Morning Session
MARSHAL: May it please the Court, I desire now to say that the Defendant Kaltenbrunner will be absent from this morning’s session on account of illness.
M. DUBOST: In my capacity as representative of the French Prosecution, I wish to ask the Tribunal to consider this request. The witnesses that were interrogated yesterday are to be cross-examined by the Defense. The conditions under which they are here are rather precarious, for it takes 30 hours to return to Paris. We would like to know whether we are to keep them here; and, if the Defense really intends to cross-examine them, we should like to proceed with that as quickly as possible in order to ensure their return to France.
THE PRESIDENT: In view of what you said yesterday, M. Dubost, I said on behalf of the Tribunal that Herr Babel might have the opportunity of cross-examining one of your witnesses within the next two days. Is Herr Babel ready to cross-examine that witness now?
HERR BABEL: No, Mr. President, I have not yet received a copy of his interrogation and consequently have not been able to prepare my cross-examination. The time from yesterday to today is, naturally, also too short. Therefore, I cannot yet make a definite statement whether or not I shall want to cross-examine the witness. If I were given an opportunity during the course of the day to get the Record. . . .
THE PRESIDENT: [Interposing] Well, that witness must stay until tomorrow afternoon, M. Dubost, but the other witnesses can go. M. Dubost, will you see, if you can, that a copy of the shorthand notes is furnished to Herr Babel as soon as possible?
M. DUBOST: Yes, Mr. President.
[The witness, Boix, took the stand.]
I shall have it done, My Lord. We continue. The Tribunal will remember that yesterday afternoon we projected six photographs of Mauthausen which were brought to us by the witness who is now before you and on which he offered his comments. This witness specifically stated under what conditions the photograph representing Kaltenbrunner in the quarry of Mauthausen had been taken. We offer these photographs as a French document, Exhibit Number RF-332.
Will you allow me to formulate one more question to the witness? Then I shall be through with him, at least concerning the important part of this testimony.
Witness, do you recognize among the defendants anyone who visited the camp of Mauthausen during your internment there?
BOIX: Speer.
M. DUBOST: When did you see him?
BOIX: He came to the Gusen Camp in 1943 to arrange for some constructions and also to the quarry at Mauthausen. I did not see him myself as I was in the identification service of the camp and could not leave, but during these visits Paul Ricken, head of the identification department, took a roll of film with his Leica which I developed. On this film I recognized Speer and some leaders of the SS as well, who came with him. Speer wore a light-colored suit.
M. DUBOST: You saw that on the pictures that you developed?
BOIX: Yes. I recognized him on the photos and afterward we had to write his name and the date because many SS always wanted to have collections of all the photos of visits to the camp.
I recognized Speer on 36 photographs which were taken by SS Oberscharführer Paul Ricken in 1943, during Speer’s visit to the Gusen Camp and the quarry of Mauthausen. He always looked extremely pleased in these pictures. There are even pictures which show him congratulating Obersturmbannführer Franz Ziereis, then commander of the Mauthausen Camp, with a cordial handshake.
M. DUBOST: One last question. Were there any officiating chaplains in your camp? How did the internees who wanted religious consolation die?
BOIX: Yes, from what I could observe, there were several. There was an order of German Catholics, known as “Bibelforscher,” but officially . . .
M. DUBOST: But officially did the administration of the camp grant the internees the right to practice their religion?
BOIX: No, they could do nothing, they were absolutely forbidden even to live.
M. DUBOST: Even to live?
BOIX: Even to live.
M. DUBOST: Were there any Catholic chaplains or any Protestant pastors?
BOIX: That sort of Bibelforscher were almost all Protestants. I do not know much about this matter.
M. DUBOST: How were monks, priests, and pastors treated?
BOIX: There was no difference between them and ourselves. They died in the same way we did. Sometimes they were sent to the gas chamber, at times they were shot, or plunged in freezing water; any way was good enough. The SS had a particularly harsh method of handling these people, because they knew that they were not able to work as normal laborers. They treated all intellectuals of all countries in this manner.
M. DUBOST: They were not allowed to exercise their functions?
BOIX: No, not at all.
M. DUBOST: Did the men who died have a chaplain before being executed?
BOIX: No, not at all. On the contrary, at times, instead of being consoled, as you say, by anyone of their faith, they received, just before being shot, 25 or 75 lash with a leather thong even from an SS Obersturmbannführer personally. I noticed especially the cases of a few officers, political commissars, and Russian prisoners of war.
M. DUBOST: I have no further questions to ask of the witness.
THE PRESIDENT: General Rudenko?
GEN. RUDENKO: Witness, please tell us what you know about the extermination of Soviet prisoners.
BOIX: I cannot possibly tell you all I know about it; I know so much that one month would not suffice to tell you all about it.
GEN. RUDENKO: Then I would like to ask you, Witness, to tell us concisely what you know about the extermination of Soviet prisoners in the camp of Mauthausen.
BOIX: The arrival of the first prisoners of war took place in 1941. The arrival of 2,000 Russian prisoners of war was announced. With regard to Russian prisoners of war, they took the same precautions as in the case of the Republican Spanish prisoners of war. They put machine guns everywhere around the barracks and expected the worst. As soon as the Russian prisoners of war entered the camp one could see that they were in a very bad state, they could not even understand anything. They were human scarecrows. They were then put in barracks, 1,600 to a barracks. You must bear in mind these barracks were 7 meters wide by 50 long. They were divested of their clothes, of the very little they had with them; they could keep only one pair of drawers and one shirt. One has to remember that this was in November and in Mauthausen it was more than 10 degrees (centigrade) below zero.
Upon their arrival there were already 20 deaths, from walking only the distance of 4 kilometers between the station and camp of Mauthausen. At first the same system was applied to them as to us Republican Spanish prisoners. They left us with nothing to do, with no work.
They were left to themselves, but with scarcely anything to eat. At the end of a few weeks they were already at the end of their endurance. Then began the process of elimination. They were made to work under the most horrible conditions, they were beaten, hit, kicked, insulted; and out of the 7,000 Russian prisoners of war who came from almost everywhere, only 30 survivors were left at the end of three months. Of these 30 survivors photographs were taken by Paul Ricken’s department as a document. I have these pictures and I can show them if the Tribunal so wishes.
GEN. RUDENKO: You do have these pictures?
BOIX: M. Dubost knows about that, yes. M. Dubost has them.
GEN. RUDENKO: Thank you. Can you show these pictures?
BOIX: M. Dubost has them.
