They were told they were being given showers, and there were fake showerheads installed to continue the ruse. There were no pipes connected to the showers, the Nazis dropped canisters down chutes. The shower contrivance makes sense as a way to get them to strip “willingly” to get at any last valuables hidden in their clothes without having to bother with the bodies.
This is something we have to be careful when talking about - because all of those complicated discrepancies between memory and rumor are the muck Holocaust deniers like to throw everywhere. I found an online “uncensored Holocaust encyclopedia” on the first page of DuckDuckGo before I found this link.
Alright let’s stop it here.
Btw there weren’t any gas showers, they were put into huge slaughterhouses that were then filled with Zyklon B.
Idk where the myth of the shower comes from.
Pretty much, yes but the slaughter houses were said to be shower areas and were sometimes even disguised in a manner (signs and fake shower heads).
I loathe to link to Reddit, but askhistorians /u/commiespaceinvader is s legit source as Holocaust historian:
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/87hpr5/did_the_jews_know_that_the_showers_were_actually/
They were told they were being given showers, and there were fake showerheads installed to continue the ruse. There were no pipes connected to the showers, the Nazis dropped canisters down chutes. The shower contrivance makes sense as a way to get them to strip “willingly” to get at any last valuables hidden in their clothes without having to bother with the bodies.
I think the popular imagination goes to that scene in Schindlers List - the very tense scene where the Schindlerjuden get shipped to Auschwitz and we don’t know if they’re going to be killed or not.
This is something we have to be careful when talking about - because all of those complicated discrepancies between memory and rumor are the muck Holocaust deniers like to throw everywhere. I found an online “uncensored Holocaust encyclopedia” on the first page of DuckDuckGo before I found this link.
spoiler
Guards told them they would be taking showers to get them to go willingly and remove their clothes (easier than doing it after they’re dead).
Or so I’ve heard, anyway.
Probably because that’s what some had been told they would be taking before entering the slaughterhouse; but just a guess, on my part.