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?
A. Yes, there were attempts to escape and these attempts occurred much more often in the later convoys, in the later transports. First the transports were very full and then afterwards the number of people in the transports decreased, and then when these workers saw they were in a transport going to Germany or going to Austria they tried to escape, but the police, who always were in the train also, very often shot them, and we never had any news of those who were wounded. In some cases when they were brought back to the train they usually were disembarked or pushed out of the train in the next village, wherever the train stopped, and we don't know whether they were brought to the dispensary or what happened to them. Anyhow, I personally never had any news of these people.
Q. Was the factory there bombed while you were there?
A. Yes.
Q. Will you tell the Court about that?
A. Yes. The first bombing of the factory was on the 2nd of August, 1943. At that time planes from Syria flew over the factory and we were told at least that they had come from Syria and they were going to land in Tunisia. The factory was very poorly protected at that time because the Germans generally believed that Wiener Neustadt was out of range of the airfields, of the American airfields, that is, but we, of course, in France knew that the American bombers could bomb Wiener Neustadt, and therefore when we heard the sirens we wanted to escape. However, the police guard, the Verschluss, as they call it, of the factory, forced us to remain in the factory until the first bombing took place. That is, they forced us with a gun in their hand or a machine pistol. At that time the factory was very poorly protected, as I said before, because the Germans didn't think of a raid on their factory. There were no air raid shelters. The first air raid shelter was constructed much later on the 25th of November, 1943. The second air raid was on the 22nd of September, 1943. At that time the factory was already much more protected. They had brought actually very strong protection and they did so because many factories were in the area of Wiener Neustadt, namely, the Dornier factory, the Heinkel factory, and the Messerschmitt factory.
And at that time during this second raid sirens could be heard only three minutes before the raid actually started, end it was impossible to get out of the factory in such a short time because while we tried to get out we got nearer into the range of these planes, and the planes at that time were bombing from higher altitudes and their position was not so strong. After these two or three raids we were authorized to leave the factory when the raids started, when the sirens rang, but, of course, as we didn't want to go back to work we would in those cases go back to camp, and that is why during the two last raids I had to live down there, and also later on, as I heard from comrades who came back, the factory workers, foreign as well as German - I must add too that applied to the German workers too - factory workers were only authorized to leave the factory when the planes could be actually seen. Of course, it was impossible to leave the factory at that time because we were in the range, but this does not apply to the members of the Gestapo, at lease as far as my factory is concerned, I can say that these people all had bicycles and could get away in time. At that time we had quite a number of killed, and we were never authorized to attend the funerals. Only a few of the comrades would get permission to go into these rooms, these barracks where they had mixed the members of these dead, and they could pick out the members and put them together and put them into a coffin, and a few delegations then were authorized to assist in funerals, and they were buried in the cemetery of Wiener Neustadt which was nearby. This order had come first from the Chief Engineer Haas, which is the same chief engineer of whom I have talked already this morning. Then I would like to draw the attention of the high Tribunal to another factor which seems to me is very important, and that is the fact that the Germans wanted to force us to clear the ground around there of many unexploded bombs in order to enable them to put straw around them and to afterwards have them exploded. We, of course, refused to do this work, that is, to clear a way around these unexploded bombs, and the whole camp actually refused, and they thought it was some kind of revolt, so they had the whole camp surrounded by an SS, and the SS guarded the camp for more than a day.
At that time, as we still refused, they started cutting off our food supplies and we still refused. We would not give in. When they saw that we wouldn't give in, they sent Serbians or Croats to do the work.
Q. You left Wiener Neustadt in November 1943?
A. Yes.
Q. And you returned then to France?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you take any money back to France with you?
A. No. I even had to borrow one hundred marks from another of my comrades in order to pay - to buy my railway ticket to go back.
Q. Had you ever had a contract of any kind so far as you know with the German government or with anybody?
A. No, not that I know, but I must say I don't know exactly whether it was a contract or whether I signed a contract or I signed anything that could have been a contract. I think that I can add there that the workers who had actually signed a contract were workers who had left France before the masses of unskilled workers and were actually specialized workers.
