THE PRESIDENT: Do any of the defendants’ counsel wish to ask any questions?
DR. EXNER: You have been speaking about the university library at Louvain. I should like to ask something: Were you yourself in Louvain when the two batteries were firing at the library, and at the library only, in 1940?
VAN DER ESSEN: I was not in Louvain, but I should say this: Louvain was in the K. O. line, that is in the very front line; and the population of Louvain was obliged by the British military authorities to evacuate the town on the 14th so that nearly all the inhabitants of Louvain had left at the time when these events took place and only paralytics and sick persons, who could not be transported and who had hidden in their cellars, were left; but what I said concerning these batteries, I know from the interrogation of the two witnesses who were on the spot just outside Louvain. The library was not set on fire from within, but shelled from without. And these witnesses of whom I speak lived in these two villages outside the town where the batteries were located.
DR. EXNER: Were there any Belgian or British troops still left in the town?
VAN DER ESSEN: The Belgian troops were no longer there. They had been replaced by the British troops when the British had taken over the sector and at the time when the library was seen to be on fire. The first flames were seen in the night of the 16th to the 17th at 1:30 in the morning. The British troops had left. There remained only a few tanks which were operating a withdrawal movement. These fired an occasional shot to give the impression that the sector was still occupied by the British Army.
DR. EXNER: So there were still British troops in the town when the bombardment started?
VAN DER ESSEN: There were no longer any British troops; there were merely a few tanks on the hills outside Louvain in the direction of Brussels, a few tanks which, as I said, were carrying out necessary maneuvers for withdrawal.
I would have liked to add a few words and to say to the very honorable Counsel for the Defense that, according to the testimony of persons who were in the library—the ushers and the janitors—not a single British soldier ever set foot in the library buildings.
DR. EXNER: That is not surprising. At the time the German batteries were firing were there still British batteries or Belgian batteries firing?
VAN DER ESSEN: No.