I cannot say how many exactly because they never allowed us to find out correctly.
Q. Was this camp guarded at all times?
A. Yes, all the time.
Q. And did the guards carry weapons?
A. Yes, always.
Q. And did you have barbed wire around there?
A. Yes. This barbed wire was even electrified.
Q. Now, up to this point, no one had asked you to sign a contract?
A. No.
Q. Now, you stayed at Strassow about ten days, which would take you to approximately the 27th or 28th of March, 1943?
A. Yes, that is correct.
Q. And then where did you go?
A. I would like to give one more statement with regard to Strassow. May I?
Q. You certainly may.
A. While we were in Strassow, an epidemic of typhus broke out and we had an enormous number of sick. The dispensary did not accept most of the sick because they really had all the people who were almost dying and would not accept any more people. This dispensary was in pretty bad shape but I must admit that the factories into which we came later had better dispensaries. This particular dispensary at Strassow had only one or two nurses, who were not even sworn nurses. I do not know what they were, probably Czechoslovakian. I supposed that this typhus had been brought in by the Russian political deportees, who had been in this camp for much longer than we had.
Q. Then you left late in March 1943, and you went to another camp?
A. Yes, that is correct. I must add that when we left Strassow we got a stamp on our wrists. From that time onwards we always travelled with this stamp and this stamp meant the initials of the factory in which we were meant to work.
Q. And that stamp, just so the record will be clear, was just a rubber stamp, wasn't it?
A. Yes, it was just a rubber stamp.
Q. You don't have anything on your wrist now?
A. No, that stayed only about a month and a half.
Q. And then, what was the next camp to which you went after Strassow?
A. Fishament.
Q. That is spelled F-I-S-C-H-A-M-E-N-T?
A. F-I-S-H-A-M-E-N-T.
Q. Just like it sounds, no "C". How long did you stay there?
A. Let me see. We stayed there for something like a fortnight, something like two weeks.
Q. And were you guarded in Fishament?
A. Yes, we always had the same kind of guards, the same kind of German police.
Q. Did they carry weapons?
A. Yes, always.
Q. And were you inside barbed wire?
A. Yes, exactly.
Q. And what kind of quarters did you have there?
A. There we were in rooms lined with straw.
Q. Just straw on the floor?
A. Yes, only straw. That was all.
Q. How many people were in the room?
A. That, of course, depended as to whether these persons were good comrades or not, but I can say that in my room we had about twenty to twenty-five persons.
Q. And all you had in the room was straw on the floor?
A. That was all.
Q. How big approximately, would you say that the room was?
A. Approximately it would have been four to five meters long, three meters wide, and about two meters and twenty as height, and it is very simple. We all were very close to each other. As a matter of fact we touched each other.
Q. How were you fed there?
A. The food was a little better down there. Every day at noon we were brought to the factory where we got a dish of stangerit, and one hundred grams of bread, and in the evening we got another stangerit.
Q. And what did they get for breakfast?
A. Coffee, that was all. If we were not too numerous, if there were not too many of us, we got bread. It was always the same story, as soon as we got too many we wouldn't get it. That is, most of the time, the following procedure was adopted, we got our bread, one hundred or sometimes one hundred and fifty grams, in the morning, and then we would eat it whenever we pleased during the day.
THE PRESIDENT: I will have to say that I do not know what stangerit means. Could you initiate me into the mystery of that?
MR. DENNEY: It means sauerkraut, doesn't it?
THE WITNESS: It is not exactly what we would call sauerkraut. It is not exactly the dish I used to eat in Germany when I came there before, but it is mixed with potatoes.
Q. (By Mr. Denney) Was there any meat in it?
A. No. We got meat about once a week, which was either donkey made up as hamburger, or else dried horse flesh made up as hamburger. I remember that because that day we used to get noodles with it.
Q. How many people, from the original 1200 that went with you from Montrauban to Strassow came with you from Strassow to Fishament?
Q. I couldn't say the exact number because we were taken always by parts according to the roll call we had in the camp.
Q. Well, do you have any idea?
A. Well, maybe three hundred, two hundred and fifty to three hundred and upwards.
Q. How many people were in Fishament altogether?
A. That would be also rather difficult to say. Maybe there would be about two thousand, but persons came and left again, and besides that it would be rather difficult to count anyhow.
Q. Did anyone get sick at Fishament because of the food or other causes?
A. Yes, at Fishament there were quite a number of them, but I must add that when we came to Wiener Neustadt latter on. There were much less cases because at that time we still had some food that had been brought from France.
