A louse - your death
A louse - your death was the slogan of a poster in the concentration camps of the German Reich.
In the war years , especially from the camp overcrowding, there were large typhoid and typhus - epidemics in the camp Dachau. In the last days of December 1942, for example, a typhus epidemic began to spread. The SS carried out stricter lice controls than those described below. Posters depicting a giant louse and bearing the inscription A louse - your death were now displayed. The residential barracks were disinfected. The inmates had to take off all clothes for disinfection, go naked into the bathroom, bathe in hot water there and were then sprayed with a disinfectant. Some of the prisoners fell ill during the radical procedure, such as pneumonia , and several deaths occurred.
In the Mauthausen concentration camp , it also came to typhoid epidemics, even here the poster was posted in the barracks, it was on a yellow background a big black louse .
In the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp , the slogan was written in different versions on the wall.
Lice control using the example of the Dachau concentration camp
Lice control served to prevent the transmission of diseases. It was carried out by prison functionaries . Usually the daily lice control was as follows: In the evening, after returning from work to the apartment blocks, the lice checks were usually carried out between 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. in the dormitories of the apartment blocks. The room elders examined the inmates 'armpit and pubic hair with the help of a wooden spatula, while assistants checked the inmates' clothing for lice. If lice were found, the inmate was usually beaten, all of his hair was shaved, then cold water was poured over him in the washroom and then brushed off with a brush. The inmates were gathered in the bedroom during the lice control, while other inmates were cleaning the rooms and other empty rooms in the apartment blocks. At 9 p.m. it was night time in the apartment blocks.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The poster hung everywhere in the Auschwitz concentration camps. The author was Mieczyslaw Koscielniak , a well-known artist - himself a prisoner in Auschwitz
- ^ A b Stanislav Zámečník: (Ed. Comité International de Dachau ): That was Dachau. Luxembourg, 2002. p. 142.