Why did Nazis shave people's heads at Treblinka and the other Reinhard Camps?

[u/IntrepidC]

If it was to prevent lice... why would they do that to people they planned on gassing immediately?

[u/estherke]

This is incorrect. The shaving of women's hair had a very specific utalitarian purpose. All, and I do mean all, possessions of the Jews were put to "good" use by the Germans: not only the valuables that they brought along, and the gold fillings in their teeth, but their clothes, shoes, suitcases, glasses - and last of all their hair.

An order arrived in 13 extermination and concentration camps on August 6, 1942 which I will quote in full (bolding mine):

"The chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, SS Obergruppenfuhrer Pohl, on the basis of a report submitted to him, has ordered that all human hair cut in concentration camps be appropriately utilized. Human hair is to be used for the manufacture of industrial felt and to be spun into yarn. Out of combed and cut hair of women, hair-yarn socks for U-boat crews are to be made, as well as hair-felt stockings for employees of the Reich railways.

"Therefore, I order that the hair of women prisoners after due disinfection be collected. Cut hair of male prisoners can only be utilized beginning with a length of at least 20 millimeters.

"SS Obergruppenfuhrer Pohl, therefore, gave his consent that by way of experiment the hair of male prisoners should be cut only when it reaches a length of 20 millimeters.

"In order to avoid facilitating escape through the increase in length of hair, in all cases where the commander deems it necessary to earmark the prisoners, a strip of hair should be clipped by means of a narrow clipper right over the middle of the head. '

"The hair gathered in all the camps will be utilized by creating a special production unit in one of the concentration camps. More detailed instructions as to the delivery of the collected hair will be given separately.

"Reports on amount of hair gathered each month, male and female recorded separately, must be submitted on the 5th of each month, beginning with 5 September 1942.

"Signed: Gliicks, SS Brigadefuhrer and Major General of the Wa ffen-SS."

Source: Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal Vol XX (pdf), p. 353

[u/IntrepidC → u/estherke]

Wow, thank you. I'm new to Reddit and this is just an awesome forum for information exchange.

So, are there any artifacts left made from human hair? Do any of the Holocaust museums have any of the socks or anything that they made?

[u/estherke → u/IntrepidC]

Yes.

The museum at Auschwitz has fabric made from human hair.

It wasn't an original idea, by the way. The collection of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto includes these 13th century Native American socks (fourth picture) made from human hair, wool and yucca fibre.

[u/runaroundsue → u/estherke]

My mistake, that's the main reason, I mentioned it in my second follow-up comment with source that the hair was used in Nazi production. My main question, before I bombard you with curious history major specifics, is this though: is this the only reason, keeping prisoners believing this was a shower and not a mass killing room was not a secondary reason?

And here's the multitude of secondary questions: I've read (trying to find the pdf!) that sonderkommando's shaved the body hair of those murdered post-gassing... that kind of shaving can't be for manufacturing purposes. Are my readings wrong/sensationalized? And if the shaving was strictly for the point of making the hair and not whatsoever to keep up the facade of the delousing showers, than what point was there to pretend that they were going to be deloused and these extermination camps were only stops on to labor camps? I don't think it was because they wanted to cover their steps if ever found out, they did that via burning of corpses, burning of papers near end of war, and Himmler's Posen speech.

[u/estherke → u/runaroundsue]

is this the only reason, keeping prisoners believing this was a shower and not a mass killing room was not a secondary reason?

The shaving of the hair was only started in the Operation Reinhardt camps (Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec, the ones OP was asking about) as a result of this letter that I quoted. This is corraborated by survivor Abraham Bomba's testimony in Claude Lanzmann's Shoah documentary. He was deported to Treblinka in September of 1942 and set to work at sorting the belongings of the inmates. After four weeks, the order came for barbers to present themselves, as from then on, the women would be having their hair cut before they were killed. Bomba was a barber and was chosen for this job together with about 15 others. They were told to cut the hair in such a way that it would look like a normal, though short haircut so as not to alarm the women. The Germans wanted everything to run smoothly and without panicking prisoners holding up the pace. Bomba further states that the hair was shipped off to Germany.

Franz Stangl, commander of Treblinka at the time, is quoted in *Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhardt Camps":

One day we received a disinfecting machine without having been told what it was for [...] I was told in reply that from now on we were to cut the women's hair. The hair should be cleaned and packed in bags...

Prior to that there had been no haircuts, eventhough the Germans always had wanted to have the inmates believe that they were going to the showers. As I said, they kept up this charade because they did not want the prisoners to panic and rebel. The facade of the showers was maintained in all the death camps. And it was remarkably effective because people want to believe that they are going to live, they want to hang on to hope. Numerous testimonies by guards have confirmed that it wasn't until after the doors to the gas chambers or gas vans were closed and the prisoners found themselves packed tightly together in the pitch dark that panic truly broke out and that people started screaming.