GEN. RUDENKO: Thank you. What do you know about the Yugoslavs and the Poles?
BOIX: The first Poles came to the camp in 1939 at the moment of the defeat of Poland. They received the same treatment as everybody else did. At that time there were only ordinary German bandits there. Then the work of extermination was begun. There were tens of thousands of Poles who died under frightful conditions.
The position of the Yugoslavs should be emphasized. The Yugoslavs began to arrive in convoys, wearing civilian clothes; and they were shot in a legal way, so to speak. The SS wore even their steel helmets for these executions. They shot them two at a time. The first transport brought 165, the second 180, and after that they came in small groups of 15, 50, 60, 30; and even women came then.
It should be noted that once, among four women who were shot—and that was the only time in the camp of deportees—some of them spat in the face of the camp Führer before dying. The Yugoslavs suffered as few people have suffered. Their position is comparable only to that of the Russians. Until the very end they were massacred by every means imaginable. I would like to say more about the Russians, because they have gone through so much . . .
GEN. RUDENKO: Do I understand correctly from your testimony that the concentration camp was really an extermination camp?
BOIX: The camp was placed in the last category, category 3; that is, it was a camp from which no one could come out.
GEN. RUDENKO: I have no further questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Does Counsel for Great Britain desire to cross-examine?
COLONEL H. J. PHILLIMORE (Junior Counsel for United Kingdom): No questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel for the United States?
MR. THOMAS J. DODD (Executive Trial Counsel for the United States): No questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Do any counsel for the defendants wish to cross-examine?
HERR BABEL: Witness, how were you marked in the camp?
BOIX: The number? What kind of brand?
HERR BABEL: The prisoners were marked by variously colored stars, red, green, yellow, and so forth. Was this so in Mauthausen also? What did you wear?
BOIX: Everybody wore insignia. They were not stars; they were triangles and letters to show the nationality. Yellow and red stars were for the Jews, stars with six red and yellow points, two triangles, one over the other.
HERR BABEL: What color did you wear?
BOIX: A blue triangle with an “S” in it, that is to say “Spanish political refugee.”
HERR BABEL: Were you a Kapo?
BOIX: No, I was an interpreter at first.
HERR BABEL: What were your tasks and duties there?
BOIX: I had to translate into Spanish all the barbaric things the Germans wished to tell the Spanish prisoners. Afterwards my work was with photography, developing the films which were taken all over the camp showing the full story of what happened in the camp.
HERR BABEL: What was the policy with regard to visitors? Did visitors go only into the inner camp or to places where work was being done?
BOIX: They visited all the camps. It was impossible for them not to know what was going on. Exception was made only when high officials or other important persons from Poland, Austria, or Slovakia, from all these countries, would come. Then they would show them only the best parts. Franz Ziereis would say, “See for yourselves.” He searched out cooks, interned bandits, fat and well-fed criminals. He would select these so as to be able to say that all internees looked like these.
HERR BABEL: Were the prisoners forbidden to communicate with each other concerning conditions in the camp? Communication with the outside was, of course, scarcely possible.
BOIX: It was so completely forbidden that, if anyone was caught at it, it meant not only his death but for all those of his nationality terrible reprisals.
HERR BABEL: What observations can you make regarding the Kapos? How did they behave toward your fellow internees?
BOIX: At times they were really worthy of being SS themselves. To be a Kapo, one had to be Aryan, pure Aryan. That means that they had a martial bearing and, like the SS, full rights over us; they had the right to treat us like beasts. The SS gave them carte blanche to do with us what they wished. That is why, at the liberation, the prisoners and deportees executed all the Kapos on whom they could lay their hands.
Shortly before the liberation the Kapos asked to enlist voluntarily in the SS and they left with the SS because they knew what was awaiting them. In spite of that we looked for them everywhere and executed them on the spot.
HERR BABEL: You said “they had to treat you like wild beasts.” From what facts do you draw the conclusion that they were obliged to?
BOIX: One would have to be blind in order not to see. One could see the way they behaved. It was better to die like a man than to live like a beast; but they preferred to live like beasts, like savages, like criminals. They were known as such. I lived there four and a half years and I know very well what they did. There were many among us who could have become Kapos for their work, because they were specialists in some field or another in the camp. But they preferred to be beaten and massacred, if necessary, rather than become a Kapo.
HERR BABEL: Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Does any other member of the defendants’ counsel wish to ask questions of the witness? M. Dubost, do you wish to ask any questions?
M. DUBOST: I have no further questions, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
GEN. RUDENKO: My Lord, the witness informed us that he had at his disposal the photographic documents of 30 Soviet prisoners of war, the sole survivors of several thousand internees in this camp. I would like to ask your permission, Mr. President, to present this photographic document to the witness so that he can confirm before the Tribunal that it is really this group of Soviet prisoners of war.
THE PRESIDENT: Certainly you may show the photograph to the witness if it is available.
GEN. RUDENKO: Yes. Witness, can you show this picture?
[The witness presented the picture to the Tribunal.]
THE PRESIDENT: Is this the photograph?
BOIX: Yes, I can assure you that these 30 survivors were still living in 1942. Since then, in view of the conditions of the camp, it is very difficult to know whether some of them are still alive.
THE PRESIDENT: Would you please give the date when this photograph was taken?
BOIX: It was at the end of the winter of 1941-42. At that time, it was still 10 degrees (centigrade) below zero. You can see from the picture the appearance of the prisoners because of the cold.
THE PRESIDENT: Has this book been put in evidence yet?
M. DUBOST: This book has been submitted as evidence, Your Honor, as official evidence.
THE PRESIDENT: Have the defendants got copies of it?
M. DUBOST: It was submitted as Exhibit Number RF-331 (Document F-321). The Defense have also received a copy of this book in German, but the pictures are not in the German version, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: Well then, let this photograph be marked. It had better be marked with a French exhibit number, I think. What will it be?
M. DUBOST: We shall give it Exhibit Number RF-333.
THE PRESIDENT: Let it be marked in that way, and then hand it to Herr Babel.
GEN. RUDENKO: Thank you, Sir. I have no more questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you hand the photo to Dr. Babel.
[The photo was handed to Herr Babel.]
I think it should be handed about to the other defendants’ counsel in case they wish to ask any question about it. M. Dubost, I think that an approved copy of this book, including the photographs, has been deposited in the defendants’ Information Center.
M. DUBOST: The whole book, except for the pictures.
THE PRESIDENT: Why not the pictures?
