Q. Now, will you briefly describe the course of the day in a concentration camp?
A. As I already mentioned before at various times, there were various periods of the year when we were in the concentration camps, and we had thirty to forty minutes time to make up the beds, which were very bad, because many collective and single sentences were passed there; then we had to wash ourselves, if there was any possible washing facilities there, and then we had to eat what was called a breakfast, and then it was time for the roll calls. The column of prisoners then marched early in the morning, that is, during dawn, to the parade grounds, and these were of all blocks. They stood there at a certain spot around the whole blocks, and then a counting up was done by the clerk. A report of the number of dead, that is, of people who had died during the night, and then it went to the report clerk, and from that time one of the camp leaders came in for a roll call, which usually took between half an hour to five-quarters of an hour. It was shorter in the evening - the roll call - because the work had to begin at a given moment. Then the camp leader came in, as I said before, and an order was given to remove your hats, and there the twenty-five, or thirty, or forty thousand inmates who were standing there on this parade grounds removed their hats simultaneously, and then there was a review of an army of bald heads, and then a report from the report clerk to the camp commandant was given, and then the order was given again, "Put on your caps again," and then a person said, that and that number had to report to the gate.
I can not explain to this Tribunal with a few words exactly what that call meant. It included everybody whose number had been called up, and I went through it myself. There was upon me, as a matter of fact, that paralyzing fear because at the gate almost anything could happen to an inmate. He could be told to stand there from the morning until the evening without knowing what it was all about. He could receive a very simple business letter which his relatives at home had sent to him without knowing the actual conditions in the concentration camps. The reson could sometimes be the report of a divorce, or he might be called to the political department to undergo an intense cross examination. He could be called up to the camp commander. Within five minutes he could be hanged. He could be executed in all sorts of ways. Nobody knew what it was all about. Every morning there was a whole series of comrades of mine who were called up. It depended on the application of sentences. After the evening roll call these punishments were carried out.
Then the command came that all the working commandos should stand at attention. At the same moment there was a big noise in the parade grounds. All the blocks broke their ranks and reformed in new ranks on the same parade ground for working details. Those particular commandos, that is. There was a heavy struggle for the tools, part of which were in the camp itself. Very few commandos had enough tools to take care of all the inmates working in their detail. Anyone who appeared during working hours without a tool - that is, if he could not work or could not work properly - was either beaten to death immediately by the SS-Commando-Fuehrer, or his number was written down and a report was turned in, for either refusal to work or for laziness or for some other reason.
After the struggle for the tool had past, new columns of Arbeitskommandos, or working commandos, were formed, and after ten or fifteen minutes the camp band started playing very nice music. The band consisted of inmates, who sometimes had to play in the winter time with frozen fingers when they could hardly play their instruments. Then in columns of five the people marched out through the gate. That is, as far as the inmates had to work outside the barbed wire fence, within the district of the Kommandatura, or in the SS settlements around the camp or sometimes in the factories which were erected in or around the camps.
We had to remove our hats at the gate, and we had to walk down the camp street, either walking or on the double. It occurred several times that one of the SS leaders would drive or ride in front of the whole column and thus determine the speed at which we had to walk or run. I went through that several times myself - very often. We had to carry our own tools. We had to sing on top of that, and we had to run on the double.
We arrived at our working place and then we started working right away. For quite a period of time it was strictly forbidden, in Buchenwald for instance up to 1941, to take any kind of food to the working place, even such a thing as a small piece of bread. However, we did have the order to carry bread sacks.
At the working place we worked - I am giving you now just an average because there were times when there were four roll calls. For instance, at noon there were two roll calls sometimes, so we had no rest whatsoever. Generally speaking there were two roll calls. In other words, we had to work most of the time until 12:30. Then we had a pause of half an hour, during which time most of us collapsed from exhaustion.
