CAPPELEN: I dare say there may have been one Norwegian as a sort of interpreter; but as I spoke the German language, I cannot, with 100 percent surety, say if there were one or two Norwegian policemen there. It is difficult. But as Victoria Terrace was the headquarters of the Gestapo, naturally they had some Norwegian Nazis to help them there. But most of them were German.
DR. MERKEL: Were the persons who interrogated you in uniform or in civilian clothes?
CAPPELEN: During my interrogation I have sometimes seen them in uniform, too. But when they tortured me they were mostly in civilian clothes. So far as I remember, there was only one person in uniform during one of the torture interrogations.
DR. MERKEL: You stated that you were then treated by a physician. Did this physician come of his own free will or was he asked to come?
CAPPELEN: The first time I asked for a doctor, but then I did not get any. But at the time when I came back to consciousness, when I was supposed perhaps to be dead, the guard possibly had been looking at me because he was then running away; and afterwards they came with a doctor.
DR. MERKEL: Did you know that in the German concentration camps there was an absolute prohibition against talking about the conditions in the camp—among the prisoners as well as to outsiders, of course—and that any violation of the order not to talk was subject to most severe penalties?
CAPPELEN: Well, in the camps it was like this: It was naturally more or less understood that it was more or less forbidden to talk about the tortures we had gone through; but naturally in the camps, the Nacht und Nebel Camps where I was, the situation was so bad that even torture sometimes seemed to be better than dying slowly away like that, so almost the only thing we spoke about was: “When shall the war end; how to help our comrades; and are we to get some food tonight or not?”
DR. MERKEL: Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Does any other defendant’s counsel wish to ask any questions? Mr. Dubost, have you anything you wish to ask?
M. DUBOST: I have nothing further to ask, Mr. President. I thank you.