On that day a number of French women were thus taken to the waiting block. I belonged was organized to go and pick up the bodies of those who were strewn over the plain as upon a battlefield. We brought back to the yard of Block 25 the dead and the dying. They remained thus, stacked in the courtyard. This Block 25, which was the anteroom of the gas chamber, if one may say so, I know it full well, because at that time we had been transferred to Block 26 and our windows opened on the courtyard of number 25. One could see the stacks of corpses lined in the courtyard, and from time to time a hand or a head would stir amongst the corpses, seeking to free itself. It was moribund women seeking to free themselves from the stack of corpses. because, as they were condemned to death, they received food or drink only if there was something left in the kitchen; that is to say, frequently, therefore, they remained several days without receiving any food, not even a drop of water. old, passing in front of the block, took pity upon those women who were moaning from morning until night in all languages, "Drink, drink, drink; water water." She came back to our block to find a little herb tea, and when whe was passing it through the grate of the window the guard took her by the neck and threw her inside of Block 25.
My whole life long I will remember Annette . Two days later she was put on the truck which was taking the internees to the gas chamber. She held against her another Frenchman, and when the truck started moving, "Think of my little boy," she said, "if you ever go back to France." Then they started singing the Marseillaise, while the truck started moving. about and gnawing at the corpses and attacking even the moribund who didn't have the strength to drive them away. food in large red containers, which were merely washed in cold water after each meal. Inasmuch as all the women were ill, and they didn't have the strength during the night to go to the trench which was used as lavatory, and the approaches of which are beyond description, they used these containers for a use to which they were not intended.
The next day one would pick up those containers and carry them to the refuse heap, and during the day another crew would come and recuperate them, wash them in cold water, and put them to use again.
Another cause of death was the problem of shoes. In the snow and the mud of Poland, leather shoes were completely damaged at the end of one week or two. Therefore, our feet were frozen and in contusions, so we had to sleep on our shoes, our muddy shoes, lest they be stolen, and at the time of standing for roll call one could hear cries of anguish, "My shoes have been taken from me." Then one had to wait until the whole block had been emptied to look under the table and find shoes again. Frequently the shoes one would find were for the same foot or else you had one wooden shoe and one leather shoe. That was sufficient to stand roll call but it certainly added to our anguish during our work, because it caused wounds upon our feet. Numerous were my friends who went into the infirmary because they had wounds in their legs, and they never came out again.
Q What did they do to the internees who came to roll call without shoes? to Block 25.
Q They were gassed then?
A Yes, they were gassed. They were gassed for any reason whatsoever. Their condition was, moreover, absolutely horrible. When we were stacked eight hundred within a block and could scarcely move, they were in blocks of similar dimensions fifteen hundred of them.
That is the Jewish women. That is to say that many of them could not sleep during the whole night or even stretch out.
Q Can you talk about the infirmary?
Q Would you please indicate what the revier was in the camp? sick. You cannot really give the name of hospital to that place, because it does not correspond in any way to the idea that we have of a hospital. To reach them one had first to obtain authorization from the block leader. He seldom granted such authorization. When you finally succeeded in getting it, you were led in columns before the infirmary. No matter what the weather, whether it snowed or whether it rained, even if you had 40 degrees of fever, you had to wait for several hours in line in order to be examined. Then frequently some of the patients would die outside before the door of the infirmary before they could enter the place. Even to stand in line in front of the infirmary was a dangerous thing in itself, because if the line was too long the SS came along, picked up all the women who were waiting, and took them directly to Block No. 25.
Q That is to say, to the gas chamber?
A Yes; to the gas chamber. That is why frequently the women preferred not to go to the infirmary, and they died at their task or at roll call. After the evening roll call in the winter time, every day one could find the bodies of the dead who had died along the roadside. The only advantage in the infirmary is that if you were assigned to a bed you didn't have to answer roll call. Of course, when the beds were less than one metre in width, four women in one bed, each suffering from a different disease, some who came in because they had contusions of their leg would catch typhus or dysentery. only when they were absolutely rotten. They were covered with vermin. You could see lice crawling like ants on the mattresses. During the typhus epidemic, one of the women said that she could not sleep all night because of the lice, and she spent the night shaking her blanket on a piece of paper.
She literally was emptying the vermin on the paper, and this lasted for hours.
There were practically no medicines. Therefore, the patients assigned to beds remained their without care, without hygiene, without being washed. Those who died remained there for several hours, laying alongside those who were sick, and finally, when they were discovered, they were simply thrown over the side of the bed and they were then dragged in front of the block. There the column would come and fetch them on small stretchers, with the head and legs drooped over the side. In the morning and at night they went from the infirmary to the morgue. the stretchers were replaced by organized cots, because there were too many bodies to be removed. During those periods of epidemics, from 200 to 250 cadavers each day.