Half an hour later, the same work started all over again, up until - that differed many times - in the shortest case up until four o'clock and in the longest case until eight o'clock in the evening. Then the signal was given that the work was over, and all the outside commandos within a few seconds had to take a stone which was about ten pounds heavy, or find one, load that one up, and then we had to form columns of fives again, and the commandos then left. Every inmate carried such a stone, and then left for the camp. During my whole life I did not know that it was possible to walk during a snow storm and in the condition that we were, without gloves and to carry five bricks on the left shoulder after such a long working day for a distance of a kilometer and a half. I could not believe it. If we had any wounded amongst us, or any dead ones, then we had to carry them with our working commando into the camp.
During the working time, flogging was used daily. Until the end of the camp it occurred very frequently in the single commandos, and barbaric actions of all kinds took place during the whole working period. The SS-Scharfuehrer carried out such things very often.
Part of the work that had to be carried out in concentration camps was sensible. Part of it, however, was senseless, entirely without sense. Not too seldom, particularly prior to the time when the working capacity of the inmates was used for the re-armament of the SS, for instance, to build walls with bricks or tiles, the walls had to be built and then removed again, and that happened up to fifteen or twenty times, so that the ininmates received a feeling of absolute, irresistable torture.
They had the impression that the only reason behind everything was to destroy them.
These senseless jobs that we had there were reduced to a minimum in the course of the war. They became more and more rare. They were used only as a sort of punishment and it was inflicted only on certain people.
Essential work was carried out by the concentration camp inmates, under the unimaginable pressure under which they were all the time, if they could in a sort of hesitating manner. In the concentration camps it was generally the idea to work with the eyes and to work as little as possible with the hands. That is, we had to watch out if a Scharfuehrer or, perhaps, even a SSKommandofuehrer or one of the numerous Capos approached.
There were, of course, quite a few good capos who shut one eye and didn't see certain things. They went through the danger that they themselves be mutilated or punished by the SS for their lack of attentiveness, that is if they were kind-hearted toward one of our comrades.
Jobs were various ones, agriculture, gardening, pit commandos, canalization, building of garages, building of barracks, building of roads, building of houses, and inner commando workshops, tailor shops, shoemaker shops, carpenter shops, sculpture, painting, goldsmiths, silversmiths and photo department. In other words, there were very many jobs, or rather there was hardly any job that wasn't carried out for the SS.
The main aim of the inmates consisted of the following: In the course of time, either through bribery or through connections within the rows, the ranks of comrades, it was their aim to get into a commando where there were the two special privileges, namely fire and a roof over the head. The food situation, which we had for years, and to be exact up until the very end, that was a very bad condition which we had to work under, and under this constant psychic pressure one could hardly carry out the work, for years, the work which was carried out outside of the camp. I know from a great number of comrades of only one who was in the concentration camp for a period of over six years and worked in an outside commando for such a long time. Most of them either died or then in the course of time were transferred to better commandos.
They wanted fire because it distributed heat and because in summer one could have certain privileges, frequently cooking if someone could steal potatoes some place, illegally, of course, and the roof which protected us from the weather.
Q. Witness, you are familiar with the Klinker-Werks in Berlstedt?
A. In Buchenwald there were no klinker works. In Sachsenhausen the works of the DEST were there.
At our camp at Buchenwald there was a clay pit which belonged to the DEST. I know that the DEST had such works at quite a number of concentration camps, particularly quarries, clay pits or tile factories, brick factories. The clay pit, Berlstedt, near Buchenwald, was a punitive detail. As an average approximately three to four and hundred and fifty inmates worked there at a time under very difficult conditions. For instance, the people were in the water up to their stomachs all day long, and their food, as it used to be in the punitive details, was very scarce and very little and not enough, and many of them died there. When we returned from those Arbeitskommandos, I forgot to mention before, the end of the day, then the music was played again. The band was playing when we walked in without our caps on at the parade ground. We had to stand at attention there after we had dropped the stone at some spot as we had been told to do, and we had to stand all through the evening roll call. The evening roll call usually took very, very long. The average was approximately, to be exact prior to '42, '4, it was very seldom under two hours. From then on at Buchenwald at least it lasted between three-quarters of an hour to five-quarters of an hour, an hour and a half.
