COL. POKROVSKY: I would like to ask you the same kind of question about the execution of the 40 Russian students. It is possible for you to give us a few details about the execution?
BLAHA: Yes, those Russian students and intellectuals—I can recall that a doctor was also among them—were brought from the Moosburg Camp to Dachau, and after 1 month they were all executed. That was in March of 1944.
COL. POKROVSKY: Do you happen to know what the reason was for their execution?
BLAHA: The order for it came from Berlin. We did not get to know the reason, because I saw the bodies only after the execution and the reason was read aloud before the execution took place.
COL. POKROVSKY: This execution produced the impression that it was one of the stages of the general plan for extermination of the people who entered Dachau?
BLAHA: Yes. It was easy to see that these executions, these transports of invalids, and the way epidemics were dealt with, were all part of the general plan for extermination; and particularly, and this I must emphasize, it was the Russian prisoners who were always treated the worst of all.
COL. POKROVSKY: Would you be so kind as to say what is known to you in regard to those internees who were in the “Nacht und Nebel” (night and fog) category? Were there many of these internees? Do you know the reason why they were sent to the concentration camp?
BLAHA: Many so-called Nacht und Nebel prisoners came to the concentration camp. The people so designated were mostly from the western countries of Europe, particularly Frenchmen, Belgians, and Dutchmen. The Russian people—and this was also the case with the Czechs and also in my own case—frequently had the designation “return undesirable.” This actually meant the same. Shortly before the liberation many of these people were executed on the order of the camp commander, that is, shot in front of the crematory. Many of these people, particularly the French and Russians, were serious cases of typhus and with a temperature of 40 degrees were carried on stretchers to the rifle range.
COL. POKROVSKY: It seems to me that you mentioned something about a considerable number of prisoners who died of starvation. Could you tell me how large that number was—the number of people who died of starvation?
BLAHA: I believe that two-thirds of the entire population of the camp suffered from severe malnutrition and that at least 25 percent of the dead had literally died of starvation. It was called in German “Hungertyphus.” Apart from that, tuberculosis was the most widespread disease in the camp and it spread also because of malnutrition. Most of its victims were Russians.