“Camp Humboldtstrasse has been inhabited by Italian military internees. After it had been destroyed by an air raid, the Italians were removed and 600 Jewish females from Buchenwald concentration camp were brought to work at the Krupp factories. Upon my first visit at Camp Humboldtstrasse, I found these persons suffering from open festering wounds and other ailments.
“I was the first doctor they had seen for at least a fortnight. There was no doctor in attendance at the camp. There were no medical supplies in the camp. They had no shoes and went about in their bare feet. The sole clothing of each consisted of a sack with holes for their arms and head. Their hair was shorn. The camp was surrounded by barbed wire and closely guarded by SS guards.
“The amount of food in the camp was extremely meager and of very poor quality. The houses in which they lived consisted of the ruins of former barracks and they afforded no shelter against rain and other weather conditions. I reported to my superiors that the guards lived and slept outside their barracks as one could not enter them without being attacked by 10, 20, and up to 50 fleas. One camp doctor employed by me refused to enter the camp again after he had been bitten very badly. I visited this camp with Mr. Gröne on two occasions and both times we left the camp badly bitten. We had great difficulty in getting rid of the fleas and insects which had attacked us. As a result of this attack by insects of this camp I got large boils on my arms and the rest of my body. I asked my superiors at the Krupp works to undertake the necessary steps to delouse the camp so as to put an end to this unbearable vermin-infested condition. Despite this report, I did not find any improvement in sanitary conditions at the camp on my second visit a fortnight later.
“When foreign workers finally became too sick to work or were completely disabled, they were returned to the labor exchange in Essen and from there they were sent to a camp at Friedrichsfeld. Among persons who were returned to the labor exchange were aggravated cases of tuberculosis, malaria, neurosis, cancer which could not be treated by operation, old age, and general feebleness. I know nothing about conditions at this camp because I have never visited it. I only know that it was a place to which workers were sent who were no longer of any use to Krupp.
“My colleagues and I reported all of the foregoing matters to Mr. Ihn, director of Friedrich Krupp AG.; Dr. Wiele, personal physician of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach; senior camp leader Kupke; and sometimes to the Essen health department. Moreover, I know that these gentlemen personally visited the camps.”—signed—“Dr. Wilhelm Jäger.”