MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: I know it only as far as Himmler is concerned. Apart from Himmler I do not know.
M. DUBOST: Who were the guards in these camps?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: At the beginning there were the SS guards, exclusively.
M. DUBOST: Will you please speak more slowly so that the interpreters can follow you?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: At the beginning there were only SS men, but from the spring of 1944 the young SS men in many companies were replaced by older men of the Wehrmacht both at Auschwitz and also at Ravensbrück. We were guarded by soldiers of the Wehrmacht as from 1944.
M. DUBOST: You can therefore testify that on the order of the German General Staff the German Army was implicated in the atrocities which you have described?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Obviously, since we were guarded by the Wehrmacht as well, and this could not have occurred without orders.
M. DUBOST: Your testimony is final and involves both the SS and the Army.
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Absolutely.
M. DUBOST: Will you tell us about the arrival at Ravensbrück in the winter of 1944, of Hungarian Jewesses who had been arrested en masse? You were in Ravensbrück—this is a fact about which you can testify?