The counting up was done then, and then the punishments were carried out, or part of the punishments, particularly the whipping, which was very, very frequent. The numbers were called up, and sometimes one, sometimes thirty of the inmates. Sometimes corrective punishment, every tenth person, for instance, was given. The people had to go up to the gate. On the left-hand side of the gate there was a stone heap, a stone pile, and then they were placed on a special wooden tripod which had some sort of percussion cap on which the inmate had to lie down. Their feet were pulled toward the inside so that their lower part was sticking out, and then two Scharfuehrers came in either with whips or long sticks, and then they started paying out, as nice as that expression went, "to pay out."
The flogging usually consisted ordinarily of whipping and consisted of between five to twenty-five whippings. Sometimes the inmates were placed there naked. In most of the cases they had to count along with the SS-Scharfuehrer everytime the stroke went on. It occurred sometimes that they made a mistake in their counting, and then they started all over again from the very beginning.
Every such punishment had to be O.K.'d by Berlin. After the capo of the matter had sent their request in to Berlin, it was usage in the concentration camp for a long time to beat the inmate first, as I had mentioned before, and only then to send the request to Berlin. Then the request came back in most of the cases O.K.'d, and the punishment was inflicted all over again in the same manner as described before. The camp physician had to give his O.K. as to the general condition of the inmate, whether he could take the punishment or not. From my long experience in the concentration camp I only know of one case where the camp physician, during such a discussion, raised an objection and the punishment was interrupted.
The people who had been beaten then came down from the stones, or they were pulled down if they couldn't get down. They had to made push-ups, up to one hundred push-ups, so that their muscles came into action again, and then they were kicked back into our ranks and then songs were sung. Songs were also sung during the flogging or whipping, and only then the order came, "Break up the ranks." Then we received the food that had become cold in the meantime.
Then we had the so-called time off, half an hour or threequarters of an hour, during which time one had to fix his clothes or shine his shoes or to take care of the smaller chores to be taken care of in the block. By that time most of them collapsed in their cots.
Part of the inmates had to work or keep on working immediately after roll call without having received any food, and sometimes right into the night. It occurred sometimes, that is up to the time when a general blackout was ordered due to air raids, that they had to work in the spotlight up to two o'clock in the morning.
That was carried out by certain categories of inmates who then had to get up again at four o'clock or five o'clock and start working all over again. That, generally speaking, was the course of the day in a concentration camp.
I only have to add at this present moment that there were commandos who were definitely better off than these average inmates. I know here there will be more and more inmates who will be able to testify that they themselves weren't badly off in the camps. I have to say the same thing about myself for the last two years and a half. However, right next to me there were incredible and unimaginable things happening. Hundreds of people died. There were commandos who had a lack of nothing, except for food, of course, who were better off than we were or even better off than the population outside of the concentration camp, but that was a very small group of people, as the people who worked in SS stores or their kitchens or who worked immediately with SS people. I have gone through so many instances where inmates, even during their captivity, said right in front of SS barbaric actions that they were doing fine, that they were very well off, that the SS people were very nice to them. It has occurred several times where SS leaders or SS people had certain jobs to do, or who had been grouped with these inmates, or were interested in receiving something special for themselves through the inmates, or then they were just in a good mood and treated somebody well. Although they sometimes flogged the people to death, and although they participated in those executions and wilful killings every day they could still be nice to other people.
Q. Now, this clay pit which you have testified was under DEST was located at Berlstedt, was it not?
A. Yes, that is correct. It was part of DEST.
Q. Berlstedt was a short distance from Buchenwald?
A. Yes, a very short distance from Buchenwald, approximately three kilometers in the northern part of Buchenwald.
Q. Now, I think you have probably described well enough the various types of work in a concentration camp. Can you tell us anything about the occasions for punishment in a concentration camp?
