Reasons Why the Nazis cut off the hair of the Jews before sending them to the gas chambers at Auschwitz

Reasons Why the Nazis cut off the hair of the Jews before sending them to the gas chambers at Auschwitz

The main reason is that hair collects cyanide gas. The same thing happens with clothes. Cyanide gas sticks to clothes. Cyanide gas sticking to hair or clothes would soon be released in the air.

Fabric, hair and skin are like any other solids. Gas molecules adsorb to the exposed surface. A porous solid like hair or fabric expose a lot mere surface to the gas molecules then a contiguous surface like skin. So a given weight of fabric or hair is going to adsorb a lot more cyanide gas than smooth skin.

The cyanide that sticks to clothes and hair is volatile. Unlike crystals of cyanide salt, adsorbed gas on porous objects evaporate quickly. So the cyanide that sticks to hair and clothes will kill the people handling the bodies, the guards watching those people, and even people downwind from the bodies. The cyanide in the bodies themselves would be dissolved in water and confined by skin. Bodies that were shaved and naked before being gassed were much safer than bodies with hair and clothing.

Cyanide gas chambers are used for criminals in the United States. Note that the convicted prisoners always have their hair cut before they a executed in the gas chamber. The prisoner has to dress in rather skimpy clothing, too. This is because cyanide gas sticks to hair and clothing.

The hair and clothes of people gassed with cyanide are dangerous. This is why gas chamber executions in the United States have required the criminal to wear few clothes as possible. The clothing is stripped from the cadaver after the execution because the clothing is poisonous. The hair on the dead body is mussed to release the cyanide. The bodies also have to be washed down with ammonia before they are given to the people who want to bury them. Yes, the skin of the cadaver is dangerous for a while. However, the gas molecules on the skin itself is far easier to remove than the gas molecules on the clothes and hair.

This is part of the reason that when cyanide started to be used, the victims had to be stripped and shorn before being gassed. The workers that handled the bodies probably had to wear gloves, gas masks and maybe hooks. With hooks, they would not have to directly touch the skin. Depictions showing the workers handle the bodies without gloves or without gas masks may be wrong.

That is one of the arguments used by holocaust deniars. Illustrations drawn by witnesses often show the workers without the equipment that it would take to safely handle the poisoned bodies. Movies and literature in fiction generally show the bodies handled without any protective equipment.

The Nazis did not care if the Jews handling the bodies were safe or not. These people were to be killed anyway. Once the bodies were incinerated, any remaining cyanide went up those tall chimneys. However, getting the bodies to the incinerators would be very difficult if they had hair and clothes.

Remember that these weren’t just concentration camps. They were death factories. So they minimized risk to the inmates only to the extent that it speeded up the killing process.

Some of these rituals were reinforced by the associated dehumanization. It may be easier to kill people who are bald because they don’t look fully human. It may be easier to kill naked people because it is a sexual turn on. However, the main reason for these grotesque rituals was probably to prevent adsorption of hydrogen cyanide on porous materials.

BTW: Zyklon B was not made of cyanide salt crystals. They were made of hydrogen cyanide adsorbed to a clay like material. It probably would have taken a very long time for a salt crystal to evaporate. In flowing air, the cyanide adsorbed to the clay must have evaporated very fast. Hence the fans in the gas chambers.

Note that cyanide is not really a good insecticide for fumigation. Usually, organophosphates and organohalogenes (like DDT) are used to kill insects. Mammals and insects per kilogram are equally vulnerable to organophosphates.

Cyanide doesn’t kill plants. Organophosphates and organohalogenes like DDT can kill plants. So cyanide rather than organophosphates are used as an insecticide generally when the insects are in living plants. I don’t know why cyanide would ever be used to sterilize clothing when the Germans had organophosphates.

The best way to get rid of lice is to boil the clothes. If lice on clothes are a problem, a small dose of organophosphate or DDT can get rid of them. I don’t understand why cyanide would be used for delousing when cyanide is more poisonous to humans than to insects.

Mammals have hemoglobin molecule to which cyanide binds. Arthropods including insects have hemolymph, which contains NO hemoglobin. So insects per kilogram are a lot less vulnerable to cyanide than mammals per kilogram. Zyklon B was designed for rats, not lice. Rats being mammal would be far more vulnerable to cyanide than lice.

A minor reason to cut the hair is to supply wartime materials. Supposedly, the hair for mats was used for submarines. However, this had to be secondary. The hair and the clothes was probably a value added feature that reinforced thei Nazi intentions. It was probably something like, ‘If we have the hair and clothes, then we may as well sell them anyway. This will offset the cost of maintaining a death factory.’

Incidentally, Zyklon B also contains tear gas as well as cyanide. The tear gas is an irritant that warns the user that there is cyanide being released. The cyanide itself causes suffocation, but tear gas would burn the eyes. So death by Zyklon B must have been extremely uncomfortable. But as long as it was safe for the Nazis, it must have been alright.

The cutting of hair seems highly correlated with the use of cyanide. When the Nazis used carbon monoxide, they often did not cut the hair. They didn’t cut the hair when they shot Jews, either. The carbon monoxide methods was far too slow, and used up lots of gasoline. The hair doesn’t absorb bullets, although it is still as valuable.

Carbon monoxide has a much smaller melting point than hydrogen cyanide, and so has different properties. Carbon monoxide would not stick to hair as much as hydrogen cyanide.