But the ordinary roll calls paled beside the medical selections, at which prisoners were picked out for the Jugendlager (the youth camp) and the gas chambers. The administration strained every resource to meet the fixed quota of deaths set for relieving the overcrowded camp. The prisoners were drawn up in rows of five. At a signal, one row moved forward. When their turn came, people walked barefoot, with quick, nervous steps. In this way they had to pass some fifty meters in front of the selector, who, bending down, watched their legs closely. From time to time he raised his hand. A gesture of the hand or the whip meant a verdict: to the left — death; to the right — a reprieve. Then the numbers of all those sent to the left were written down. After a while trucks drove up, collected the “unfit,” and delivered them to the Jugendlager or straight to the gas chambers, a five-minute drive away. The prisoners in Block 27, where Mother Maria was held, did not go out to work and lived in expectation of the next selection. The nervous strain, together with the hunger and the whole atmosphere, drove many to madness. Mother Maria remained silent and calm. Until then it had been possible to hide her from the SS at the critical moment. With Christina’s help she was concealed under the bunks, and twice even in the loft. But on Great Friday 1945 no stratagem could help any longer. On that Great Friday the artillery cannonade of the advancing Soviet army could already be clearly heard. In the afternoon, at the hour of Christ’s agony, another selection was held in the main camp.
The chapter goes on in the book.