Q How many people worked at the Messerschmitt 109 factory in Wiener Neustadt?
A. Do you mean French workers or workers in general?
Q. Everything, first.
A. I was told that there were twenty thousand, twenty thousand at the Number 1 factory, and five thousand at the Number 2 factory.
Q. And you have told the Court that among these were Frenchmen like yourself who were not prisoners of war, Frenchmen who were prisoners of war, Belgians who were prisoners of war, Croats, Serbs, Ukranians, Russians and what else, if you know?
A. Poles and female Poles.
Q. Were there any Dutch there?
A. No, I don't know that there were any Dutch. I know that there were Dutch workers in another factory which also belonged to the Messerschmitt factories, but not in the factory where I worked.
Q. And how did you eat generally, say for the last five months that you were there?
A. Well, I may say that during the first of these five months the food was possible, but afterwards it became worse and worse. If it please the Tribunal, I would like to give some more details with regard to the health situation in the camp.
Q. Yes, I am sure the Court would like to hear it.
A. Well, during the first period in the first camp, this camp was in the factory itself and we were there together with Serbs and Croats. Then afterwards, but before the bombing of the factory, we had another camp which was about one hundred yards from the Heinkel factories and that meant that we had to go about three miles to our camp. During the first bombing when we still had these Serbs and Croats, the whole camp burned and ads their personal clothing and everything burned, and we had to bring them clothing afterwards.
The most dangerous for the health situation in the camp was the fact that people of all nationalities would be thrown into those camps and came through and came and went again. Sometimes there would be fifteen hundred, sometimes two thousand, sometimes three thousand -- one could not give exact figures.
In spite of this enormous number there were only four WC's and also there were only four stoves for the whole camp and sometimes when we could repair it there would be a fifth stove on which we could cook.
If I can express myself in that way, I and all my comrades were convinced that they had not put the camps far away from the factories in order to protect the workers from the air raids, but on the contrary they had put the camps near to the factories in order to protect the factories by the fact that the workers were near. That is all I could say with regard to the bombing. There might be other small details but I don't think they are valuable.
MR. DENNEY: Are there any questions by your Honors?
EXAMINATION BY THE PRESIDENT:
Q Witness, did you see prisoners of war working in the factory making parts for airplanes?
A Yes, they worked exactly in the same way we worked.
Q They worked side by side with the workers who came from France?
A Yes.
Q Did you ever see any American or English prisoners of war at Wiener Neustadt?
A Yes, English prisoners of war.
Q What were they doing?
A They did not work. I didn't see them work. We saw them when they came to fetch food supplies, but I think they fetched them at the great Heinkel Factory. We saw a truck every morning. We met that truck when it passed by. The truck was full of English prisoners of war who probably went to that factory in order to fetch food supplies. We were very glad to meet them and to see them.
Q But they didn't work in the factory?
A Not in my factory, not as far as I know.
BY JUDGE MUSMANNO:
Q What nationality were the prisoners of war who worked?
A. In the factory where I was?
Q. Yes, well those that you saw.
A. There were Frenchmen, Belgians, Russians and also after Italy had sided with the Allies there were Italians.
Q. These were prisoners of war working in the factory in which you were employed?
A. Yes, they were all prisoners cf war who belonged to some command. There were about three hundred of them, I mean French prisoners of war.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Very well.
BY JUDGE PHILLIPS:
Q. What was your physical condition when you returned to France?
A. I was very depressed, and I never succeeded in getting back my physical health, the physical health I had when I left France.
Q. How much weight had you lost?
A. Twenty-four kilogram, as I said to the Court, and I have been able to gain eight kilos again in the meantime; that's all.
Q. Why were you sent back to France in November, 1943?
A. I was not sent back to France. This was in connection with the possibilities cf leave which still existed at that time and I have forgotten to speak about that. When we were first brought to Germany we were told that unless we signed certain papers, these papers which were submitted to us, we could not have leave. As far as sending people back is concerned, only some sick prisoners were sent back and some people who were incapacitated for work or others who had been able to establish false sick certificates before they came over.