A There was a very peculiar system in the concentration camps, as far as punishments were concerned. Officially there was not too much punishment for which certain regulations had been set up. So it was always possible for the higher-ups to say - of course, I am speaking now of floggings, and all those things. For instance, it was strictly forbidden to carry out the flogging on inmates who were naked. That is, the flogging was then entirely cancelled by Himmler after '42 or '43. But, generally speaking, the cause for the punishments and the way in which punishments were carried out were so horrible and numerous that it is very difficult to give a clear-cut picture of all those things. There were more or less normal punishments. They could be inflicted on the smallest offense; or then, due to a very heavy offense at least heavy in the eyes of the SS, because we did not know any regulations, and we did not ever hear of regulations. For instance, we could be punished because we looked at some SS leader on the camp street in an "unruly" manner. Our number would be written down because our hands were not pressed correctly against the seam of our trousers; because the cap was crooked, or because a button was missing; or then because when we came back from the working Kommandoes, our clothes were dirty; sometimes because we carried out sabotage; during a storm we put some sort of a piece of paper from a paper cement bag underneath our clothes in order to protect ourselves from the rain. Or then sometimes because our clothes were not clean enough. Or then because the stone we carried was not clean enough or was not heavy enough. Or because we smoked - or allegedly smoked; because somebody had given us a stub of a cigarette; because somebody had picked up a stub of a cigarette off the SS roads.
Or then because somebody had allegedly written or used a wrong word in a letter to one of his relatives. Or because the letter was not properly written. Or then, because we didn't answer a Scharfuehrer. For instance, they asked us why we were standing at the gate when we had been called up. Because none of us knew why we were standing at the gate, we couldn't answer - because we didn't know we couldn't answer. Or then because we had to answer in a "fresh" manner. For instance, "I don't know why I am standing here."
One of my close friends, the Austrian Section Chief, Franz von Nortsch, who now is dead, was called up to the gate, around Christmas, and stood there from morning until evening, and was abused by the SS. And he didn't know why. And he was punished thousands of times. Then he was sent away.
And the man who only weighed forty-nine pounds, could hardly stand up, was called up again on Christmas and he stayed there from morning until evening. In the evening the Report Clerk pushed a telegram through the window that his father had died. That is how punishments were carried out in the concentration camps.
Because, for instance, we hadn't kept up the working time. Of course, there were certain cases when people tried to escape, and if someone tried to escape, he was hanged in front of all the concentration camp inmates there. Or then he was tortured prior to that. One was sent to the bunker - or, rather, someone was sent to the bunker - it meant death for him in a gruesome manner.
Somebody could die, for instance, from starvation; somebody could be fed with salt herrings without water until he went crazy.
Or we could be hanged by our feet. All those things are not things I am imagining right at the present moment. All those things actually happened to comrades of mine in the concentration camp Buchenwald, and I know in Dachau, too, worse things happened. And I know in Sachsenhausen, and I know from other camps - and they are all absolutely authentic.
Why else could we be punished? Let me think. I don't know exactly all the occasions. It was nothing but pure will! There were no regulations. The general was for escaping, but there were other regulations for escapees so that people were beaten until they started running and then they were shot.
Then came the function of the SS, who said that an inmate was caught for trying to escape; this was then written into the record, details were given about his execution or the way he was killed. For instance, he ran away and he was short in the back, etc., etc. But I also went through that where another inmate was hiding behind some bushes, and he wanted to go run through the chain of guards in order to be killed there. And that then one of these people asked, "What do you want?" And he said, "I want to be shot;" whereupon he was told, "Why don't you stick around for a moment?" And only when this commission of visitors had left and the inmate had been killed in the meantime, then the commission came back and wrote a new report that somebody else had tried to escape. We had many such cases; and again one of my best friends, the Austrian Justice Minister, Dr. von Winterstein, who was 65 years of age, was killed during one of those "escapes." Punishments? People were hanged to trees so that their toes could not touch the ground; people were hanged to wooden legs; people were killed, hanged, choked, shot to death.
It is quite a chapter if I want to go into detail.... The reasons for punishment and the way the punishment was carried out. And there were enough SS leaders who were in positions in which they allegedly - or really - knew nothing; who, however, at all times, had the possibility, on the basis of their official position, to see all these things - or, rather, who could but who didn't say a word because they were leading their own lives... in their proud uniforms due to which tens of thousands died.
