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After the First World War, people in Eastern Europe were routinely deloused
to prevent the spread of typhus. Displaced people expected to be subjected to
this at borders. So when typhus later became stigmatised as a Jewish disease,
the Nazis already had a tool for persecution in the form of sanitary policing.
In Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890-1945, Paul Weindling
suggests that it was just the excuse they needed to lure their victims into the
gas chambers. Published by Oxford University Press, £55, ISBN 0198206917.