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por José Luis » Dom Ene 20, 2008 10:39 am
En cuanto al tema específico del tifus y la higiene, el asunto está razonablemente explicado en Deborah Dwork, Robert Jan Van Pelt, Auschwitz (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2002), en las páginas 218 y 219, de las que copio literalmente:
[Using Kammler’s type sheets, the architects in Auschwitz turned their attention first to the prisoners’ reception and delousing building. Their goal was to prevent the spread of contagious diseases, which were rife in Auschwitz. The camp was overcrowded, the hygienic conditions were poor, and the inmates were ill fed, ill clothed, and ill shod. Dysentery, typhoid fever, and typhus felled the inmates and threatened the Germans. Typhus, transmitted by lice and carried by human beings and rats, was the most fatal of the three and therefore the most feared. The Germans had experience in this area from the First World War when they developed delousing units to control the disease on the eastern front, where it was endemic. The soldiers were bathed and their clothes fumigated in mobile units, thus destroying the lice. But the vermin were ubiquitous: buildings, mattresses, sofas, and chairs became infected. The Technical Committee for Pest Control of the German War Ministry founded the firm Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung (German Company for Pest Control), or Degesch, in 1917 to deal with the problem. One of its most powerful and popular disinfestation products was the extremely toxic hydrocyanic, or prussic, acid. Sold in a crystal form and packed in sealed tins, it carried the trade name Zyklon (cyclone). As the German word for prussic acid is Blausäure, for the deep blue stains in produces, the poison was also known as Zyklon-Blausäure, or Zyklon B. It was commonly used to fumigate lice-infested buildings, which were sealed during the operation and could be entered safely only after having been aired for twenty hours. Even then, as a company manual warned, “mattresses, straw mattresses, pillows, upholstered furniture and similar items must be shaken or beaten for at least one hour in the open air.”
Zyklon B had been introduced in Auschwitz in July 1940, when it was used to fumigate the Polish barracks which, according to Höss, “teemed with lice, fleas, and other bugs.” Later that year Schlachter created primitive gas chambers in block 26, and some months thereafter in block 3, to fumigate the prisoners’ clothing; existing rooms were sealed and powerful fans installed.]
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Saludos a todos
José Luis
"Dioses, no me juzguéis como un dios
sino como un hombre
a quien ha destrozado el mar" (Plegaria fenicia)