Q How many people died in those days? winters, from 200 to 350.
Q Was the infirmary open to any of the inmates?
A No. When we came in the Jewish women could not be admitted. They were directly led to the gas chamber. At Auschwitz there were experimental blocks that? because of the vermin there, they disinfected the blocks with gas. These disinfections were the cause of many, many deaths also, because while you were proceeding with gas disinfection, the prisoners were taken to the shower and their clothes were taken away from them. Then the clothes were taken to be steamed, and the internees remained naked outside while awaiting their clothing. They even sent those who were sick, when they could barely stand upon their legs, to the showers. It is quite evident that a great many of them would die in the course of such proceedings. Those who could not move were washed all in the sane basin during the disinfection.
Q How were you fed? a liter of rutabaga soup, and a few grams of margarine or a thin slice of sausage in the evening.
Q Regardless of the work that you were called upon to perform?
A Regardless of the work that we were called upon to perform. Some who had to work in the factory at Lounion, which was an ammunition factory where they made grenades and shells, received what was known as a supplemental ration when their production was satisfactory. They had to answer roll call as we did, and they were at work twelve hours in the factory. They came back to the camp after the day's tasks, and they went and returned on foot. It was an ammunition factory. I don't know to what company it belonged. It was called Lounion.
Q Was it the only factory?
A No. There was another one in Brudno, but as I did not work there I dont know what they did in that factory. The internees who were taken for Brudno never came back to our camp.
Q. Will you tell us about the experiments?
A. With regard to the experiments, I have seen in theinfirmary, because I was employed at the revere, the line of young Jewish women from Salonica who were waiting in front of the ray room for sterilization. I know that they also operated by castration in the men's camp. With regard to the experiments carried out on one woman, I am familiar with the problem, because my friend, a woman doctor, Helene Solomon-Langevin, who has returned to France, worked for several months in that block to take care of the sick, and she always refused to participate in those experiments. They sterilized women either by inoculation or by operation; likewise also with rays. I knew of several women who had been thus experimented upon. There was a very high mortality rate among those experimented upon. Women who refused to be sterilized were sent to a hard-labor commando, that is punishment labor.
Q. Did one return from such commondos?
A. Very seldom. It was indeed an exception if one came back.
Q. Tell us about the sterilization.
A. The Germans said that they were seeking the best method for sterilizing in order to replace in the occupied countries the local population with Germans at the end of a generation; after they had won the war; after liquidating the inhabitants working for them as slaves.
Q. In the infirmary did you see pregnant women?
A. The Jewish women, when they came in in a state of pregnancy, were subjected to abortion when their pregnance was nearing maturity. After the birth they drowned the babies in a bucket of water. I know that because I worked in the infirmary, and the woman who was assigned to that task was a German nid-wife who was a common-law criminal, guilty of having performed abortion operations. After a while a doctor came, and for months they did not kill the Jewish babies. But one fine day an order came from Berlin saying that they had to be done away with. Then the women and their babies were called to the infirmary. They went up in a truck and they were taken to the gas chamber.
Q. Why did you say that an order came from Berlin?
A. Because I knew the internees who worked in the secretariat of the SS, in particular a Slovakian woman by the name of Hertha Rot, who is now working at UNRRA at Bratislava.
Q. And she told you that?
A. Yes, she did. And moreover, I also knew men who worked in the gas commando.
Q. You have told us about these Jewish mothers. Were there other women with children in your camp?
A. Non-Jewish women were allowed to bear their babies, and the babies were not taken away from them. But considering the horrible conditions in the camp, seldom did the babies live for more than four or five weeks. There was a block where the Polish and Russian mothers were located. One day the Russian mothers, having been accused of making too much noise, had to stand roll call all day long in front of the block, naked, with their babies held in their arms.
Q. What was the disciplinary system of the camp? Who kept surveillance and imposed discipline?
A. Generally speaking, the SS saved a good many of their own personnel by employing criminals for the surveillance of the camp. They themselves performed only supervisory functions over them. These internees were taken from the common-law criminals. They were Germans, and sometimes also of other nationalities; but most of them were of German nationality. By corruption and by denounciation and terror they succeeded in making veritable human beasts of themselves, and one had as much to complain about them as about the SS themselves. They beat us just as hard as the SS, and with regard to the SS the women were as savage as the men were. There is no difference to be drawn between the men and women. The system that was employed by the SS to lower human beings to the very lowest by terror and causing them to commit acts which must have brought shame upon them -- they succeeded in dishumanizing them, and that is what the SS thought. It took a great deal of courage to resist this atmosphere of terror and corruption.