Q Witness, going back for a moment to "work", can you describe to the Tribunal the happenings on May Day or Labor Day - in a concentration camp?
A I did not quite understand the first expression. Would you repeat, please? (Interpreter repeats question) Well, on the first of May - that is '41 or '42 - the dates were more important than the years, really - well, special Scharfuehrers were detailed for the camp, or for the camp administration, and ordered to provide for a very hard work program in the gardens because that was the international holiday of the workers, and we were to be given an opportunity to celebrate first of May.
I shall describe everything that happened in the garden on that particular day.
The result was, over a dozen comrades had been flogged to death - or, rather, five to six death on that evening, not speaking of other things. The Scharfuehrer was very angry about the fact that they also had to lose their time off for the supervision, and, therefore, that is how they expressed their anger - on the inmates themselves. On the time off we worked very hard in the camp. That is, all the punitive details or the special details, so-called "K" inmates. These "K" inmates were the ones who wore green triangles with the letter "K". They were inmates who were considered war criminals and thus sent to the camps.
I had quite a few political friends among them, friends I knew before. That is, people who had nothing to do with criminal things.
Well, as I was saying, all these special commanders and of course the Jews; and in many cases the Poles - had to work on their time off. All the other camp inmates had to do whatever they were told to do. Once in a while we had a Sunday afternoon off.
Q Will you tell us something about the food which was given to the concentration camp inmates?
A That is not very easy to explain either. For a concentration camp inmate originally, 60 Reichpfennigs per day were figured out. Then, this amount, for a short period of time, was reduced to 55 pfennigs. And after a short period of time it was increased to 65 pfennigs.
There was an official food allocation. The value of the calories which were on the paper from 1942, on, was approximately the same as the number of calories which the Germans received outside of the concentration camp - but only on paper. I compared the figures sometimes during my time in the camp and also after my release: they were almost the same. The result, however, was different. The food allocated by the Food Ministry upon orders from the WVHA was first divided up by the SS itself, then the man who was in charge of the stores removed a certain amount of food, then the kitchen; that is, the inmates and the SS people removed a little bit of the food. Then the block eldest received food. And whatever was left - which was very shabby - was left for the inmates, the mass of inmates.
The bread in the various camps, according to the ex perience we had there, was different.
For instance, in Buchenwald for a short period of time it was not bad at all and was the same bread which was used in the Wehrmacht. But at other times it was bad, and it was not enough very little for most of the people in the camp. Some of the Kommandos had special food allocations for those who did heavy work in the armament factories.
Court No. II - Case No. 4 That additional allocation consisted of a small piece of sausage every second or third day, a piece of sausage approximately five centimetres, and a piece of bread, perhaps 1/8 to 1/3 of a loaf.
There were certain times for which the bread was quite sufficient for these Commandos. However, one does not look at the food separately, but in connection with all the other situations in the camp. Then it can be understood why until the end, even during the time of the war, hundreds of inmates, particularly, Russians, Ukranians, and Poles, you actually collected the least small piece of garbage, which were selected out of the garbage cans and eaten by them. Then you can also understand why in our concentration camp in Buchenwald Russian prisoners of war were turned in who came from the outside camps of Buchenwald in the Sperrgebiet because they had eaten food from the cans. The people were sent to bunkers there and killed. All these things couldn't be expressed or understood if the ration which was on the paper would have really been landed out everywhere and to all of them in the correct manner and properly. To this I may add a point mainly the way in which this food was prepared, that didn't have any taste at all, but the taste, the way it was prepared, it was horrible. If you receive sticky beets two or three times a week, then you can't eat them after a long period of time and many people have certain stomach diseases after a little while and this, generally speaking, illustrated the food situation in the camps.