M. DUBOST: At that moment we did not have them to submit. In our exposé we have not mentioned the photographs.
THE PRESIDENT: The German counsel ought to have the same documents as are submitted to the Tribunal. The photographs have been submitted to the Tribunal; therefore they should have been deposited in the Information Center.
M. DUBOST: Mr. President, the French text, including the pictures, was deposited in the Defense Information Center; and, in addition, a certain number of texts in German, to which the pictures were not added because we had that translation prepared for the use of the Defense. But there are French copies of the book that you have before you which include the pictures.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
M. DUBOST: We have here four copies of the picture which was shown yesterday afternoon, which we shall place before you. It shows Kaltenbrunner and Himmler in the quarry of Mauthausen, in accordance with the testimony given by Boix. One of these pictures will also be delivered to the Defense, that is, to the lawyer of the Defendant Kaltenbrunner.
THE PRESIDENT: Now the photograph has been handed around to the defendants’ counsel. Do any members of the defendants’ counsel wish to ask any questions of the witness about this photograph? No question? The witness can retire.
BOIX: I would like to say something more. I would like to note that there were cases when Soviet officers were massacred. It is worth noting because it concerns prisoners of war. I would like the Tribunal to listen to me carefully.
THE PRESIDENT: What is it you wish to say about the massacre of the Soviet prisoners of war?
BOIX: In 1943 there was a transport of officers. On the very day of their arrival in the camp they began to be massacred by every means. But it seems that from the higher quarters orders had come concerning these officers saying that something extraordinary had to be done. So they put them in the best block in the camp. They gave them new prisoner’s clothing. They gave them even cigarettes; they gave them beds with sheets; they were given everything they wanted to eat. A medical officer, Sturmbannführer Bresbach, examined them with a stethoscope.
They went down into the quarry, but they carried only small stones, and in fours. At that time Oberscharführer Paul Ricken, chief of the service, was there with his Leica taking pictures without stopping. He took about 48 pictures. These I developed and five copies of each, 13 by 18, with the negatives, were sent to Berlin. It is too bad I did not steal the negatives, as I did the others.
When that was done, the Russians were made to give up their clothing and everything else and were sent to the gas chamber. The comedy was ended. Everybody could see on the pictures that the Russian prisoners of war, the officers, and especially the political commissars, were treated well, worked hardly at all, and were in good condition. That is one thing that should be noted because I think it is necessary.
And another thing, there was a barrack called Barrack Number 20. That barrack was inside the camp; and in spite of the electrified barbed wire around the camp, there was an additional wall with electrified barbed wire around it. In that barrack there were prisoners of war, Russian officers and commissars, some Slavs, a few Frenchmen, and, they said, even a few Englishmen. No one could enter that barrack except the two Führer who were in the camp prison, the commanding officers of the inner and outer camps. These internees were dressed just as we were, like convicts, but without number or identification of their nationality. One could not tell their nationality.
The service “Erkennungsdienst” must have taken their pictures. A tag with a number was placed on their chest. This number began with 3,000 and something. There were numbers looking like Number 11 (two blue darts), and the numbers started at 3,000 and went up to 7,000. SS Unterscharführer Hermann Schinlauer was the photographer then in charge. He was from the Berlin region, somewhere outside of Berlin, I do not remember the name. He had orders to develop the films and to do all work personally; but like all the SS of the interior services of the camp, they were men who knew nothing. They always needed prisoners to get their work done. That is why he needed me to develop these films. I made the enlargements, 5 by 7. These were sent to Obersturmführer Karl Schulz, of Cologne, the Chief of the Politische Abteilung. He told me not to tell anything to anybody about these pictures and about the fact that we developed these films; if we did we would be liquidated at once. Without any fear of the consequences I told all my comrades about it, so that, if one of us should succeed in getting out, he could tell the world about it.
THE PRESIDENT: I think we have heard enough of this detail that you are giving us. But come back for a moment to the case you were speaking of. I wish you would repeat the case of the Russian prisoners of war in 1943. You said that the officers were taken to the quarry to carry the heaviest stones.
BOIX: No, just very small stones, weighing not even 20 kilos, and they carried them in fours to show on the pictures that the Russian officers did not do heavy work but on the contrary, light work. That was only for the pictures, whereas in reality it was entirely different.
THE PRESIDENT: I thought you said they carried big, heavy stones.
BOIX: No.
THE PRESIDENT: Were the photographs taken while they were in their uniforms carrying these light stones?
BOIX: Yes, Sir; they had to put on clean uniforms, neatly arranged, to show that the Russian prisoners were well and properly treated.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well. Is there any other particular incident you want to refer to?
BOIX: Yes, about Block 20. Thanks to my knowledge of photography I was able to see it; I had to be there to handle the lights while my chief took photographs. In this way I could follow, detail by detail, everything that took place in this barrack. It was an inner camp. This barrack, like all the others, was 7 meters wide and 50 meters long. There were 1,800 internees there, with a food ration less than one-quarter of what we would get for food. They had neither spoons nor plates. Large kettles of spoiled food were emptied on the snow and left there until it began to freeze; then the Russians were ordered to get at it. The Russians were so hungry, they would fight for this food. The SS used these fights as a pretext to beat some of them with bludgeons.
THE PRESIDENT: Do you mean that the Russians were put directly into Block 20?
BOIX: The Russians did not come to the camp directly. Those who were not sent to the gas chamber right away were placed in Block 20. Nobody of the inner camp, not even the Blockführer, was allowed to enter this barrack. Small convoys of 50 or 60 came several times a week and always one heard the noise of a fight going on inside.
In January 1945, when the Russians learned that the Soviet Armies were approaching Yugoslavia, they took one last chance. They seized fire extinguishers and killed soldiers posted under the watch tower. They seized machine guns and everything possible as weapons. They took blankets with them and everything they could find. They were 700, but only 62 succeeded in passing into Yugoslavia with the partisans.
That day, Franz Ziereis, camp commander, issued an order by radio to all civilians to co-operate, to “liquidate” the Russian criminals who had escaped from the concentration camp. He stated that everyone who could produce evidence that he had killed one of these men would receive an extraordinary sum of marks. This was why all the Nazi followers in Mauthausen went to work and succeeded in killing more than 600 escaped prisoners. It was not hard because some of the Russians could not drag themselves for more than 10 meters.
After the liberation one of the surviving Russians came to Mauthausen to see how everything was then. He told us all the details of his painful march.
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think the Tribunal wants to hear more details which you did not see yourself. Does any member of the Defense Counsel wish to ask any question of the witness upon the points which he has dealt with himself.
