Ceremonies - Women in Auschwitz

The “Sauna”

The "Sauna" was the first stage of the de-humanization period, where the women were taken. Most people did not go to the "Sauna" having been taken immediately to the crematorium.
In the so-called “Sauna”, the newcomers began to go through the registration process. Here they were stripped of their clothes in a de-humanizing process, which made them a “number” instead of a human being. Here they were “showered”, disinfected, shaved all over their body, tattooed, given an ill-fitting and a shabby prisoners uniform and wooden clogs.

Although both men and women were to go through the “Sauna”, there were some significant differences between their experience. First and foremost, while going through the “Sauna,” the men undressed in front of other men while the women had to undress in front of men, exposed to abuse ranging from verbal harassment to forceful and humiliating physical contact.

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Additional resources

Although the act of shaving the hair was a difficult experience for both men and women, it held additional significance for women: A woman’s hair is an essential component of feminine beauty and, apart from the humiliation of the act of shaving per se, the female self-image was more severely harmed than that of the male by this loss. In addition to shaving of the hair from head and body, women in the sauna also suffered other unique forms of humiliation.

• For a photograph of Women Deemed Fit for Work, After the Camp Absorption Process, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, click here
• For a photograph of Women Inside the Women’s Camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, click here

“I didn’t know where we where going. So I found myself between the young women, and we come to a big hall. We had to undress and our heads were shaved. They left me with my shoes. The other women’s shoes were taken but mine weren’t in such good condition. […] good shoes they took away. And I covered myself like that, my shoes were hanging from my hands, trying to cover myself. We cry and we laugh because we didn’t recognize one another without hair, completely shaven. […] It was cold. […] Our pile of clothes are there, and there is another hall and door where we pass, and the Nazis are taking the shoes from the girls’ hands to see if there is something hidden inside the shoe.
Source: The testimony of Shoshana Schreiber, Yad Vashem Archives O.3/6481, Jerusalem 1991, pp. 21-22.

Shoshana Schreiber
Shoshana Schreiber, nee Weiser, was born in 1923 in Mukacevo, Hungary, to a Hassidic family with seven children. She was deported to Auschwitz with her parents and four brothers and sisters, and after the first selection, Shoshana remained alone. In Auschwitz-Birkenau she met her brother and father, who were in the men’s camp at the time. Afterwards the two men were sent to Warsaw and forced to work at clearing the ruins. Around the time the camp was evacuated Shoshana went out on a Death March towards Bergen-Belsen, where she remained until liberation in April 1945. After liberation, she volunteered in the clinic set up within the camp and later traveled to Sweden under the sponsorship of the Red Cross, where she worked in a hospital for refugees. In Sweden she renewed contact with her brother, who was in Austria at the time, and through him she discovered that her father had died in Dachau concentration camp. She also met her future husband, Henry Kraushar, who helped her get an immigrant visa to the USA. Shoshana and Henry Kraushar married and had two children, a son and a daughter. Their daughter is married with 8 children and lives in the States; and their son, who is Ultra Orthodox, is married with 14 children and lives in Israel. After her divorce from Henry, Shoshana worked in the States and many years later, married Max Schreiber.

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