– Yvon Chouinard
Both A Film Unfinished (2010) and Holocaust Escape Tunnel (2017)
mention ritual baths (miqva’ot or mikveh or mikvah) which are still used in Jewish communities.
Showers were generally rare before and during WWII.
This was found in Lithuania:
The Germans get the blame for destroying it.
"The Great Synagogue compound was looted and burned by German forces in 1941,
and the standing remains were later completely destroyed by Soviet authorities in the 1950s.
The Soviets later built a school on top of the area in 1964."
https://www.foxnews.com/science/holocau ... d-by-nazis
Scary Showers
"Uncertainty is part of the human experience. Some people thrive in uncertain times; others become emotionally paralyzed. The way people respond to uncertainty may depend on how afraid they are of the unknown.
If you fear spiders or snakes, it’s based on what you’ve learned: Some of these creatures are venomous and can literally kill you. But not all fears are based on such concrete information.
Some fears are based on what you don’t know."
https://www.healthline.com/health/under ... he-unknown
One example of this kind of fear is "water came down instead of gas" moment in emotionally manipulative movie Schindler's List.
Before that scene Mila Pfefferberg has told what she heard: "And then they were herded down a big corridor to bunkers with Stars of David on the doors and signs that said 'Bath and Inhalation Room'.
SS gave them soap. They told them to breath all the time because it's good for disinfecting. And then they gassed them."
One woman responds that she doesn't believe it. (Star of David was claimed to have being used in Hackenholt designs but not in Auschwitz-Birkenau)
Jewish director Juraj Herz:
"At that time, it was already known what the showers meant.
I was there looking at the panic-stricken adults and I knew there was no gas in the tubes because there were glass windows in the room.
It would be easy to break them and let the gas out.
So I knew it couldn't be a gas chamber.
After a while, water started to come out from the tubes, and all the men were screaming that it is just water and not gas.
This scene you know from Steven Spielberg.
But ten years before him, I shot this scene with women in the film Zastihla me noc (1986).
Spielberg copied the scene shot by shot from me."
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0381228/bio ... _ov_bio_sm
Emphasis added.
But what the showers really meant?
There were showers in WWI POW camps.
"Prisoners prepare to take a shower in a German prison camp under the supervision of German guards. To prevent the spread of vermin and disease, the Germans required POW's to take showers or baths on a regular basis. This photograph shows a typical shower facility in a prison camp." Emphasis added.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/wwi_pow_camps/224/
But showers were not common in households during WWI or WWII.
https://www.showerdoc.com/blog/a-brief- ... the-shower
Majdanek bath house is one these scary installations.
Hissing water comes from the pipes above compared to stepping down to a pool of water.
It was good enough to start rumors. Especially after propaganda films.
Wide audiences did not see the window in the shower room.
Or the other things like the well, water heaters etc. which prove this was and still is a bath house with working showers.
"Our deep fear of the unknown not only scares us, but it can scramble our brains."
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20 ... he-unknown
Some people are afraid to go to shower after watching the famous scene in Psycho,
some seem to be offended by them.
Auschwitz 'showers' offend some visitors to the former Nazi camp
https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/01/world/au ... index.html