HERR BABEL: One question only. In the course of your testimony you gave certain figures, namely 165, then 180, and just now 700. Were you in a position to count them yourself?
BOIX: Nearly always the convoys came into the camp in columns of five. It was easy to count them. These transports were always sent from the Wehrmacht, from the Wehrmacht prisons somewhere in Germany. They were sent from all prisons in Germany, from the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the SD, or the SS.
THE PRESIDENT: Just answer the question and do not make a speech. You have said they were brought in in columns of five and it was easy to count them.
BOIX: Very easy to count them, particularly for those who wanted to be able to tell the story some day.
HERR BABEL: Did you have so much time that you were able to observe all these things?
BOIX: The transports always came in the evening after the deportees had returned to the camp. At this time we always had two or three hours when we could wander about in the camp waiting for the bell that was the signal for us to go to bed.
THE PRESIDENT: The witness may now retire.
[The witness left the stand.]
M. DUBOST: If the Tribunal permits, we shall now hear Mr. Cappelen, who is a Norwegian witness. The testimony of Mr. Cappelen will be limited to the conditions that were imposed on Norwegian internees in Norwegian camps and prisons.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
[The witness, Hans Cappelen, took the stand.]
THE PRESIDENT: I understand that you speak English.
M. HANS CAPPELEN (Witness): Yes, I speak English.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you take the English form of oath?
CAPPELEN: Yes, I prefer to speak in English.
THE PRESIDENT: What is your name?
CAPPELEN: My name is Hans Cappelen.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me:
I swear that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.
[The witness repeated the oath in English.]
THE PRESIDENT: [To the witness.] Raise your right hand and say “I swear.”
CAPPELEN: I swear.
M. DUBOST: M. Cappelen, you were born 18 December 1903?
CAPPELEN: Yes.
M. DUBOST: In what town?
CAPPELEN: I was born in Kvitseid, province of Telemark, Norway.
M. DUBOST: What is your profession?
CAPPELEN: I was a lawyer, but now I am a business man.
M. DUBOST: Will you tell what you know of the atrocities of the Gestapo in Norway?
CAPPELEN: My Lord, I was arrested on 29 November 1941 and taken to the Gestapo prison in Oslo, Moellergata 19. After 10 days I was interrogated by two Norwegian NS, or Nazi police agents. They started in at once to beat me with bludgeons. How long this interrogation lasted I cannot remember, but it led to nothing. So after some days I was brought to 32 Victoria Terrace. That was the headquarters of the Gestapo in Norway. It was about 8 o’clock at night. I was brought into a fairly big room and they asked me to undress. I had to undress until I was absolutely naked. I was a little bit swollen after the first treatment I had by the Norwegian police agents, but it was not too bad.
There were present about six or eight Gestapo agents and their leader was Femer; Kriminalrat was his title. He was very angry and they started to bombard me with questions which I could not answer. So Femer ran at me and tore all the hair off my head, hair and blood were all over the floor around me. And so, all of a sudden, they all started to run at me and beat me with rubber bludgeons and iron cable-ends. That hurt me very badly and I fainted. But I was brought back to life again by their pouring ice water over me. I vomited, naturally, because I was feeling very sick. But that only made them angry; and they said, “Clean up, you dirty dog!” And I had to make an attempt to clean up with my bare hands.
In this way they carried on for a long, long time, but the interrogation led to nothing because they bombarded me with questions and asked me of persons whom I did not know or scarcely knew.
I suppose it must have been in the morning I was brought back again to the prison. I was placed in my cell and felt very sick and weak. All during the day I asked the guard if I could not have a doctor; that was the 19th. After some days—I suppose it must have been the day before Christmas Eve 1941—I was again, in the night, brought to the Victoria Terrace. The same happened as last time, only this time it was very easy for me to undress because I had only a coat on me. I was swollen up from the last beating. Just like the last time, six, seven, or eight Gestapo agents were present.
THE PRESIDENT: German Gestapo, do you mean?
CAPPELEN: Yes, German Gestapo, all of them. And then there was Femer present at that time, too. He had a rank in the SS and was criminal commissar. Then they started to beat me again, but it was useless to beat a man like me who was so swollen up and looking so bad. Then they started in another way, they started to screw and break my arms and legs. And my right arm was dislocated. I felt that awful pain, and fainted again. Then the same happened as last time; they poured water on me and I came back again to life.
Now all the Germans there were absolutely mad. They roared like animals and bombarded me with questions again, but I was so tired I could not answer.
Then they placed a sort of home-made—it looked to me like a sort of home-made—wooden thing, with a screw arrangement, on my left leg; and they started to screw so that all the flesh loosened from the bones. I felt an awful pain and fainted away again. But I came back to consciousness again; and I have still big marks here on my leg from the screw arrangement, now, four years afterwards.
So that led to nothing and then they placed something on my neck—I still have marks here [indicating]—and loosened the flesh here. But then I had a collapse and all of a sudden I felt that I was sort of paralyzed in the right side. It has otherwise been proved that I had a cerebral hemorrhage. And I got that double vision; I saw two of each Gestapo agent, and all was going round and round for me. That double vision I have had 4 years, and when I am tired it comes back again. But I am better now, so I can move again on the right side; but the right side is a little bit affected from that.
Well, I cannot remember much more from that night, but the other prisoners who had to clean up the corridors in the prison had seen them bringing me back again in the morning. That must have been about 6 o’clock in the morning. They thought I was dead because I had no irons on my hands. If it had been for 1 day or 2 days, I can’t tell, but one day I moved again and was a little bit clear; and then the guard at once was in my cell where I was lying on a cot in my own vomiting and blood, and afterwards there came a doctor.
He had, I suppose, quite a high rank; which rank I can’t exactly say. He told me that I most probably would die, especially if I wasn’t—I asked him, “Couldn’t you bring me to a hospital, because . . .” He said, “No. Fools are not to be brought to any hospital, before you do just what we say you shall do. Like all Norwegians, you are a fool.”
Well, they put my arm into joint again. That was very bad, but two soldiers held me and they drew it in, and I fainted away again. So the time passed and I rested a bit. I couldn’t walk, because it all seemed to be going around for me. So I was lying on the cot. And so one day—it must have been in the end of February or in the middle of February 1942—they came again. It must have been about ten o’clock in the night, because the light in my cell had been out for quite a long time. They asked me to stand up, and I made an attempt, and fell down again because of the paralysis. Then they kicked me; but I said, “Is not it better to put me to death, because I can’t move?”
