Discussion on Holocaust Experiences and Myths

Somehow the rumor started that they were going to gas

us.

I have to tell you that this is really true. This is what happened.

And what happened eventually is, is that they rained from the shower

heads, they rained soap and water on us, and the reason for that was

that we had to be deloused. We were so full of

lice through the, through that we-- Our hair was cut,

and they rained soap and water on us, and I do not remember if there were any

towels, but we came out-- And this happened prior.

You see, we had to be clean to be-

Germans

... to be, to be naturalized, yes. So this happened prior to that.

Wouldn't do otherwise.

That's right. And-

Germans had to be clean in those days

... that's right, and I remember how embarrassed these

people were to

sit there stark naked. So when I hear about the shower heads and the

Holocaust and all of that, I know exactly what it was.

That was soap and water raining down on us to delouse us.

That's what it was. And where the story came from

that those were

dangerous shower heads, I don't know.

That must have come out of the Russian propaganda in those years,

because I remember it very clearly that there was a rumor,

you know-

In other words, these simple-

... we were going to be done in.

These simple people-

Yeah

... were afraid of this procedure?

We were afraid of this procedure, yeah.

And if, if I can tell, you can cut it out if it doesn't belong-

So it wa-- So it's like Steven Spielberg.

Uh, pretty much

That every, everybody in, in Schindler's List-

Yeah

... is, is waiting for the gas to come in, and-

Yeah, and all it is, is-

... lo and behold, all it was, it was-

... is soap and water-

... was water

... came raining down on us in this great

big-- We called it banya, which is a

Russian word for a ba-- uh, for a washroom.

Washroom, yeah. Bathroom.

Bathroom, yeah, but it was a big one.

Big communal ba-- Yeah.

A communal bathroom.

Mm-hmm.

It was huge. I would say it was-- The way I remember it, of

course, I was little, but the way I remember it,

I would say it was at least thirty

by thirty. It must have been built for that purpose,

to wash us,

to wash us down like dogs, yeah.

But most people, of course, don't know is that the Germans had drawn a

line from the Baltic, or actually from the North

Cape virtually all the way down to the Bosporus.

Mm-hmm.

And anybody that came across that line, whether he was German or Mennonite,

Jews for that matter, anybody in Europe could not go across

that line without being

deloused-

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

... because they wanted to keep lice out of

Europe-

That's right

... because lice were so dangerous to public health.

That's right, that's right. So that was the first-

So don't feel badly, you know?

No, no.

You were not picked on because we were Mennonites.

Yeah, yeah.

All Lutherans.

Or the same for the cutting of hair.

I mean, we were all shorn bald in order to

stop the li-- the lice, the louse problem that we had.

Yeah, yeah.

Everybody had lice in the war, you know?

So-

I mean, this was just common knowledge

that everybody had lice, and then of course

we had to be deloused and put into Germany.

So Jews cannot-

No, they-

... claim unique victim status here.

No, they cannot.

You-

And when I hear the stories about them losing their hair, big deal.

None of us had hair.

Yeah.