitz," that he saw, in July 1944, dozens of his fellow detainees busy at work on the said pool which, he pointed out, had "a diving board and an access ladder". (Esrail, registration no. 173295, « Une piscine à Auschwitz », in Après Auschwitz [Bulletin de l'Amicale des déportés d'Auschwitz], n° 264/octobre 1997, p. 10).