The prisoners were chronically undernourished and disease was rampant. Conditions differed based on a prisoner's status and race. Polish and Soviet prisoners occupied the lowest rungs on the prisoner hierarchy, being put on the most physically demanding work details and allocated less food than other prisoners. There was an epidemic of dysentery in January 1940 that shut down work at the camp, and typhus epidemics in September 1944 and January 1945 claimed many lives. The total number of prisoners who passed through Flossenbürg and its subcamps has been estimated at 89,964 or over 100,000. About 30,000 of the prisoners died at Flossenbürg or during its evacuation, the main causes of death were malnutrition and disease. Between 13,000 and 15,000 prisoners died at the main camp and more than 10,000 at the satellite camps. An estimated three-quarters of the deaths occurred in the nine months before liberation.