Q. They didn't have any blankets for you in Fishament?
A. Yes, we had one blanket each.
Q. And how about Strassow?
A No, at Strassow, we didn't have any.
Q Just the camp?
A Yes, that was all and what we had on us, what we had brought with us.
Q From Fishament where did you go?
AAt Fishament before we left we had to fill in quite a number of forms, and that is why we had to stay about two weeks, and to queue all the time, and then he had another visit we had to go through, and then we were sent to Wiener Neustadt, and in this particular case I can even give positions as to the figure. There were about ninety of us in the same convoy, in the same transport.
Q At Fishament did you lose weight?
A Yes, I lost twenty-four kilos. That is, I must say it wasn't at Fishament only, from the moment when I left until the first chance I got to weigh myself. That was at Wiener Neustadt, about ten days after we arrived. I had lost twenty-four kilos. That would be about forty days.
Q What had you done with the clothing that you had brought with you by the time you were ready to leave Fishament?
A Well, at that time we didn't have any money any more so we had to start to sell something in order to pay, to buy some food on the black market, to have some marks for that.
Q The Germans had not paid you up until this point, had they?
A No, they had not.
Q But they later began to pay you, didn't they?
A They started to pay us from the moment onward when we were in the apprenticeship, but I have to give a position, it wasn't quite correct that they had not paid us. They had given us two and a half marks at Fishament.
Q So you had two and a half marks to take care of all your needs from the time you left France until sometime in March, until the time that you left Fishament, which is sometime late, or early in May?
A No, we had been permitted to exchange two and a half marks at Landau already.
Q So, the two and a half marks at Landau and the two and a half marks you got at Fishament, five marks, was all you had by the time you got ready to go to Wiener Neustadt?
A Yes, that was all.
Q Were you in debt when you left Fishament?
A Yes, I was in debt. I had thirty marks, I owed thirty marks when I left Fishament, but after ten or twelve days in Wiener Neustadt, because the Germans did not pay us right away there either, it went after ten or twelve days I had already seventy-five to eighty marks which I owed to somebody.
Q When did you get to Wiener Neustadt?
A It was about the middle of April.
Q Will you tell the Tribunal about the conditions there, how long you worked? Tell them about how long you worked.
A Yes, but in that case I have to divide it in several periods, in several periods of time, because there were actually periods of time in which it was better and in which it was worse.
Q First, what did they make at Wiener Neustadt?
A I was in a factory which belonged to Goering and which produced Messershmitt 109 airplanes.
Q Now, tell the Court, just in your own words, about what happened there all the time, what you did, how long you worked, how you ate, what you did to get your food, what you did to get your lodging, and how much the Germans paid you.
A Yes, then I will have to tell about each period of time.
Q All right, sir, tell it any way you want.
A The first period was the period of waiting. This is when we waited before we became apprentices. It lasted for about eight to ten days, and we were lodged in a big barrack for eighty persons, and always two of us together had a sort of a straw mat, but the barrack was subdivided and one end of the barrack served as a canteen at the same time.
Q Did you work during that period?
A No, not during this first week.
Q Were you still guarded by people carrying weapons and inside of barbed wire?
A No, we were not. There was no barbed wire around our barrack. The barrack was outside of the camp. It touched the camp, but during this first week we were forbidden to leave the barrack.
Q Well, then what happened after that?
A If I may call this barrack our first period of time, as far as food is concerned we used to have coffee, and 150 grams of bread, and in the evening either a dish of stangerit or Havard beets, and sometimes we would have soup in the evening. That would have been about once every third evening.
Q And then what happened in the next period?
A Could I give some more positions to that subject?
Q Yes, you may.
A It was that period which was the most weakening for all our comrades. They were all feeling very weak, and we had departures to the dispensary of a rate of about 50%, from 50 to 60%. Then one day we were brought into the workshops where we had to serve our apprenticeship. In these workshops the tools were very complete. Everything was there, and we were standing in ranges of twelve, and there was a wooden arrangement for the whole workshop and we were always twelve in one range. For every range there was a supervisor who was at the same time the man who taught us how to work, but there were constantly police in the factory, and there for the first time we saw also guards who were members of the Hitler Youth.
Q How long did you stay there?
AAbout a month, maybe a month and a half.
Q Then what did you do?
A May I give some more positions?
Q Yes.
A Well, I want to add that it was at that time that we first got our pay from the Germans, and that is after two weeks when we had served our apprenticeship for two weeks, we got the first marks which, if you want to call it that way, was our pay. But I must say that all this pay went away for the food, and I don't want to exaggerate but we had to pay for the tickets which we received for our food and also we had to pay our rent because we had received a better barrack, a higher barrack now which contained sixteen persons, and it would have been a barrack for eight to ten.