Well, they dragged me out of the cell, and I was again brought up to Victoria Terrace; that is the headquarters where they made their interrogations. This time the interrogation was led by one SS man called Stehr. I could not stand so, naked as I was, I was lying on the floor. This Stehr had some assistants, four or five Gestapo agents; and they started to tramp on me and to kick me. So all of a sudden they brought me to my feet again and brought me to a table where Stehr was sitting. He took my left hand like this [indicating] and put some pins under my nails and started to break them up. Well, it hurt me badly; and all things began going around and around for me—the double vision—but the pain was so intense that I drew my hand back. I should not have done that, because that made them absolutely furious. I fainted away, collapsed, and I do not know for how long a time; but I came back to life again by the smelling of burned flesh or burned meat. And then one of the Gestapo agents was standing with a little sort of lamp burning me under my feet. It did not hurt me too much, because I was so feeble that I did not care; and I was so paralyzed my tongue could not work, so I could not speak, only groaned a bit, crying, naturally, always.
Well, I don’t remember much more of that time, but this was to me one of the worst things I went through with respect to interrogations. I was brought back again to the prison and time passed and I attempted to eat a little bit. I spewed most of it up again, I threw it up again, most of it. But little by little I recovered. I was still paralyzed in the side, so I couldn’t stand up.
But I was also taken into interrogations again, and then I was confronted with other Norwegians, people I knew and people I did not know; and the most of them were badly treated. They were swollen up, and I remember especially two of my friends, two very good persons. I had been confronted with them, and they were looking very bad from torture, and when I came back again after my imprisonment I learned that they both were dead; they had died from the treatment.
Another incident which I aim to tell—I hope My Lord will permit me to do it—concerned a person called Sverre Emil Halvorsen. He was one day—that must have been in the autumn or in August or October 1943—a little bit swollen up and very unhappy; and he said they had treated him so bad, but he and some of his friends had been in some sort of a court where they had been told that they were to be shot the next day. They placed a sort of sentence upon them, just to set an example.
Well, Halvorsen had, naturally, a headache and felt very ill, and I asked the guard to bring—the head guard, that was a person named Herr Götz. He came and asked what the devil I wanted. I said, “My comrade is very ill, could not he have some aspirins?” “Oh no,” he said, “it is a waste to give him aspirin, because he is to be shot in the morning.”
Next morning he was brought out of the cell, and after the war they found him up at Trondheim together with other Norwegians in a grave there with a bullet through his neck.
Well, the Moellergate 19, in Oslo, the prison where I was for about 25 months, was a house of horror. I heard every night—nearly every night—people screaming and groaning. One day, it must have been in December 1943, about the 8th of December, they came into my cell and told me to dress. It was in the night. I put on my ragged clothes, what I had. Now I had recovered, practically. I was naturally lame on the one side, could not walk so well, but I could walk; and I went down in the corridor and there they placed me as usual against the wall, and I waited that they would bring me away and shoot me. But they did not shoot me; they brought me to Germany together with lots of other Norwegians. I learned afterwards about some few of my friends—and by friends, I mean Norwegians. We were so-called “Nacht und Nebel” prisoners, “Night and Mist” prisoners. We were brought to a camp called Natzweiler, in Alsace. It was a very bad camp, I must say.
We had to work to take stones out of the mountains. But I shall not bore you about my tales from Natzweiler, My Lord, I will only say that people of all other nations—French, Russians, Dutch, and Belgians—were there and we are about five hundred Norwegians who have been there. Between 60 and 70 percent died there or in other camps of concentration. Also, two Danes were there.
Well, we saw many cruel things there, so cruel that they need—they are well known. The camp had to be evacuated in September 1944. We were then brought to Dachau near Munich, but we did not stay long there; at least, I didn’t stay long there. I was sent to a Kommando called Aurich in East Friesland, where we were about—that was an under-Kommando of Neuengamme, near Hamburg. We were about fifteen hundred prisoners. We had to dig tank traps. Well, we had to walk every day about 3 or 4 hours, and go by train for 1 hour to the Panzer Gräben where we worked. The work was so strong and so hard and the way they treated us so bad, that most of them died there. I suppose about half of the prisoners died of dysentery or of ill-treatment in the five or six weeks we were there. It was too much even for the SS, who had to take care of the camp, so they gave it up, I suppose; and I was sent from Neuengamme, near Hamburg, to a camp called Gross-Rosen, in Silesia; it is near Breslau. That was a very bad camp, too. We were about 40 Norwegians there; and of those 40 Norwegians we were about 10 left after 4 to 5 weeks.
THE PRESIDENT: You will be some little time longer, so I think we better adjourn now for 10 minutes.
[A recess was taken.]
M. DUBOST: M. Cappelen, will you continue to speak to us of your passage through those camps, particularly of what you know of the camp of Natzweiler and the role at Natzweiler of Dr. Hirt, Hirch, or Hirtz of the German medical faculty of Strasbourg?
CAPPELEN: Well, in Natzweiler, yes, there were also carried on experiments. Just beside the camp there was a farm they called Struthof. That was practically a part of the camp; and some of the prisoners had to work there to clean up the rooms; and—well not so often, but sometimes—they were taken out. For instance, one day, I remember, all the Gypsies were taken out, and then they were brought down to Struthof. They were very afraid of being brought down there.
Well, one friend of mine, a Norwegian called Hvidding, who had a job in the hospital—so-called hospital—in the camp, told me the day after the Gypsies were taken and brought to Struthof, “I tell you something. They have, so far as I understand, tried some sort of gas on them.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Well, come along with me.”
And then, through the window of the hospital, I could see four of the Gypsies lying in beds. They did not look well, and it was not easy to look through the glass, but they had some mucus, I suppose, around their mouths. And he told me that they had—Hvidding told me—that the Gypsies could not tell much because they were so ill, but so far as he understood, it was gas which they had used upon them. There had been 12 of them, and 4 were living; the other 8, so far as he understood, died down there at Struthof. Then he told further on, “You see that man who sometimes walks through the camp together with some others?”
“Well, I have seen him,” I said.
“That is Professor Hirtz from the German University in Strasbourg.”
I am quite sure Hvidding said that this man is Hirt or Hirtz. He is coming here now nearly daily with a so-called commission to see those who are coming back again from Struthof, to see the result. That is all I know about that so far.
M. DUBOST: How many Norwegians died at Gross-Rosen?
CAPPELEN: In Gross-Rosen, it is not possible for me to say here exactly; but I know about 40 persons who had been there, and I also know about ten who came back again. Well, Gross-Rosen was a bad camp. But nearly the worst of it all was the evacuation of Gross-Rosen. I suppose it must have been in the middle of February of that year. The Russians came nearer and nearer to Breslau.
