Oral History

They marched us to a huge building which had shower caps, and we were told to undress, and I was always, I was young and vain, and I dressed in my best clothes, my nice coat, my, my best dress, so I put it nicely together when I, when I undressed, and there comes over this Kapo, and she flings it to the side, and I say, "This is my clothes." She said, "Yes, but you won't need it anymore," and, and I was terribly scared because I didn't know what that meant. Then when we were undressed, we were ordered, everybody was ordered to stand up on a stool, and they shaved us, they shaved our hair, and the private parts, and we looked, we couldn't even recognize each other once we were stripped, not only of our clothes, but of our hair. Then we were shoved into those, um, showers, and they first opened the hot water, so we were scalded and as we ran out from under the hot water, we were beaten back by the SS and by the Kapos to go under the showers again, so they opened the ice cold water, which had the same effect, and finally we were out of this shower. Each of us was given one garment, which, of course, didn't fit. Some got small, that was too small, some got that was too large. We didn't get, receive not even underwear or brassieres or panties, just that one dress.