ROSER: Yes, French prisoners of war, so far.
Going along a wood, the German noncommissioned officer, who for some time had been annoying two of them, Pierrel and Ondiviella, directed them into the woods. A few moments later the others heard shots. Pierrel and Ondiviella had just been killed.
On 20 September 1942, at Stryj once again, a Kommando was at work under the supervision of German soldiers and German civilian foremen. One of the Frenchmen succeeded in escaping. Without waiting, the German noncommissioned officers selected two men, if my memory is correct, Saladin and Duboeuf, and shot them on the spot. Incidents of this type occurred in other circumstances. The list of them would be long indeed.
M. DUBOST: Can you speak of the conditions under which the refractory noncommissioned officers who were with you at camp at Rawa-Ruska lived?
ROSER: The noncommissioned officers who refused to work were grouped together in one section of the camp, in two of the large stables which served as billets. They were subjected to a regime of most severe repression; frequent roll calls for assembly; lying-down and standing-up exercise which after a while leaves one quite exhausted.
One day, Sergeant Corbihan, having refused Captain Fournier—a German captain with a French name—to take a tool to work with, the German captain made a motion and one of the German soldiers with him ran Corbihan through with his bayonet; Corbihan by miracle escaped death.
M. DUBOST: How many of you disappeared?
ROSER: At Rawa-Ruska, in the 5 months that I spent there, we buried 60 of our comrades who had died from disease or had been killed in attempted escapes. But so far, 100 of those who were with us and sought to escape have not been found.
M. DUBOST: Is this all that you have witnessed?
ROSER: No, I should say that our stay at the punishment camp, Rawa-Ruska, involved one thing more awful than anything else we prisoners saw and suffered. We were horrified by what we knew was taking place all about us. The Germans had transformed the area of Lvov-Rawa-Ruska into a kind of immense ghetto. Into that area, where the Jews were already quite numerous, had been brought the Jews from all the countries of Europe. Every day for 5 months, except for an interruption of about six weeks in August and September 1942, we saw passing about 150 meters from our camp, one, two, and sometimes three convoys, made up of freight cars in which there were crowded men, women and children. One day a voice coming from one of these cars shouted: “I am from Paris. We are on our way to the slaughter.” Quite frequently, comrades who went outside the camp to go to work found corpses along the railway track. We knew in a vague sort of way at that time that these trains stopped at Belcec, which was located about 17 kilometers from our camp; and at that point they executed these wretched people, by what means I do not know.