Q. What about the possibility of prisoners receiving money or purchasing things in the concentration camp canteen?
Court No. II - Case No. 4
A. Every month we could write one letter - not all the inmates, not by far. As a matter of fact, that also is only generally speaking. There was a special letter head on that letter which took approximately one-third of the first page and it said there among other things that every inmate in the concentration camp can receive money from his relatives. The sum was not mentioned and he could buy anything he wished to in the concentration camp. Therefore, some of the relatives who had money out of the war, that applied to approximately 1/3 of the inmates from Germany particularly and in some surrounding countries. From 1942 on they did not receive any money at all. At the end, perhaps 9/10 of the camp in the last three years received no money. Anyway, generally speaking 1/3 of the people could receive money. As people found out that money could be sent they sent hundreds of marks and some inmates received thousands of marks, when they could receive thirty marks per month. I shall skip how money was paid out. Well, what was it that a man could actually buy with these thirty marks. There were canteens which was purchased by the SS administration which received generally things from Dachau up until 1939. That canteen community, that was the exact name of it, received certain nice things who ever had money and did not lose it through bribery or pressure, if he had connections, that is, then they probably could buy a few nice things. There were Capos sometimes who got up to four hundred or five hundred marks monthly and who had a wonderful breakfast sometimes even with cream, whipped cream, cakes, cookies, but that applied not to 98% of all the other inmates; in Dachau, for instance, there was a restaurant. I could Court No. II - Case No. 4 only call a name.
It is true that we could receive coffee or a small piece of cake or cookie. That is true in 1939. Whatever ration there was in the camp was purchased. However, from 1939 this diminished rapidly as an average one could only buy certain things like salad and once in a while Germany cigarettes or paper cigars or sometimes tobacco. All these things which were very valuable to us were sold at the same time. They were sold at the same time, with for instance for twenty cigarettes you could buy garters. There were people who had three or four garters because they wanted cigarettes all the time. It was the only means of exchange. The Jews for instance, had to provide the sum in order to buy these garters. It occurred that the SS would collect all these items or special needles, hair needles from the women, so that these needles were sold to us, together with something we really needed for a high price. Then after 1944 we received thin beer for certain inmates, that is in Buchenwald. Apart from that we couldn't buy anything important in the canteens. I can't remember of anything I could have bought myself. From 1943 on a premium or bonus system was introduced in many camps. That is, we the inmates, who worked particularly well were paid a certain weekly bonus. In other words, it was some sort of an ersatz money that was printed by the SS. We found out that money had not been paid out for special work, but that it had simply been given to the Capos and they had distributed it to certain people whom they wanted to give it to and we never saw real money for that money remained with the Capo when it was put down on the accounts of the SS and the SS itself worked with that money. In the Court No. II - Case No. 4 SS-WVHA sometimes it amounted to millions of marks which they could use and trade from these various sources.
In the last few years, I believe, not more often than three times money was paid out to certain categories of inmates, that is, real money. There were bonuses, but, to be exact, we couldn't buy very much with those bonuses. Once in a while we could buy cigarettes. That was possible. It was different in different camps. That just goes to show you how the corruption works. For instance, some of the SS commanders sent some inmate to Holland in order to buy cigarettes or cigars. We were told to pay 10 or 15,000 marks in advance and you will receive cigarettes or tobacco whatever in the world you wish, and the man came back with a few boxes and everyone received two or three cigars, perhaps eight or ten cigarettes, and perhaps just one candy bar. Once could really tell the whole world that there was chocolate in the concentration camps. Then from a certain moment on we could receive parcels from the outside world, which rule was from 1941 on. These parcels proved to be quite some help. All the relatives tried to spare all which would make it easy in order to buy parcels. A woman, for instance, who had two or three children, worked in horrible conditions for five years so that I myself, her kin, in order to save money so she could send me small parcels. And even those small parcels were quite some help. Particularly the protectorate, certain communities collected money to help people in the concentration camps and did help them. Then from a certain moment on, that is from 1943 quite a few Red Cross parcels came in for the French, the Danes, and the Norwegians. We had, for instance, Court No. II - Case No. 4 960 Danish policemen in the camp at Buchenwald and they received Red Cross parcels constantly.