A striped overcoat of the Buchenwald camp uniform belonging to a Jehovah’s Witness. The prisoner number is #38641. Courtesy of The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

By 1937, Nazi regime’s prisoner uniforms made of coarse grey-blue striped material and clogs had become standard issue in the concentration camp system. The exhibition is home to several uniforms that were used by inmates in Auschwitz and other concentration and death

The striped uniform he wore and the jacket that was marked as prisoner clothing help tell his story of being persecuted for being Jewish. The garments also speak to his resilience after liberation.

Next, starting in February 1943, on account of increasing difficulties with supplies, prisoners were allowed to wear civilian clothes taken from the inmates’ deposit. These clothes were marked, e.g. by having pieces of striped material sewn onto the back or stripes painted on with oil paint.

Jan 20, 2018 · He still wears his original number plate — issued by camp guards as a way to dehumanize Jewish prisoners by taking away their names — every day. It’s now strung on a gold bracelet to replace the...

This uniform jacket was worn by William Luksenburg, a Polish Jew born in 1923 in Dąbrowa Górnicza, Poland. In 1943, Luksenburg was deported to the Blechhammer camp and then a few weeks later to Gleiwitz, both part of the larger complex of camps around Auschwitz .

Identification of inmates in Nazi concentration camps (operated by Nazi Germany in its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe) was performed mostly with identification numbers marked on clothing, or later, tattooed on the skin. More specialized identification in Nazi concentration camps was done with badges on clothing and armbands.

The striped concentration camp uniform has become one of the most powerful symbols of the Holocaust – the term used specifically to mean the Nazi persecution and murder of Europe’s Jews from 1933 to 1945 (Figure 11.1).

Made of cotton, white and cobalt blue stripes, this prisoner uniform jacket has five white buttons and three pockets cut from the same striped fabric. Zigmund Schick most likely received it upon his arrival at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942.

The Nazi SS and other camp guards systematically dehumanized concentration camp prisoners. 10 They forced them to wear striped uniforms, like the camp prisoner uniform of William Luksenburg. They also made prisoners wear badges with identification numbers and symbols made of colored triangles, such as this prisoner badge worn by Josef Kohout .