During the Arrival and Selection in the concentraion camps of Auschwitz, the Jews, Gypsies (Roma), homosexuals, asocials, criminals, and prisoners of war they were gathered, stuffed into cattle cars on trains and told to leave all their belongings on board and were then forced to disembark from the train and gather upon the railway platform.
Families, who had disembarked together, were quickly and brutally split up as an SS officer, usually a Nazi doctor, ordered each individual into one of two lines. Most women, children, older men, and those that looked unfit or unhealthy were sent to the left; while most young men and others that looked strong enough to do hard labor were sent to the right. Unbeknownst to the people in the two lines, the left line meant immediate death at the gas chambers and the right meant that they would become a prisoner of the camp. (Most of the prisoners would later die from starvation, exposure, forced labor, and/or torture.)
Once the selections had been concluded, a select group of Auschwitz prisoners (part of "Kanada") gathered up all the belongings that had been left on the train and sorted them into huge piles, which were then stored in warehouses. These items (including clothing, eye glasses, medicine, shoes, books, pictures, jewelry, and prayer shawls) would periodically be bundled and shipped back to Germany.
At concentration camp, prisoners were assigned to do jobs. Such as farming, construction projects, or coal mining. If they weren't to able to work, they will be killed. Many people starved to death and beaten to death. Also, many were raped.