In March 1939, when Hana Müller (later Bruml) was 16 years old, Nazi Germany occupied her hometown of Prague, Czechoslovakia. Like other Czech Jews, Hana experienced persecution and discrimination under Nazi rule. In August 1942, she was sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where she worked as a nurse. More than two years later, in October 1944, German authorities deported Hana to Auschwitz-Birkenau. At Auschwitz, she was selected for forced labor. After a few weeks, she was sent to Sackisch, a subcamp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. At Sackisch, Hana was forced to work in a German factory making airplane parts for the Nazi German war effort. She was liberated in May 1945.
As we came and we undressed, we had to go through a hallway, naked except in the shoes. An SS came by and looked at our breasts and looked at our bellies, if none of us...if some of us might be pregnant. If they saw anybody pregnant, they pulled them out. So you know, it was...so we were standing there naked, and they came and they looked at our breasts and our bellies. Then we went to a room where they shaved us. And I remember seeing sitting there one of the people I knew with long hair and at that point half of her hair was shaven and half was still long. And I looked at her, and I had few bobby pins, and I kept the bobby pins. I thought when my hair grow I will have the bobby pins. And of course when you all of a sudden see you bald-headed, completely shaven, you look like monkeys. Everybody looks like a monkey. And not only that, with one blade, hundreds of people. And then, with that German thoroughness, they also shaved our pubic hair--about a hundred people with one blade, pubic hair. Uh no cleanliness otherwise, but they shaved the pubic hair.
We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies, Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation, the Claims Conference, EVZ, and BMF for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of donor acknowledgement.
