M. DUBOST: Where were you sent then, Madame?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: On leaving Auschwitz we were sent to Ravensbrück. There we were escorted to the “NN” block—meaning “Nacht und Nebel”, that is, “The Secret Block.” With us in that block were Polish women with the identification number “7,000.” Some were called “rabbits” because they had been used as experimental guinea pigs. They selected from the convoys girls with very straight legs who were in very good health, and they submitted them to various operations. Some of the girls had parts of the bone removed from their legs, others received injections; but what was injected, I do not know. The mortality rate was very high among the women operated upon. So when they came to fetch the others to operate on them they refused to go to the Revier. They were forcibly dragged to the dark cells where the professor, who had arrived from Berlin, operated in his uniform, without taking any aseptic precautions, without wearing a surgical gown, and without washing his hands. There are some survivors among these “rabbits.” They still endure much suffering. They suffer periodically from suppurations; and since nobody knows to what treatment they had been subjected, it is extremely difficult to cure them.
M. DUBOST: Were these internees tattooed on their arrival?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: No. People were not tattooed at Ravensbrück; but, on the other hand, we had to go up for a gynecological examination, and since no precautions were ever taken and the same instruments were frequently used in all cases, infections spread, partly because common-law prisoners and political internees were all herded together.
In Block 32 where we were billeted there were also some Russian women prisoners of war, who had refused to work voluntarily in the ammunition factories. For that reason they had been sent to Ravensbrück. Since they persisted in their refusal, they were subjected to every form of petty indignity. They were, for instance, forced to stand in front of the block a whole day long without any food. Some of them were sent in convoys to Barth. Others were employed to carry lavatory receptacles in the camp. The Strafblock (penitentiary block) and the Bunker also housed internees who had refused to work in the war factories.
M. DUBOST: Are you now speaking about the prisons in the camp?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: About the prisons in the camp. As a matter of fact I have visited the camp prison. It was a civilian prison, a real one.
M. DUBOST: How many French were there in that camp?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: From 8 to 10 thousand.
M. DUBOST: How many women all told?