BOIX: No, not at all. On the contrary, at times, instead of being consoled, as you say, by anyone of their faith, they received, just before being shot, 25 or 75 lash with a leather thong even from an SS Obersturmbannführer personally. I noticed especially the cases of a few officers, political commissars, and Russian prisoners of war.
M. DUBOST: I have no further questions to ask of the witness.
THE PRESIDENT: General Rudenko?
GEN. RUDENKO: Witness, please tell us what you know about the extermination of Soviet prisoners.
BOIX: I cannot possibly tell you all I know about it; I know so much that one month would not suffice to tell you all about it.
GEN. RUDENKO: Then I would like to ask you, Witness, to tell us concisely what you know about the extermination of Soviet prisoners in the camp of Mauthausen.
BOIX: The arrival of the first prisoners of war took place in 1941. The arrival of 2,000 Russian prisoners of war was announced. With regard to Russian prisoners of war, they took the same precautions as in the case of the Republican Spanish prisoners of war. They put machine guns everywhere around the barracks and expected the worst. As soon as the Russian prisoners of war entered the camp one could see that they were in a very bad state, they could not even understand anything. They were human scarecrows. They were then put in barracks, 1,600 to a barracks. You must bear in mind these barracks were 7 meters wide by 50 long. They were divested of their clothes, of the very little they had with them; they could keep only one pair of drawers and one shirt. One has to remember that this was in November and in Mauthausen it was more than 10 degrees (centigrade) below zero.
Upon their arrival there were already 20 deaths, from walking only the distance of 4 kilometers between the station and camp of Mauthausen. At first the same system was applied to them as to us Republican Spanish prisoners. They left us with nothing to do, with no work.
They were left to themselves, but with scarcely anything to eat. At the end of a few weeks they were already at the end of their endurance. Then began the process of elimination. They were made to work under the most horrible conditions, they were beaten, hit, kicked, insulted; and out of the 7,000 Russian prisoners of war who came from almost everywhere, only 30 survivors were left at the end of three months. Of these 30 survivors photographs were taken by Paul Ricken’s department as a document. I have these pictures and I can show them if the Tribunal so wishes.
GEN. RUDENKO: You do have these pictures?