Ramaswami: On April 24, 1943, Heinrich Himmler gave a speech to an assembly of SS officers: “Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology,” he told them. “It is a matter of cleanliness. In just the same way, anti-Semitism, for us, has not been a question of ideology, but a matter of cleanliness, which now will soon have been dealt with. We shall soon be deloused. We have only 20,000 lice left, and then the matter is finished within the whole of Germany.”