I should also add that it is impossible to determine the number of these children—like that of the Jews—because they were driven directly to the crematory, were not registered, were not tattooed, and very often were not even counted. We, the internees, often tried to ascertain the number of people who perished in gas chambers; but our estimates of the number of children executed could only be based on the number of children’s prams which were brought to the storerooms. Sometimes there were hundreds of these carriages, but sometimes they sent thousands.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: In one day?
SHMAGLEVSKAYA: Not always the same. There were days when the gas chambers worked from early morning until late at night.
I should also like to tell you about the children—and their number is large—who were interned in concentration camps. At the beginning of 1943 Polish children from Zamoishevna arrived at the concentration camp with their parents. At the same time Russian children from territories occupied by the Germans began to arrive. The Jewish children were added to these. In smaller numbers, one could also meet Italian children in the concentration camp. The conditions were as difficult for the children as for adults; perhaps even more onerous. These children didn’t receive any parcels because there was no one to send them. Red Cross packages never reached the internees. In 1944 a great number of Italian and French children arrived at the concentration camp. All these children suffered from skin diseases, lymphatic boils, and malnutrition; they were badly clad, often without shoes, and had no possibility of washing themselves.
During the Warsaw uprising captured children from Warsaw were brought to the concentration camp. The youngest of the children was a little 6-year-old boy. The children were quartered in special barracks. When the systematic deportation of internees from Birkenau to the interior of Germany commenced, these children were used for heavy labor. At the same time there arrived in the concentration camps the children of Hungarian Jews, who had to work together with the children who were brought after the Warsaw uprising. These children worked with two carts which they had to pull themselves to transport coal, iron machines, wood for floors, and other heavy things from one camp to the other. They also labored at dismantling barracks during the liquidation of the camp. These children remained in the concentration camp until the very end. In January 1945 they were evacuated and had to march to Germany on foot under conditions as difficult as those of the front, under an SS guard, without food, covering about 30 kilometers a day.
MR. COUNSELLOR SMIRNOV: During this march the children died of exhaustion?
SHMAGLEVSKAYA: I wasn’t in the group where there were children, as I managed to escape on the second day after this evacuation march.
I should also like to add a few words regarding the methods of demoralization of the people who were interned in concentration camps. Everything that we had to suffer was the result of a whole system for degrading human beings.
The concentration camp cars in which the internees were transported had previously been used for cattle. When the transports were about to move the cars were nailed shut. In each one of these cars there was a great number of people. The convoy of SS men never considered that human beings have physical needs. Some of these people happened to have necessary pots with them, and they often had to use them for physical needs.
For some time I worked at the store, where kitchen utensils of internees were brought.