THE PRESIDENT: You mean 1945?
CAPPELEN: Yes, 1945 I mean. One day we were placed upon a so-called “Appellplatz” (roll call ground). We were very feeble, all of us. We had hard work, little food, and all sorts of ill-treatment. Well, we started to walk in parties of about 2,000 to 3,000. In the party I was with, we were about 2,500 to 2,800. We heard so and so many when they took up the numbers.
Well, we started to walk, and we had SS guards on each side. They were very nervous and almost like mad persons. Several were drunk. We couldn’t walk fast enough, and they smashed in the heads of five who could not keep up. They said in German, “That is what happens to those who cannot walk.” The others would have been treated in the same way if they had not been able to follow. We walked the best we could. We attempted to help one another, but we were all too exhausted. After walking for 6 to 8 hours we came to a station, a railway station. It was very cold and we had only striped prison clothes on, and bad boots; but we said, “Oh, we are glad that we have come to a railway station. It is better to stand in a cow truck than to walk, in the middle of winter.” It was very cold, 10 to 12 degrees below zero (centigrade). It was a long train with open cars. In Norway we call them sand cars, and we were kicked on to those cars, about 80 on each car. We had to sit together and on this car we sat for about 5 days without food, cold, and without water. When it was snowing we made like this [indicating] just to get some water into the mouth and, after a long, long time—it seemed to me years—we came to a place which I afterwards learned was Dora. That is in the neighborhood of Buchenwald.
Well, we arrived there. They kicked us down from the cars, but many were dead. The man who sat next to me was dead, but I had no right to get away. I had to sit with a dead man for the last day. I didn’t see the figures myself, naturally, but about one-third of us or half of us were dead, getting stiff. And they told us that one-third—I heard the figure afterwards in Dora—that the dead on our train numbered 1,447.
Well, from Dora I don’t remember so much, because I was more or less dead. I have always been a man of good humor and high spirited, to help myself first and my friends; but I had nearly given up.
I do not remember so much before, so I had a good chance, because Bernadotte’s action came and we were rescued and brought to Neuengamme, near Hamburg; and when we arrived, there were some of my old friends, the student from Norway who had been deported to Germany, other prisoners who came from Sachsenhausen and other camps, and the few, comparatively few, Norwegian “NN” prisoners who were living, all in very bad condition. Many of my friends are still in the hospital in Norway. Some died after coming home.
That’s what happened to me and my comrades in the three and three-quarter years I was in prison. I am fully aware that it is impossible for me to give details more than I have done; but I have taken, so to say, the parts of it which show, I hope, the way they behaved against Norwegians, and in Norway, the German SS.
M. DUBOST: For what reason were you arrested?
CAPPELEN: I was arrested the 29th of November 1941, in a place called then Hoistly. That is a sort of sanitarium where one goes skiing.
M. DUBOST: What had you done? What was held against you?
CAPPELEN: Well, what I had done. Like most of us Norwegians, we regarded ourselves to be at war with Germany in one way or another; and naturally we, most of us, were against them by feelings; and also, as the Gestapo asked me, I remember, “What do you think of Mr. Quisling?” I only answered, “What would you have done if a German officer—even a major—when your country was at war and your government had given an order of mobilization, he came and said, ‘Better forget the Mobilization Order?’ ” A man can’t do that with respect.
M. DUBOST: On the whole, did the German population know of, or were they unaware of, what went on in the camps?
CAPPELEN: That is, naturally, very difficult for me to answer. But in Norway, at least, even at the time when I was arrested, we knew quite a lot about how the Germans treated their prisoners.
And there is one thing I remember in Munich where I was working. I was not working; I was in Dachau for that short period. With some others, I was once brought to the town of Munich to go into the ruins to seek for persons and find bombs and things like that. I suppose that was the idea. They never told us anything, but we knew what was on. We were about one hundred persons, prisoners. We were looking like dead persons, all of us looking very bad. We went through the streets and people could see us; and they also could see what we were going to do, the sort of work which one should think was very dangerous and which should in some way help them; but it was no fun for them to see us. Some of them were hollering to us, “It is your fault that we are bombed.”
M. DUBOST: Were there any chaplains in your camp? Were you allowed to pray?
CAPPELEN: Well, we had among the “NN” prisoners in Natzweiler a priest from Norway. He was, I suppose, what you call in English a Dean. He was of quite high rank. In Norwegian we call it “Prost.” From the west coast of Norway. He was also brought to Natzweiler as an “NN” prisoner, and some of my comrades asked him if they could not meet sometimes so he could preach to them. But he said, “No, I don’t dare to do it. I had a Bible. They have taken it from me and they joked about it and said, ‘You dirty churchman, if you show the Bible and things like that . . .’ ” You know, therefore, we did not do anything in that way.
M. DUBOST: Those who were dying among you, did they have the consolation of their religion at the time of their death?
CAPPELEN: No.
M. DUBOST: Were the dead treated with decency?
CAPPELEN: No.
M. DUBOST: Was there any religious service conducted?
CAPPELEN: No.
M. DUBOST: I have no further questions to ask.
THE PRESIDENT: Does counsel for the U.S.S.R. desire to cross-examine?
GEN. RUDENKO: I have no question, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Has the United States?
[No response.]
Then does any member of the defendants’ counsel wish to ask the witness any questions?
DR. MERKEL: Witness, at your first interrogations which as a rule took place about ten days after arrest, were you interrogated by German or by Norwegian Gestapo men?
CAPPELEN: It was made by two Norwegians who belonged to, as I learned afterward, the so-called State Police. That was not the police in Norway. They were working together with the Gestapo; in fact, it was the same. But it was by them I was interrogated after the 10 days. But they, as I heard afterwards, usually did it in that way, because it was easy to do it in Norwegian; and some of the Germans could not speak Norwegian. Most of them could not. I think it was, therefore, that they took the Norwegian; and you can call them Gestapo, practically. They let them handle the persons first.
DR. MERKEL: Then at the Victoria Terrace, which name I believe you used to designate the Gestapo headquarters in Oslo, were there Norwegian or German officials present during your interrogation?
CAPPELEN: I dare say there may have been one Norwegian as a sort of interpreter; but as I spoke the German language, I cannot, with 100 percent surety, say if there were one or two Norwegian policemen there. It is difficult. But as Victoria Terrace was the headquarters of the Gestapo, naturally they had some Norwegian Nazis to help them there. But most of them were German.