Now, the food at that time would have been eighty to a hundred grams of potatoes and an additional fifty grams of bread and perhaps ten grams of noodles or something like that, and once in a while an egg. When we paid all this we wouldn't have anything left of our money.
Q Did they ever send any money to France for you?
A No, I never could send any money to France. On the contrary I needed the money.
Q Didn't the Germans ever deposit money in the Credit Lyonnais at Montrauban for you to your account so that when you got back to France you had some money?
A No, I have never known anything about that. No, I have to add that from whatever we received as a salary, and I mean now, not only when I was an apprentice but also later on when I had become what they used to call a skilled worker, that this salary was only a total salary, but in reality there were tax deductions.
First of all there was the ordinary tax. Then there was what they called the contribution for victory. Altogether there were three taxes, and we always received an account and the account showed that -- well, we would receive about the money we would actually receive wouldn't amount to but half or one-third of what was supposed to be our salary.
Q What was the top salary that you ever got in all the time you worked in Germany?
A One hundred to one hundred twenty marks per month, I think. No, maybe one hundred forty, something like one hundred forty marks. That was the highest salary I received.
Q Are we through with the period now of when you were in your apprenticeship?
A Yes, that is the termination period of my apprenticeship.
Q Then sometime in August, was it, or late in July that you started working in the factory as a laborer?
A No, it was at the beginning of July.
Q Beginning of July. Well, tell the Court now how long you worked and how you ate and what you got paid -- perhaps before we start on this, this would be a convenient time for your Honors to adjourn.
THE PRESIDENT: This would seem to be the most significant part of the testimony and let us take it all together after the recess. Recess until 1:30.
THE MARSHAL: This Tribunal is in recess until 1330 hours.
(A recess was taken until 1330 hours.)
AFTERNOON SESSION (The hearing reconvened at 1330 hours, 5 March 1947.)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal Number II is again in session.
(ROLAND FERRIER - Resumed)
DIRECT EXAMINATION (Continued)
MR. DENNEY: May it please your Honors.
BY MR. DENNEY:
Q. Monsieur Ferrier, we had just reached the point in your testimony where around the middle of 1943 you had finished your apprenticeship.
A. Yes.
Q. Now, there are one or two points that I should like to bring out about the time when you were still at Fishamend. Did there come a time when you were there when you were presented with a paper which you were asked to sign?
A. Yes, we had to sign several papers; and there was one especially important. We refused to sign all those papers. The fact that we refused to sign this important paper meant that we had to go for a day or a day and a half or even forty-eight hours -- I cannot quite recollect how long it was -- without any food for this period of time.
Q. And the reason that you refused to sign this paper was that you couldn't understand it; it was in German? Is that right?
A. Yes. There was one paper, however, which we signed. Some of our comrades with previous experience had told us that this was an unimportant paper; and it is actually true that it was not followed by any measures; and we never heard anything about it anymore.
Q. But this paper which you signed was also in German?
A. Yes, it was also in German.
Q. They had no one there who translated the paper for you nor anyone who explained to you on behalf of the guards as to what the paper contained?
A. I could not say that they were never translated because quite a number of papers were signed at Fishamend, and there were interpreters;
but it so happened that in my own case and the case of some of my comrades who had been accused with me there was no interpreter around, and actually the papers were not translated.
THE TRIBUNAL (JUDGE MUSMANNO): Did he know what the first paper contained, Mr. Denney?
A. Well, there were papers which pertained to our birth certificate; other papers which pertained to the question as to whether we had any military service or not. And we were made to sign a paper containing the question of whether we had belonged to the Communist Party or not. Another question was whether we were Jewish or whether one of our ancestors had been Jewish.
Q. Now, returning to the time when you completed your apprenticeship and you entered the ME-109 factory at Wiener Neustadt as an employee of your hosts in Germany, will you tell the Court the conditions what happened as you have told us about the prior periods?
A. When we had finished our apprenticeship we were walked around in groups of fifty, sixty, or a hundred; and then someone came along. He was what they called the Meister, that is, the production manager of the workshop. He pointed out the persons he wanted to have for his workshop; and whoever was left over was chosen by the next man, until nobody was left.
Q. Then what did you do after you were picked to go to work by one of these Meisters?
A. When I was picked out this Meister, as production manager, brought me to his workshop and he confronted me with a French prisoner of war. He told the French prisoner of war in German what I was supposed to do; and then the French prisoner of war translated it to me and explained to me what I had to do, which actually was to make holes into one of the plugs, plugs for cars or airplanes with compressed air.
