These toilets are in the brick barracks in Auschwitz I. As the camp expanded and Auschwitz II at Birkenau was built, no such toilets existed. There were, rather concrete slabs with many holes in them (see http://www.remember.org/camps/birkenau/bir-latrines-02.html for photo).

Photo: Alan Jacobs

There was no privacy, very little water for washing and little or no opportunity for personal cleanliness in Auschwitz. Prisoners were often afflicted starvation syndrome, typhus, and other diarrhea-producing illnesses. The toilets in each barrack were totally inadequate and prisoners were often beaten while using them. The toilets depicted here were a luxury, having running water. In Birkenau latrines were cleaned by hand, another strategy of dehumanization. Author Terrence Des Pres described it as an "excremental assault" and wrote: "How much self-esteem can one maintain, how readily can one respond to the needs of another, if both stink, if both are caked with mud and feces?" [Terrence Des Pres, The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps (Pocket Books: New York, 1976) p. 66.]

Watercolor: Jerzy Potrzebowski
Reproduction courtesy of Auschwitz Museum Archive, 1980