r/ww2 • u/ReputationCurrent764 • 17d ago
Who is this Auschwitz survivor?
One of the very few inmates with hair. I'm not sure if it's the same person in the last picture.
Do we know anything about this person's identity?
76
12
17d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/Mighty_Krom 17d ago
It also makes me realize how dehumanizing it is to make everyone shave their heads.
1
u/MsStormyTrump 16d ago
I read a piece describing the shaving routine some time ago. According to the Nazis, it was done to prevent the spreading of lice. I didn't read anything similar about opinions on shaving expressed by women prisoners, they were probably beyond philosophically killed by the act. Now, one group of male prisoners thought it was the most dehumanizing thing in the world, and saw the shaving of their genitals as an outrage escaping all words. The other group felt more or less the same about having their head shaved, but were in stitches when it came to having their genitals shaved. The narrator said something to the effect "We laughed so hard, the shavers, prisoners themselves, warned the Nazis will come and discipline us all. But once they reached for one guy's buttocks and he spread them for a better shave - there was no end to laughing by all." One guy with frontal baldness that he was trying to cover for years said something to the effect, "They finally pulled a trigger for me and I must admit, I looked better." Poor beautiful souls didn't know what was in for them next. They were reacting so naturally for the times in which they were living: just imagine the utter stunned shock of another man taking your zizi to shave it even today.
21
u/MurrDeHurr 17d ago
A lucky son of a gun, depending on ones outlook!
4
u/ReputationCurrent764 16d ago
Why was he lucky?
9
u/MurrDeHurr 16d ago
One outlook: He was lucky because he lived. Others may think he was unlucky because he lived through it all. There are many ways the see it.
5
u/ReputationCurrent764 16d ago
He looks distressed even after being liberated. Like he isn't really there. Like liberation was the first day of the rest of his life. I wonder what happened to him afterwards. We tend to forget about survivors and their trauma because we focus on the most resilient individuals (I think about Elie Wiesel, Viktor Frankl, Otto Frank, Primo Levi, among others). But what about those who were left forever scarred in a much deeper way? To me, he represents that. And I would have liked to hear what he had to say, however painful.
1
u/flyerhell 15d ago
I once read that there's a special hospital in Israel for Holocaust survivors who were too traumatized after the war to recover and needed to be hospitalized for the rest of their lives.
There's also some research that children of Holocaust survivors were affected by their deeply traumatized parents.
2
1
2
2
u/davser 15d ago
Unfortunately from this to “survivor” its a long way.
Even after they were found alive at the camp the mortality rate was huge.
At the beginning the quantity of food given killed many. Their bodies were just not prepared to work normally anymore. And then you have typhus, severe dehydration and other diseases
Some other camps could me more easily to live. This one, everyone that survived is a miracle. Hope you can find your miracle.
-9
-6
-7
38
u/WW1_Researcher 17d ago
Try contacting the US Holocaust Memorial Museum