Discussion on Schindler's List and War Experiences

In Schindler's List-

Yeah

... he's, he's waiting for the gas to come in and-

Yeah, and all it was-

Lo and behold, all it was, it was-

Is soap and 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. 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.

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-

I know

... we got 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 anywhere.

No, they cannot.

You-

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

None of us had hair