“Among the German executioners were specialists in particular methods of torture. Prisoners were killed by a blow with a stick on the back of the head, by a kick in the stomach, in the groin, et cetera.
“The SS torturers drowned their victims in the dirty water flowing from the bathhouse through a narrow ditch. The head of the victim was plunged into the dirty water and kept under by the boot of an SS man until he died. A favorite method of the Hitler SS was to hang prisoners with their hands bound behind their back. The Frenchman, De Courantin, who suffered the torture in question, stated that a man hanged in this manner lost consciousness very rapidly, whereupon the hanging would be interrupted. He was hanged again as soon as consciousness was recovered and the process was repeated several times.
“For the smallest offense, particularly for any suspicion of escape, the camp internees were hanged by the German fiends. In the middle of each field stood a post with a cross beam 2 meters above ground, from which the victims were hanged. ‘I saw from my barracks,’ said witness Demashev, former camp internee and Soviet prisoner of war, ‘how people were hanged from the beam in the middle of the field.’
“Close to the laundry, in the entresol between the first and second floor, was a special shed with beams from the ceilings where prisoners were hanged in whole groups.”
The women interned in the camp were subjected to the same ill-treatment and torture; they suffered the same forms of control, of work beyond their strength, of beating, and ill-treatment. The greatest cruelty was exercised by the female personnel of the SS. The worst were the chief woman supervisor Erich, and the supervisors Braunstein, Anni David, Weber, Knoblick, Ellert, and Radli.
The Commission has established many facts of unparalleled brutality perpetrated by the German executioners in the camp.
The German, Heinz Stalbe, chief of the camp police, at a plenary meeting stated that he had seen with his own eyes how the director of the crematory, Oberscharführer Mussfeld, tied the arms and legs of a Polish woman and threw her into the furnace alive. The witnesses Yelinski and Olech—workers in the camp—also stated that internees had been burned alive in the crematory ovens:
“An infant was snatched from its mother’s breast and dashed before her eyes against the wall of the barrack”—stated witness Atrochov—“I saw for myself how infants were taken from their mothers and murdered before their eyes: One small leg would be seized by a hand, the executioner would stand on the other and the infant would be torn in half”—stated witness Edward Baran.
“The deputy camp commandant, SS-Obersturmführer Tumann was particularly noted for his sadistic tendencies. He forced groups of internees to kneel in a row and then killed them by blows on the head with a stick. He set Alsatian dogs on the internees. He participated actively and energetically in all executions and killings of the prisoners.
“Thus hunger, work beyond their strength, torture, torment, ill-treatment, and murder accompanied by unheard-of sadism were employed for the mass extermination of the captives in the camp.”