“Germany needs your arms. You are, therefore, going to work; but I want to tell you that you will never see your families again. When one enters this camp, one leaves it by the chimney of the crematorium.”
I remained about three weeks in quarantine in an isolated block, and I was then detailed to work with a squad in a stone quarry. The quarry at Mauthausen was in a hollow about 800 metres from the camp proper. There were 186 steps down to it. It was particularly painful torture, because the steps were so rough-hewn that to climb them even without a load was extremely tiring.
One day, 15 April 1944, I was detailed to a team of 12 men—all of them French—under the orders of a German “Kapo,” a common criminal, and of an SS man.
We started work at seven o’clock in the morning. By eight o’clock, one hour later, two of my comrades had already been murdered. They were an elderly man, M. Gregoire from Lyons, and a quite young man, Lefevre from Tours. They were murdered because they had not understood the order, given in German, detailing them for a task. We were very frequently beaten because of our inability to understand the German language.
On the evening of that first day, 15 April 1944, we were told to carry the two corpses to the top, and the one that I, with three of my comrades, carried was that of old Gregoire, a very heavy man; we had to go up 186 steps with a corpse and we all received blows before we reached the top.
Life in Mauthausen—and I shall declare before this Tribunal only what I myself saw and experienced—was a long cycle of torture and of suffering. However, I would like to recall a few scenes which were particularly horrible and have remained more firmly fixed in my memory.
During September, I think it was on the 6th of September 1944, there came to Mauthausen a small convoy of 47 British, American, and Dutch officers. They were airmen who had come down by parachute. They had been arrested after having tried to make their way back to their own lines. Because of this they were condemned to death by a German tribunal. They had been in prison about a year and a half and were brought to Mauthausen for execution.
On their arrival they were transferred to the bunker, the camp prison. They were made to undress and had only their pants and a shirt. They were barefooted. The following morning they were at the roll call at seven o’clock. The work gangs went to their tasks. The 47 officers were assembled in front of the office and were told by the commanding officer of the camp that they were all under sentence of death.
I must mention that one of the American officers asked the commander that he should be allowed to meet his death as a soldier. In reply, he was bashed with a whip. The 47 were led barefoot to the quarry.
For all the prisoners at Mauthausen the murder of these men has remained in their minds like a scene from Dante’s Inferno. This is how it was done: At the bottom of the steps they loaded stone on the backs of these poor men and they had to carry them to the top. The first journey was made with stones weighing 25 to 30 kilos and was accompanied by blows. Then they were made to run down. For the second journey the stones were still heavier; and whenever the poor wretches sank under their burden, they were kicked and hit with a bludgeon, even stones were hurled at them.