DR. MERKEL: Were the persons who interrogated you in uniform or in civilian clothes?
CAPPELEN: During my interrogation I have sometimes seen them in uniform, too. But when they tortured me they were mostly in civilian clothes. So far as I remember, there was only one person in uniform during one of the torture interrogations.
DR. MERKEL: You stated that you were then treated by a physician. Did this physician come of his own free will or was he asked to come?
CAPPELEN: The first time I asked for a doctor, but then I did not get any. But at the time when I came back to consciousness, when I was supposed perhaps to be dead, the guard possibly had been looking at me because he was then running away; and afterwards they came with a doctor.
DR. MERKEL: Did you know that in the German concentration camps there was an absolute prohibition against talking about the conditions in the camp—among the prisoners as well as to outsiders, of course—and that any violation of the order not to talk was subject to most severe penalties?
CAPPELEN: Well, in the camps it was like this: It was naturally more or less understood that it was more or less forbidden to talk about the tortures we had gone through; but naturally in the camps, the Nacht und Nebel Camps where I was, the situation was so bad that even torture sometimes seemed to be better than dying slowly away like that, so almost the only thing we spoke about was: “When shall the war end; how to help our comrades; and are we to get some food tonight or not?”
DR. MERKEL: Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Does any other defendant’s counsel wish to ask any questions? Mr. Dubost, have you anything you wish to ask?
M. DUBOST: I have nothing further to ask, Mr. President. I thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Then the witness can retire.
[The witness left the stand.]
M. DUBOST: If the Tribunal will permit, we will now hear a witness, Roser, who will give a few details on the conditions under which they kept French prisoners of war in reprisal camps.
[The witness, Paul Roser, took the stand.]
THE PRESIDENT: What is your name?
M. PAUL ROSER (Witness): Roser, Paul.
THE PRESIDENT: You swear to speak without hate or fear, to state the truth, all the truth, only the truth? Raise the right hand and say “I swear.”
[The witness raised his right hand and repeated the oath in French.]
THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down.
M. DUBOST: Your name is Paul Roser, R-o-s-e-r?
ROSER: R-o-s-e-r.
M. DUBOST: You were born on the 8th of May 1903? You are of French nationality?
ROSER: I am French.
M. DUBOST: You were born of French parents?
ROSER: I was born of French parents.
M. DUBOST: You were a prisoner of war?
ROSER: Yes.
M. DUBOST: You were taken prisoner in battle?
ROSER: Yes, I was.
M. DUBOST: In what year?
ROSER: 14 June 1940.
M. DUBOST: You sought to escape?
ROSER: Yes, several times.
M. DUBOST: How many times?
ROSER: Five times.
M. DUBOST: Five times. You were transferred finally to a disciplinary camp?
ROSER: Yes.
M. DUBOST: Will you indicate the regime of such a camp? Will you indicate your rank, and the treatment which French people of your rank in those disciplinary camps had to submit to, and for what reasons?
ROSER: Very well, I was an “aspirant,” a rank which, in France, is between a first sergeant and a second lieutenant. I was in several disciplinary camps. The first was a small camp which the Germans called Strafkommando, in Linzburg in Hanover. It was in 1941. There were about thirty of us.
While I was in that camp during the summer of 1941, we attempted to escape. We were recaptured by our guards at the very moment when we were leaving the camp. We were naturally unarmed. The Germans, our guards, having recaptured one of us, attempted to make him reveal the others who also had sought to escape. The man remained silent. The guards hurled themselves upon him, beating him with the butts of their pistols in the face, with bayonets, with the butts of their rifles. At that moment, not wishing to let our comrade be killed, several of us stepped forward and revealed that we sought to escape. I then received a beating with bayonets applied to my head and fell into a swoon. When I recovered consciousness one of the Germans was kneeling on my leg and was continuing to strike me. Another one, raising his gun, was seeking to strike my head. I was saved on that occasion through the intervention of my comrades, who threw themselves between the Germans and myself. That night we were beaten for exactly 3 hours with rifle butts, with bayonet blows, and with pistol butts in the face. I lost consciousness three times.
The following day we were taken to work, nevertheless. We dug trenches for the draining of the marshes. It was a very hard sort of work, which started at 6:30 in the morning, to be completed at 6 o’clock at night. We had two stops, each of a half-hour. We had nothing to eat during the day. Soup was given to us, when we came back at night, with a piece of bread, a small sausage or 2 cubic centimeters of margarine, and that was all.
Following our attempted escape, our guards held back from us all the parcels which our families sent to us for a month. We could not write nor could we receive mail.
At the end of three and a half months, in September 1941, we were shipped to the regular Kommandos. I, personally, was quite ill at that time and I came back to Stalag X B at Sandbostel.
M. DUBOST: Why were you subjected to such a special regime, although you were an “aspirant”?
ROSER: Certainly because of my attempted escape.
M. DUBOST: Had you agreed to work?
ROSER: No, not at all. Like all my comrades of the same rank and like most of the noncommissioned officers and like all “aspirants,” I had refused to work, invoking the provision of the Geneva Convention, which Germany had signed and which prescribed that noncommissioned officers who were prisoners cannot be forced to perform any labor without their consent. The German Army, into whose hands we had fallen, practically speaking, never respected that agreement undertaken by Germany.
M. DUBOST: Are you familiar with executions that took place in Oflag XI B?
ROSER: I was made familiar with the death of several French or Allied prisoners, specifically at Oflag XI at Grossborn in Pomerania. A French prisoner, Lieutenant Robin, who with some of his comrades had prepared an escape and for that purpose had dug a tunnel, was killed in the following manner: The Germans having had information that the tunnel had been prepared, Hauptmann Buchmann, who was a member of the officer staff of the camp, watched with a few German guards for the exit of the would-be escapees. Lieutenant Robin, who was first to emerge, was killed with one shot while obviously he could in no manner attack anyone or defend himself.
Other cases of this type occurred. One of my friends, a French Lieutenant Ledoux, who was sent to Graudenz Fortress where he was subjected to a hard detention regime, saw his best friend, British Lieutenant Anthony Thomson, killed by Hauptfeldwebel Ostreich with one pistol shot in the neck, in their own cell. Lieutenant Thomson had just sought to escape and had been recaptured by the Germans on the airfield. Lieutenant Thomson belonged to the RAF.
I should like to state also that in the camp of Rawa-Ruska in Galicia, where I spent 5 months, several of our comrades . . .
