Germans checked who was circumcised?

[Von Schadewald]

Was checking to see if a man was circumcised as described here
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 12,00.html
frequently done by the Germans?

[David Thompson]

Von Schadewald -- What research steps have you already taken to answer your question? From the forum and section rules:

In the research sections of the forum, we ask the posters to be reasonably well-prepared, and not ask others for information which they could easily get for themselves. The purpose of these sections of the forum is to provide a place where historical matters can be intelligently discussed. It is not a research service.

Noncomplying posts are subject to deletion after warning.

If you have a question, please let the readers know what steps you have taken to answer it when you post the inquiry. This will eliminate misunderstandings and give responding posters a better idea of your familiarity with the subject.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi von S,

This would have created a lot of confusion in the UK. In the 1930s some 35% of boys were circumcised in a population that was under 1% Jewish and without a measurable Muslim population at all. It was supposedly done for medical health reasons. One wonders if the something similar prevailed in pre-war Germany?

Cheers,

Sid.

[4thskorpion]

It was extremely, extremely rare for a non-Jewish Pole to have been circumcised in Poland during that period so consequently when the German's were unsure if a male was Jewish or not because he did not fit the stereotypical appearance of "a Jew", the man in question would be forced to expose himself. This was a widely reported occurrence and fear for those Jews hiding within the non-Jewish population.

[David Thompson]

Let's start seeing some sources for these claimed facts.

[4thskorpion]

From the Jewish virtual library:

"....Because non-Jews in continental Europe generally were not circumcised, German and collaborationist police commonly checked males apprehended in raids. For boys attempting to hide their Jewish identity, using a public restroom or participating in sports could lead to their discovery. More rarely, they underwent painful procedures to disguise the mark of circumcision or even dressed as girls."
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/js ... idden.html


Hiding in the Open:...."The Nazis routinely checked males for circumcisions."
http://www.chgs.umn.edu/histories/minne ... iding.html


Survivor Stories: Isak Borenstein
"....In the death chamber I was tortured. I given cold showers. I was beaten with leather straps until my skin turned the color of wood. They looked to see if I was circumcised. If I was circumcised they would know I was a Jew. I made up a story: I told them that I was a bed wetter. I had put a tight string around my penis and it had cut me. A Volksdeutscher said, "This guy has been beaten so much that if he was a Jew he would already have confessed." They believed me that I was a Russian soldier, so they put me back in a regular cell. There in the cell a Polish officer recognized me as being a Jew. He started yelling, "Jew, Jew, Jew." The Russian prisoners beat that officer so much that he did not say anything. It was pure luck that I survived.

http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/data. ... ivors&ke=1

Uncircumcision: A Historical Review of Preputial Restoration
UNCIRCUMCISION DURING THE NAZI ERA

"...The persecution of Jews under the Nazi regime made the state of being circumcised a life-threatening fact, making no difference whether the person had lost his foreskin for religious reasons or because of a congenital or acquired phimosis. So every circumcised man at that time was in danger of being denounced and, therefore, had to hide his genital state or have it uncircumcised. No description of a surgical technique can be found in the official medical literature of this time, but there exist several personal reports of patients undergoing and doctors performing uncircumcision during this time. One example is the work of Tenenbaum who knew several of these doctors and also examined some of the patients treated.17

From the memoirs of Jonas Turkow, a famous actor at that time, we hear the story of his nephew being uncircumcised twice without success. He pointed out that several "Aryan doctors" made a good living from this procedure by asking large sums of money for the treatment.18"

17. Tenenbaum, J. In Search of a Lost People. New York: Beechhurst Press, 1948.
18. Turkow, J. In Kamf farn Lebn. Buenos Aires: Tsentral-Farband fun Poylishe Yidn, 1949.

http://www.cirp.org/library/restoration/schultheiss/


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[Sergey Romanov]

I don't have any stats, but I am aware of directives warning against lack of circumcision being a sign of non-Jewishness.

To wit:

Pages 6-8: Letter by the head of the Sipo and SD to the commanders of the Sipo and SD in Krakow, Radom, Warsaw, Lublin and Klagenfurt, dated 10 October 1941. It states that there is information that some of the Soviet Jews were not circumcised after 1920-1921.

[Trustme]

This subject seems strikingly familiar to me.
My father told me that when I was born, a Jewish doctor attempted circumcise me. My father vehemently opposed having me circumcised, even though the doctor insisted it was for "health reasons." He also told me he didn't want any of his children associated with being a Jew, because that's one way the Germans distinguished non-Jews from Jews while he lived in Germany during WW2.

[wm]

In Poland the so called "Aryans" were sometimes circumcised for medical reasons, or maybe rather quack medical reasons. It happened sufficiently frequently that doctors were aware of this possibility. During the occupation sometimes pre-war medical certificates of circumcision were falsified.
Some Jews weren't circumcised - probably mostly for fear of infection. There was for example a case of a boy not circumcised after two of his siblings died as result of circumcision.

In the occupied Poland the Polish Council to Aid Jews was helping with "uncircumcisation". For example doctor Feliks Kanabus (although I'm not sure he was a member) did about 70 operations - mostly successful, in one case a German medical board was fooled by his job. Only a few operation was unsuccessful, he said later circumcision was done differently in different regions of Poland, and the Lublin region was the worst - in this case circumcision couldn't be reversed.