Berek Rothenberg - May 20, 1984
Making the Panzerfaust in Schlieben
What's that?
Panzerfaust is a big hat with a long pipe and the soldier could carry five or six of them. And he used to go out on the road and he used to blow up tanks for them. And I used to, and I used to make him--I used to take--it's a metal hat with a little neck and filled up, and I used to fill 'em in with ??? cream. It was a poison thing. It's still--it's thirty-nine years after, forty years after, and I'm still--when I take a shower I still got in my scalp. I still got this, this, this taste in my mouth comes in--the taste when I take a shower--this bitter taste in my mouth from the stink so many years after.
Was it a uh, a poisonous...
A powder. It was a powder. Naturally it was poison. And we used to boil that--make it liquidy. And we used to pour it in, in, in those hats, and, and, and then fill it up and it got hard like a stone. And then I used to bore that out--make holes. The neck--I used to bore it out those holes. So I used to have a boring machine and I used to take those hats and each neck I used to bored it out. And then the pipes was like cinders. This--the pipe had a little thing what uh, would light up this hat and the hat blowed up against the tank and the, the tank blowed up. We used to work on those Panzerfaust.
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