THE PRESIDENT: Plates?
MR. DENNEY: Spark plugs, I believe.
A. Spark plugs.
A. Well, it went on for eight or ten days and suddenly there they realized whenever I was working with the air pressure that I broke all these plug wires, and that the consumption of plug wires had doubled while I was there, so the first time this meister came along and told me to or explained to me how I should do the work, and then he came a second time and he did speak a little louder, and the third time he hit me over the head -- I am sorry, he hit me in the face, and then the fourth time he sent one of the Hitler youth to watch me, and then it became harder and harder. After sometime the following thing happened, a chief engineer named Has, which was the name of the engineer, who told me and asked me why I broke all of these wires, so I answered, it was not my profession, I did not know how to do it, and he then asked me what I would want to do, so I said, "I would like to do exactly what I used to do in France." He got quite furious too and he hit me in the face, also, and then he called two of these guards, who were first lieutenants as they were called, and he had me sent to the Gestapo.
Q. And then what happened?
A. I was then led into a room which was prepared for this kind of receptions, and there they tried to make me say that I did sabotage, and then I did the work on purpose, and I cannot say exactly that I was tortured, but it was the same regime as they used in France, I was hit over the head, and they beat me, and they even used a wooden stick to hit me over the head. When I was led to the Gestapo I met a French nurse, I think she was a nurse, or something of that kind, well, I met her, and I said, it means, well, they got me --"Bon pour la releve"--they got me and they put me in the releve camp. It was a camp for people who came from France in order to relieve the French prisoners of war who were sent back to France, in releve camp; in reality however , these camps were filled with that kind of people because they were camps where workers were sent who had done some little sabotage, or had not worked properly, and in reality these camps were nothing else but camps for ploitical deportees. Well, when I said that to the nurse she must have gone and seen the director of the factory, and I must say that this director of the factory was the only man around there who 1500 -a man around there who was a friend of the Frenchmen, and he has done a lot for the French colony, and he has very often protected them inspite of the Gestapo and against the Gestapo.
I don't know whether it was actually the director of the factory, who intervened but anyhow the next day I was brought back to my camp, and I was put into a workship where I had to do a very hard work, and what was the worst, the situation was following: I worked at piece work and I was paid according to the number of pieces I produced. If I produced forty pieces, or not enough of them I would not have enough pay to buy my food. I must say that at that time, in July, the food situation in our camp had improved, and had improved considerably. However, it was altogether insufficient for the work-hours we had, which were ten, twelve and sometimes fourteen hours per day, and during these working hours we had only ten minutes rest at nine o'clock in the morning, twenty minutes at noon and ten minutes at four o'clock in the afternoon.
If I say the food situation had improved, that applies only to us who had become skilled workers, and who were capable of rendering considerable services to the German industry. Whoever was not capable of working permanently in an industry would not receive the same rations.
Q. Did there come a time when people who for one reason or another failed properly to perform their work, and these people were sent away from the camp?
A. Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: I am not getting it. It is not coming through.
MR. DENNEY: Nobody is saying anything sir.
THE PRESIDENT: When he was saying something it did not come through then. Try again.
THE INTERPRETER: Can you hear now?
MR. DENNEY: Excuse me.
THE PRESIDENT: It was fading out but it is all right now.
MR. DENNEY: Excuse me sir.
BY MR. DENNEY:
Q. Will you tell the Tribunal what happened to those people who failed to do their work?
A. Well, at that time I had not been sent to this kind of a camp when I was arrested by the Gestapo. However, in September they brought some of our comrades who came back from these camps. They could not tell us exactly where these camps were located because they had been brought there by night, or in closed cars, closed railway cars. They came back in very bad shape, looked pale, and with broken arms, and their faces were all crestfallen, and they were really in very bad shape, and they could have been -- they looked exactly as if they had been political prisoners who had been deported, and who had suffered incredible misery for six or twelve months. We had reports from the comrades who came back from these camps, that the camps were not guarded by the SS but by members of the Hitler Youths, and that was these members of the Hitler Youths who would torture them most, because they would play with these people like a cat with a mouse, that is a correct expression, and if please the Tribunal I would like to give some details as to the treatment to which these prisoners had been submitted to in these camps, but it is only from hearsay, from what I heard from my comrades.
MR. DENNEY: If your Honor please, I think it is perfectly competent for him to tell what he was told by his comrades as to what happened to them when they were taken there.
