story that provided the title for her memoir: the
diamonds. Shortly before the Seigelsteins are deported,
Chana's mother takes her daughter aside and shows her
four small diamonds that she had saved from the Nazis:
"I'm going to sew them into the hem of your skirt . . .
Guard them closely and never sell them, unless you are
hungry - then you may use the diamonds to buy bread."
When she has to undress on intake at Auschwitz, Chana
tears the hem, removes the gems, and holds them tightly
in her fist. When she sees that the newcomers are bodily
searched, she swallows the diamonds. The next day, after
roll call, she goes to the latrine, relieves herself
unnoticed in a corner, and rummages through her own
excrements until she finds all four diamonds. She
hides them in a knot made at the end of her garment.
She is firmly decided never to give away her mother's
diamonds.
Therefore, though not explicitly mentioned, she swallows
her diamonds again before she has to undress for the
selection for Majdanek. There she again retrieves the
gems in the latrine. This procedure repeats itself
until liberation. "The entire time I was incarcerated,
I would swallow and retrieve my mother's diamonds again
and again". "At each selection, I swallowed". She must
have swallowed her diamonds also every time she was called
for a medical experiment, or when she or her clothes were
deloused (about which, by the way, we read nothing).
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... .html#more
Knowing from numerous descriptions of undisputed Auschwitz
survivors how appalling the sanitary conditions were
particularly at Birkenau, that the number of latrine
places for thousands of prisoners was absolutely
insufficient, that the latrines could only be used
for a short time in the course of a day, that there
was not the tiniest little bit of privacy, and that
prisoner functionaries (kapos) "directed traffic"
inside with shouting, beating and insults, it is
inconceivable that Chana for months has been able
to relieve herself undisturbed in some corner of
the latrine and to retrieve her diamonds unnoticed.

As the diamond episode is central in the marketing
of Mrs. Zisblatt's book - and also in her contribution
to the documentary The Last Days with the sub-title
'Everything you are about to see is true' - Holocaust
deniers hook up particularly on this part of her story.
They say that the repeated swallowing of cut diamonds
would have hurt Chanas esophagus and intestines.
Furthermore, they say that, given the appalling sanitary
conditions at Birkenau - particularly the notorious lack
of water and soap - Chana could not have sterilized her
diamonds and sooner or later would have ingested life-
threatening germs, an argument that cannot simply be
dismissed. On the other hand, according to her story,
Chana obviously did not have health problems with
ingesting feces, as the Stehzelle episode shows.
During the five days in this dungeon, the girls
relieve themselves into the ankle-deep water in
which they stand and drink the same water repeatedly,
without becoming sick.