Well, one day after the bombing, the air raid of 2 November, I had fallen seriously ill and I had been sick in bed for about four days at the dispensary, and the French doctor, prisoner of war doctor, who was at the factory gave me eight days of leave but I didn't come back after eight days I took twelve days. When I came back to the factory the German doctor, the factory doctor, female factory doctor, told me, "Well, you have exceeded your leave by four days. You will have news from me."
Well, at that time I had received a certificate according to which my mother had a serious heart attack and was going to die, and I didn't know whether she was actually really sick or whether this was only a phoney certificate, but anyhow I got this certificate. Now, when somebody wanted to go on leave he would have to apply and get a confirmation, leave confirmation from the German engineer, and at that time the German engineer would not grant any such confirmation because there was too much work and you could not go to these labor offices, the offices of the Deutsche Arbeits Front, the German Labor Front, in order to get the other necessary papers unless you had this confirmation by the chief engineer.
So what I did was just steal one of these forms, these leave forms, and I filled it in myself and I had the signature of the German chief engineer forged by one of my comrades. With that payer I went very quickly to these German offices and got the other papers and got away.
THE TRIBUNAL (JUDGE MUSMANNO): When was that?
A. That was the 25th of November; and I arrived at home on the 29th of November.
THE TRIBUNAL (JUDGE MUSMANNO: Of what year?
A. Or, rather, I did that on the 24th; but I left on the 25th on leave.
Q. You are a citizen of France, are you not?
A. Yes, I am.
MR. DENNEY: Your witness.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bergold, we'll take the recess now.
DR. BERGOLD: All right.
THE MARSHAL: This Tribunal will be in recess fifteen minutes.
(A recess was taken.)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal No. 2 is again in session.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, you told us that you came into a Youth's camp, is that correct?
A. Yes, that is correct.
Q. Do you know whether the French Victy Government had special decrees to that effect?
A. Yes, certainly.
Q. Was it the duty of every French citizen to take part in such a camp?
A. Yes, exactly.
Q. And after your release you resumed your work with the Credit Lyonnais, did you not?
A. Yes, for five days.
Q. And you told me that you were assistant-manager in this bank?
A. No, not a subdirector. I was Assistant Control Chief, that is what I said.
Q. Is that a high position, or is it in other words that of a simple bank clerk?
A. You might say it was the second stage of qualified bank employees. That is, the first stage altogether -- that is, the first stage altogether would have been employees who were not qualified as bank employees yet; the second stage would be bank employees which had no high position but who were qualified, and my position as Assistant Control Chief might have been considered as the third stage in the employment in the bank.
Q. In other words, you had several bank employees, or clerks under your supervision, is that correct?
A. Yes, that is correct to be said, besides there were three of them who were under my supervision.
Q. In that rather high position you had, did you ever know anything about these Vichy decrees?
A. What kind of prescription are you referring to?
Q In a general prescription, if one is in a high position I suppose that somebody knows of the decrees and the laws of the government, I am sure?
A What subject are you referring to, the Youth Camps, or agreements with Germany?
Q No. I refer to the general decrees of the French Vichy Government.
A I could only speak about the directives issued by the French Government pertaining to the agreements with Germany, or to the Youth Camps, because at that time the French Government would issue so many directives; I mean, after all we had a dictatorships down there, and the French Government would issue so many directives, that only a director or the assistant director of a bank or of a larger bank establishment, could have known all the directives issued by the government.
Q Well, in a position as a free Frenchman, do you know of directives, or did you know of directives concerning labor mobilization Rf the Vichy Government, particularly, concerning the draft labor?
A You can only speak of free Frenchmen with certain restrictions, because under the regime I lived at that time I never considered myself a free Frenchman; only after the liberation of France did I consider myself a free Frenchman in the proper sense of the word.
Well, I can speak about these decrees insofar as I heard something about then when I was up in the mountains, because at my age group when they were drafted into these Youth Camps, we were sent high up into the mountains, and there we could only receive letters which had been our only source of information. The only other source of information we would have at that time were posters, and so far as I know these posters were posted up for the first time only after I had left with my convoy to Germany.