The Auschwitz camp complex was the only location that issued identifying tattoos during the Holocaust. Only prisoners selected for forced labor were assigned serial numbers. Prisoners who were sent directly to the gas chambers were not registered or tattooed. More than 400,000 serial numbers were assigned at Auschwitz.
In 1939, Slovak fascists took over Topol'cany, where Miso lived. In 1942, Miso was deported to the Slovak-run Novaky camp and then to Auschwitz. At Auschwitz, he was tattooed with the number 65,316, indicating that 65,315 prisoners preceded him in that series of numbering. He was forced to labor in the Buna works and then in the Birkenau "Kanada" detachment, unloading incoming trains. In late 1944, prisoners were transferred to camps in Germany. Miso escaped during a death march from Landsberg and was liberated by US forces.
Item View![Rene Guttmann [LCID: 2972]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/e09e2578-8718-4934-bf84-7c6dcf1ff318.gif "Rene Guttmann [LCID: 2972]")
Rene, his twin sister, Renate, and their German-Jewish parents lived in Prague. Shortly before the twins were born, Rene's parents had fled Dresden, Germany, to escape the Nazi government's policies against Jews. Before leaving Germany to live in Czechoslovakia, Rene's father, Herbert, had worked in the import-export business. His mother, Ita, was an accountant.
1933-39: Rene's family lived in a six-story apartment building along the #22 trolley line in Prague. A long, steep flight of stairs led up to their apartment, where Rene and his sister, Renate, shared a crib in their parents' bedroom; a terrace overlooked the yard outside. Rene and Renate wore matching outfits and were always well-dressed. Their days were often spent playing in a nearby park. In March 1939 the German army occupied Prague.
1940-45: Just before Rene turned 6, his family was deported to Auschwitz from the Theresienstadt ghetto. His arm was tattooed with the number 169061. There, he was separated from his sister and mother and put into a barracks with older boys--many seemed to be twins. Rene didn't understand what was going on. Sometimes he was taken to a hospital, even though he wasn't sick, and was measured everywhere and X-rayed. Once, Rene and other boys watched when Soviet and Polish soldiers were shot into a pit outside.
Rene and his sister survived and were reunited in America in 1950. They learned that as one pair of the "Mengele Twins," they had been used for medical experiments.
Item View![Jakob Frenkiel [LCID: 1942]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/ff769699-098f-41d6-bfec-ee1d46ce41c3.gif "Jakob Frenkiel [LCID: 1942]")
Jakob was one of seven boys in a religious Jewish family. They lived in a town 50 miles west of Warsaw called Gabin, where Jakob's father worked as a cap maker. Gabin had one of Poland's oldest synagogues, built of wood in 1710. Like most of Gabin's Jews, Jakob's family lived close to the synagogue. The family of nine occupied a one-room apartment on the top floor of a three-story building.
1933-39: On September 1, 1939, just a few months before Jakob turned 10, the Germans started a war with Poland. After they reached his town, they doused the synagogue and surrounding homes with gasoline and set them on fire. All the Jewish men were rounded up in the marketplace and held there while their synagogue and homes burned to the ground. Jakob's house had also been doused with gasoline, but the fire didn't reach it.
1940-45: At age 12, Jakob was put in a group of men to be sent to labor camps. More than a year later, they were shipped to Auschwitz. The day after they arrived, Jakob and his brother Chaim were lined up with kids and old people. Jakob asked a prisoner what was going to happen to them. He pointed to the chimneys. "Tomorrow the smoke will be from you." He said if they could get a number tattooed on their arms, they'd be put to work instead of being killed. They sneaked to the latrine, then escaped through a back door and lined up with the men getting tatoos.
After 17 months in Auschwitz, Jakob was force-marched to camps in Germany. Liberated in April 1945 near Austria, he immigrated to the United States at the age of 16.
Item View![Szlamach Radoszynski [LCID: 6054]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/f685442b-12b1-4038-84a0-46737d2fb1cd.gif "Szlamach Radoszynski [LCID: 6054]")
Szlamach was one of six children born to Yiddish-speaking, religious Jewish parents. Szlamach's father was a peddler, and the Radoszynski family lived in a modest apartment in Warsaw's Praga section on the east bank of the Vistula River. After completing his schooling at the age of 16, Szlamach apprenticed to become a furrier.
1933-39: During the 1930s Szlamach owned a fur business. Despite the Depression, he was hoping the economy would turn around so that he could make enough money to move into his own apartment and start a family. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. One week later, his city was surrounded by the Germans. After a terrible siege, Warsaw surrendered.
1940-44: In November 1940 the Nazis established a ghetto. By April 1943 Szlamach's entire family had either died in the ghetto or had been deported to the Treblinka killing center. After the ghetto uprising, he was deported to Auschwitz. Day after day his job there was to shovel dirt over discarded, still-smoldering ashes of cremated victims. He kept wondering whether he, too, would end up the same. But Szlamach was sustained by the fact that the number tattooed on his arm--#128232--added up to 18, the Jewish mystical symbol for life.
In January 1945 Szlamach was deported to Dachau, where he was liberated during a forced march on May 1, 1945, by U.S. soldiers. In July 1949 he immigrated to the United States.
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