THE PRESIDENT: We have had a good deal of that kind of evidence here, so I do not think that is any exception.
MR. DENNEY: All right, Your Honor.
A. He told me the following. This was a boy from the town, and I don't know his name because we only knew him by his nickname. But he came back from that camp, and he told us, for instance, that they would make them run around the whole camp at ten o'clock during the night and they were all naked, and, besides that, he told me that, for instance, there would be fourteen in a barrack and that they would put down seven plates far away from them to that only the first seven would have any food and the others would get nothing.
Some other time he told us they had been building a bridge over a river and that they deposited stones on the other side of the river. Incidentally, this almost led us to the conclusion that the camp was Weimar because there was a camp near Weimar, but we finally thought that this was too far away and that we had camps much nearer. While they were building that bridge there actually was a bridge already, but they did not make them cross this existing bridge but had put a wooden plank over the water, and, in order to have fun, they saw these prisoners fall into the water.
I may add one last thing concerning these camps. Between ourselves we used to say that three months in a camp like that would mean death. Of course, these prisoners who came back from those camps had mainly tuberculosis or had broken limbs, or they were coughing and spitting blood, and all this, and in these cases where they could no longer be used there they would be released from the war armament factories and either sent back to France or used in other establishments as waiters.
That is all I can say with regard to the camp. I think that is sufficient.
Q. Now, how long did you stay employed in this Messerschmitt Plant at Weiner Neustadt?
A. Until I could go home. That is, 25 November 1943.
Q. And did you ever see any Luftwaffe officers there?
A. Yes, very often. I can even give an exact case, an individual case. Goering visited our factory three times, but the most important visit was the 1503-A beginning of July before the first bombing of the factory.
That was a gala visit with a lot of officers around, and Goering went through the plant and would question one or the other of the workers. We had been told that while Goering was there we had to go on working. At that time there were Czechoslovakians, Ukrainian, Jugoslavian and French and Belgian prisoners of war. At that time I was working there together with a French prisoner of war, and Goering asked us -- That is, he rather asked the French prisoner of war because he understood more German --He asked him, "Well, How are things going?" The prisoner of war was quite furious. That is he answered, "They are not going at all", so Goering told him that he had to be patient, that there was still work to be done.
Q. And did you see other Luftwaffe officers there from time to time?
A. They came quite often to hold conferences with the production managers, and the -- I cannot recall the names, but I am quite sure my comrades told me the names of the people at the time.
Q. They had an arrangement in the factory about the Gestapo, I believe. Will you tell the Court something about that?
A. Yes, that is correct. Well, here is what I know about that. Of course, there were certain persons in the factory who were anti-Nazi, or at least, not altogether Nazis, because, after all, this was in Austria.
For instance, the chief of the workshop, a Meister Beck -- his name was Beck -- he would often talk with me and also another boy, and when we talked we knew perfectly well what was the general arrangement of the factory. There was, for instance, in a workshop 100 workers, and there would be one engineer, one or two assistant engineers, and then there was the manager of the workshop --several managers of the workshops.
Every manager was watched by four or five guys who were from the Gestapo, but these guys themselves were watched by some other people who were from the Gestapo, and they did not know each other That is, the first guards, the first Gestapo people, did not know the ones by whom they were themselves supervised again. Therefore, we gained the impression that they were all 1504(a) scared one of the other.
When they were alone they used to speak quite freely with us, at least more freely, and as soon as there were two of them it was all "Heil Hitler", and we even thought they were scared -that the father would be scared of his son and vice versa, among close relations.
Q. Do you recall that at later dates sometime during the latter half of 1943, prior to your return to France, other workers came in from France?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you have a chance to discuss with these workers the conditions under which they came?
A. Yes.
Q. Will you tell the Court what you learned from the workers who came in subsequent transports?
A. Until the first of July no new workers from France arrived at our factory, and then we saw youngsters in the green uniforms of these youth camps which we talked about this morning, and they usually had been put into railroad cars right away, and it all depended on the chief of these youth camps because either they passed into the Maquis, that is, into the French resistance movement, and then, of course, they would lead their boys also into the resistance movement, or else if they depended on Vichy and belonged to the Vichy movement, then they would betray their comrades to the Germans.
Until that time the workers who arrived there were either 21, 22, maybe 25, but at the highest 28 years of age, and from that moment on ward they were either younger than 21 or older than 28 -- mostly older, and they usually had been caught in raids on movies, theatres, and so forth.
Q. And did they tell you about attempts to escape that were made by their comrades while they were on their way to Germany or Austria?