Cities And Memory

"This composition is based on an ambisonic recording made inside the Sauna at Auschwitz. This was the ‘bathhouse’ where new arrivals from the trains arriving at the camp were stripped of all their belongings, valuables and clothes, registered and tattooed with a number, then showered, shaved, disinfected and re-clothed. The building had a “clean” and a “dirty” side, and machines were used to steam and delouse clothing. Existing prisoners were also sometimes sent to the Sauna in attempts to control pests and disease in the camp. "As Andrzej Strzelecki describes in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum book about the Auschwitz Sauna, the purpose of this place had little to do with caring for prisoners’ hygiene. Instead, it acted as an instrument in the Nazis’ system of mass destruction and theft of the property of groups targeted in pursuit of their racist ideology. The sauna was also a site of ritual humiliation, dehumanisation and control, stripping people of their dignity. Most new arrivals believed they were being