LemmyCaution
Master Poster
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The racist depiction of eastern Jews as naive primitives aside, this is so much nonsense. In one of Rodoh's many demolition exercises on this hoary old gambit, I posted about the delousing station these supposedly childlike and terrified Jews had in Kovno:Kremer's diary entries need to be considered in the context of the long standing fear among the eastern European Jews of German delousing procedures.
This is a description of a German delousing as seen by a Jewish women who was subjected to it. This was published in 1912 but refers to an incident from the late 19th century:
I can imagine watching this sort of reaction from the German side could be very disturbing. I can also imagine it would be very frustrating to be part of the contingent that was responsible for keeping ordering during this procedure. You can be patient when a three year old is afraid of the bath but a whole trainload of adult Jews believing they're going to die just because you want them clean is a bit much.
Oh the Primitive Terror, the Typical Ignorant Hysteria of Jews and Their Fear of Delousing!
From the diary of Avraham Tory, Kovno ghetto
20 May 1942:
A lice disinfection center has been opened in the ghetto.
3 December 1942:
An institute for delousing and destroying various insect pests was recently opened in the Ghetto; 4,000 were designated to be checked by the institute.
- - - - - - - - -From the memoir of Jack Brauns, Kovno, concerning mid-October 1942
To combat the spread of [typhus], the German authorities established in Kovno a delousing center for wounded German soldiers; it was situated at 4 Vytauto Street. Wounded soldiers were taken off the trains and transported to the center. Their heads were shaved. They were bathed, and their clothes were disinfected. All this work was carried out by Jewish workers brought daily from the Ghetto. . . . An epidemic of typhus, with a high mortality rate, broke out among the Lithuanian workers at the delousing center. . . . There was indeed an epidemic of typhus in the Ghetto [too]. It came from three sources: from the inmates who had to work at the delousing center; from the Ghetto workshops, where articles of clothing received were supposed to have already been disinfected, but where live lice were often found in the clothes; and from inmates transferred from other camps (Zezmer -- nine cases). . . . At the time of the visit of the Lithuanian doctors, twenty-nine people in the Ghetto were infected with typhus. . . . Dr. Brauns gave special instructions to each of the affected families. . . . Dr. Brauns was able to increase the distribution of soap, wood, and food rations to the typhus patients. . . . .
Just as though they were people, Jews in the 1940s, the era under discussion, were concerned about the spread of disease, understood the causes of the spread of typhus, for example, and deployed medical and public health knowledge to combat the spread of disease. It is more than doubtful that people confused delousing stations with gas chambers, leaving aside that of the Jews murdered by the Nazis, about whom the Jews are "hysterical," were 2.5 million not gassed, as estimated by Raul Hilberg thus:
- ghettoisation and general: 800,000
- transit and concentration camps, other: 300,000
- Open air shootings: 1,400,000
- death camps: up to 2,600,000
total: 5,100,000
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