“The former internees of Breendonck, many of whom have had experience of the concentration camps in Germany—Buchenwald, Neuengamme, Oranienburg—state that, generally speaking, the conditions prevailing at Breendonck in regard to discipline and food were worse. They add that in the camps in Germany, which were more crowded, they felt less under the domination of their guards and had the feeling that their lives were less in danger.”
The figures given in this report are only minimum figures. To give but one example (last paragraph of the last page), M. Verheirstraeten declares that he put 120 people in their coffins during the two months of December 1942 and January 1943. If one bears in mind the executions of the 6th and 13th of January, each of which accounted for the lives of 20 persons, we see that at that time, that is to say, over a period of two months, 80 persons died of disease or ill-treatment. From these camps the internees were transported to Germany in convoys, and a description of these should be given to the Tribunal.
The Tribunal should know, first of all, that from France alone, excluding the three Departments of the Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin, and Moselle, 326 convoys left between 1 January 1944 and 25 August of the same year, that is to say, an average of ten convoys a week. Now each convoy transported from 1,000 to 2,000 persons; and we know now, from what our witness said just now, that each truck carried from 60 to 120 individuals. It appears that there left from France, excluding the above-mentioned three northern departments, 3 convoys in 1940, 19 convoys in 1941, 104 convoys in 1942, and 257 convoys in 1943. These are the figures given in the documents submitted under Number F-274, Exhibit Number RF-301, Page 14. These convoys nearly always left from the Compiègne Camp where more than 50,000 internees were registered and from there 78 convoys left in 1943 and 95 convoys in 1944.
The purpose of these deportations was to terrorize the populations. The Tribunal will remember the text already read; how the families, not knowing what became of the internees, were seized with terror and advantage was taken of this to round-up more workers to help German labor which had become depleted owing to the war with Russia.
The manner in which these deportations were carried out not only made it possible more or less to select this labor; but it constituted the first stage of a new aspect of German policy, that is, purely and simply the extermination of all racial or intellectual categories whose political activity appeared as a menace to the Nazi leaders.
These deportees, who were locked up 80 or 120 in each truck, in any season, could neither sit nor crouch and were given nothing whatsoever to eat or drink during their journey. In this connection we would particularly like to bring Dr. Steinberg’s testimony taken by Lieutenant Colonel Badin of the Office for Inquiry into War Crimes in Paris, Document Number F-392, which we submit as Exhibit Number RF-330, which is the 12th in your document book. We will read only a few paragraphs on Page 2:
“We were crowded into cattle trucks, about 70 in each. Sanitary conditions were frightful. Our journey lasted two days. We reached Auschwitz on 24 June 1942. It should be noted that we had been given no food at all when we left and that we had to live during those two days on what little food we had taken with us from Drancy.”
The deportees were at times refused water by the German Red Cross. Evidence was taken by the Ministry of Prisoners and Deportees, and this appears in Document RF-301, Page 18. It is about a convoy of Jewish women which left Bobigny station on 19 June 1942:
“They travelled for three days and three nights, dying of thirst. At Breslau they begged the nurses of the German Red Cross to give them a little water, but in vain.”
Moreover, Lieutenant Geneste and Dr. Bloch have testified to the same facts and other different facts; and in Document Number F-321, Exhibit Number RF-331, entitled “Concentration Camps,” which we have been able to submit to you in French, Russian, and German, the English version having been exhausted, on Page 21, you will find, “In the station of Bremen water was refused to us by the German Red Cross, who said that there was no water.” This is the testimony by Lieutenant Geneste of O.R.C.G. Concerning this conduct of the German Red Cross and to finish dealing with the subject, there is one more word to be said. Document RF-331 gives you, on Page 162, the proof that that was an ambulance car bearing a red cross which carried gas in iron containers destined for the gas chambers of Auschwitz Camp.