M. DUBOST: Would you tell us why you were at Rawa-Ruska?
ROSER: In the course of the winter, 1941-42, the Germans wanted to intimidate, first, the noncommissioned officers who were refractory in labor; second, those who had sought to escape; and third, the men who were being employed in Kommandos (labor gangs) and who were caught in the act of performing sabotage. The Germans warned us that from 1 April 1942 onward all these escapees who were recaptured would be sent to a camp, a special camp called a Straflager, at Rawa-Ruska in Poland.
It was following another attempt to escape that I was taken to Poland with about two thousand other Frenchmen. I was at Limburg-an-der-Lahn, Stalag XII A, where we were regrouped and placed in railway cars. We were stripped of our clothes, of our shoes, of all the food which some of us had been able to keep. We were placed in cars, in each of which the number varied from 53 to 56. The trip lasted 6 days. The cars were open generally for a few minutes in the course of a stop in the countryside. In 6 days we were given soup on 2 occasions only, once at Oppel, and another time at Jaroslan, and the soup was not edible. We remained for 36 hours without anything to drink in the course of that trip, as we had no receptacle with us and it was impossible to get a supply of water.
When we reached Rawa-Ruska on 1 June 1942, we found other prisoners—most of them French, who had been there for several weeks—extremely discouraged, with a ration scale much inferior to anything that we had experienced until then, and no International Red Cross or family parcel for anyone.
At that time there were about twelve to thirteen thousand in that camp. There was for that number one single faucet which supplied, for several hours a day, undrinkable water. This situation lasted until the visit of two Swiss doctors, who came to the camp in September, I think. The billets consisted of 4 barracks, where rooms contained as many as 600 men. We were stacked in tiers along the walls, 3 rows of them, 30 to 40 centimeters for each of us.
During our stay in Rawa-Ruska there were many attempts at escape, more than five hundred in 6 months. Several of our comrades were killed. Some were killed at the time when a guard noticed them. In spite of the sadness of such occurrences, no one of us contested the rights of our guards in such cases, but several were murdered. In particular, on 12 August 1942, in the Tarnopol Kommando, a soldier, Lavesque, was found bearing evidence of several shots and several large wounds caused by bayonets.
On the 14th of August, in the Verciniec Kommando, 93 Frenchmen, having succeeded in digging a tunnel, escaped. The following morning three of them, Conan, Van den Boosch, and Poutrelle, were caught by German soldiers, who were searching for them. Two of them were sleeping; the third, Poutrelle, was not asleep. The Germans, a corporal and two enlisted men, verified the identity of the three Frenchmen. Very calmly they told them: “Now we are obliged to kill you.” The three wretched men spoke of their families, begged for mercy. The German corporal gave the following reply, which we heard only too often: “Befehl ist Befehl” (“An order is an order”); and they shot down immediately two of the French prisoners, Van den Boosch and Conan. Poutrelle was left like a madman and by sheer luck was not caught again. But he was captured a few days later in the region of Kraków. He was then brought back to Rawa-Ruska proper, where we saw him in a condition close to madness.
On the 14th of August, once again in the Stryj Kommando, a team of about twenty prisoners accompanied by several guards, were on their way to work . . . .
M. DUBOST: Excuse me, you are talking about French prisoners of war?
ROSER: Yes, French prisoners of war, so far.
Going along a wood, the German noncommissioned officer, who for some time had been annoying two of them, Pierrel and Ondiviella, directed them into the woods. A few moments later the others heard shots. Pierrel and Ondiviella had just been killed.
On 20 September 1942, at Stryj once again, a Kommando was at work under the supervision of German soldiers and German civilian foremen. One of the Frenchmen succeeded in escaping. Without waiting, the German noncommissioned officers selected two men, if my memory is correct, Saladin and Duboeuf, and shot them on the spot. Incidents of this type occurred in other circumstances. The list of them would be long indeed.
M. DUBOST: Can you speak of the conditions under which the refractory noncommissioned officers who were with you at camp at Rawa-Ruska lived?
ROSER: The noncommissioned officers who refused to work were grouped together in one section of the camp, in two of the large stables which served as billets. They were subjected to a regime of most severe repression; frequent roll calls for assembly; lying-down and standing-up exercise which after a while leaves one quite exhausted.
One day, Sergeant Corbihan, having refused Captain Fournier—a German captain with a French name—to take a tool to work with, the German captain made a motion and one of the German soldiers with him ran Corbihan through with his bayonet; Corbihan by miracle escaped death.
M. DUBOST: How many of you disappeared?
ROSER: At Rawa-Ruska, in the 5 months that I spent there, we buried 60 of our comrades who had died from disease or had been killed in attempted escapes. But so far, 100 of those who were with us and sought to escape have not been found.
M. DUBOST: Is this all that you have witnessed?
ROSER: No, I should say that our stay at the punishment camp, Rawa-Ruska, involved one thing more awful than anything else we prisoners saw and suffered. We were horrified by what we knew was taking place all about us. The Germans had transformed the area of Lvov-Rawa-Ruska into a kind of immense ghetto. Into that area, where the Jews were already quite numerous, had been brought the Jews from all the countries of Europe. Every day for 5 months, except for an interruption of about six weeks in August and September 1942, we saw passing about 150 meters from our camp, one, two, and sometimes three convoys, made up of freight cars in which there were crowded men, women and children. One day a voice coming from one of these cars shouted: “I am from Paris. We are on our way to the slaughter.” Quite frequently, comrades who went outside the camp to go to work found corpses along the railway track. We knew in a vague sort of way at that time that these trains stopped at Belcec, which was located about 17 kilometers from our camp; and at that point they executed these wretched people, by what means I do not know.
One night in July 1942 we heard shots of submachine guns throughout the entire night and the moans of women and children. The following morning bands of German soldiers were going through the fields of rye on the very edge of our camp, their bayonets pointed downward, seeking people hiding in the fields. Those of our comrades who went out that day to go to their work told us that they saw corpses everywhere in the town, in the gutters, in the barns, in the houses. Later some of our guards, who had participated in this operation, quite good-humoredly explained to us that 2,000 Jews had been killed that night under the pretext that two SS men had been murdered in the region.
Later on, in 1943, during the first week of June, there occurred a pogrom which in Lvov caused the death of 30,000 Jews. I was not personally in Lvov, but several French military doctors, Major Guiguet and Lieutenant Levin of the French Medical Corps, described this scene to me.
THE PRESIDENT: The witness appears to be not finishing and therefore I think we had better adjourn now until 2 o’clock.