It was undeniable that the conditions in both Auschwitz and Birkenau were steadily improving. At the beginning, beating and killing were the rule, but later this became only sporadic. At first, you had to sleep on the floor lying on your side because of the lack of space, and could turn over only on command; later you slept in bunks, or wherever you wished, sometimes even in bed. Originally, you had to stand at roll-call for as long as two days at a time, later — only until the second gong, until nine o’clock. In the early years, packages were forbidden, later you could receive 500 grams, and finally as much as you wanted. Pockets of any kind were at first strictly taboo, but eventually even civilian clothes could sometimes be seen around Birkenau. Life in the camp became ‚better and better‘ all the time — after the first three or four years. We felt certain that the horrors could never again be repeated, and we were proud that we had survived.

—Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), 92.