Q. Who distributed punishments?
A. The SS leaders, women and men.
Q. What was the nature of the punishments?
A. Corporal punishment. In particular, one of the most usual punishments was fifty blows of a stick on the back. That was administered with a machine which I saw. It was a sort of swinging system, and one SS was handling it. There were also endless roll calls during the night or also gymnastics; flat on your belly and up and down and up and down for hours. Then when you faltered you were beaten with sticks and taken to block twenty-five.
Q. What about the SS guards and the women? What was their conduct with them?
A. At Auschwitz there was a house of prostitution for the SS and also for the Kapos, that is, they were assistant guards. There was another house for the letter. Moreover, when the SS needed servants they came accompanied by the supervisor, the woman commandant of the camp. They would select during the disinfecting operation, and they designated young women, and the woman leader would pull her out of the ranks, would examine her, and make humorous remarks about her physique, and if they liked her then they would hire her as a maid, with the consent of the women supervisor, who would say to the girl that she must obey absolutely, no matter what was asked of her.
Q. Why did they go during disinfecting?
A. Because they were all naked at the time of the disinfecting.
Q. The system of demoralization and corruption, -- was it exceptional?
A. No. In all the camps where I have been the system was identical. And I spoke to internees who came from camps where I had never been, and the some story everywhere. The system is identical no matter what the camp is. There may be slight variations. I believe Auschwitz was one of the worst. And I went also to Ravensbruch. There also was a house of prostitution, and there they also recruited among the women for the purposes of prostitution.
Q. According to you, then, everything was put into effect in order to degrade those women?
A. Yes indeed.
Q. What do you know about the transportation of Jewish women who were brought in from Romainville?
A. When we left the fort of Romainville we had left behind us the Jewish women who were there the same time we were.
They were sent to Grancy, and then they arrived at Auschwitz, where we found them again three weeks later; three weeks after we arrived. Out of 1,200 only 125 actually came into the campt; the others went immediately to the gas chambers. Of the 125 not one was left after one month of the 125. The transports were carried out in the following manner: they selected first the older people, older women, the mothers and the children, and they were put into lorries, as well as the sick or those who seemed to be of weak constitution. They only took the young women, the young girls, young men -- the latter, of course, were sent to the men's camp. Generally, out of a transport of about 1,000 to 1,5000, seldom more than 250 actually came into the camp. That was really the maximum; the rest of them were directly put away to the gas chamber. Through a system of selection they also chose women in good health between the ages of twenty and thirty who were sent to the experimental blocks, and the young firls and the women who were somewhat older, who had not been selected for this purpose, were sent to the camp and, well, like ourselves, they were tattoed and their heads were shaved.
It was the period when large transports of Hungarian Jews came, 700,000 about. Doctor Monella, who was carrying out experiments, kept the twins from all the transports, and generally regardless of their age, all twins; just so the two could be present at the same time. Then in that block you had babies and you had adults, right there. I don't know whether in addition to bloodletting and other things -- I don't know what they did to them. the convoys. You were present? the block where we lived, was right opposite the place where the train arrived. Instead of making the selection at the place where they arrived, there was a side line which took the train almost to the gas chamber, about one hundred yards from the stop was the gas chamber, and the train was right in front of our block, and there were, of course, two rows of barbed wire between our house and the train. We could see the cars being opened; the soldier would bring the men, women, and children out of the cars, and then you could see the heart-rending scenes of old couples being separated from one another; mothers being forced to abandon their young girls, since the young women entered the camp and the mother and child were immediately taken to the gas chamber. All of those people were not aware of the fate that was in store for them; they were merely bewildered because they were being separatef from each other, and they did not know whether they were going to their death or not. say, in June and July 1944 there was an orchestra of internee personnel. They were all young girls, very prettily dressed in white blouses. They played, while the selecting was being made at the time of the arrival of the train, cheerful tunes like the "Merry Widow" and the barcarolle from "The Contes d'Hoffmann", and so on. Then they told them that this was a labor camp, and inasmuch as they did not enter the camp they only saw the outside there, the little platform surrounded with green flowers. Naturally, seeing only the orchestra they didn't realize what was awaiting them. Those who were selected for gas chambers, that is, the old people and children and the mothers, were escorted to a red-brick building.
Q These were not immatriculated?
Q You yourself were tattooed?
A Yes. They were taken to this red-brick building, which bore the letters B-a-d, that is to say, bath. There at the beginning they first were asked to undress, and they were given a towel before they went inside the so-called shower room. Later on, at the time of the great convoys, they didn't have time to simulate pleasantness at the arrival; they merely told them to undress and brutally took them away. Iremember a little Jewish woman who lived in Paris, yes, in the Republic section of Paris. They called her Little Mary. Little Mary was the surviving member of a family of nine. Her mother and her seven sisters and brothers had been gassed upon arrival. When I met her she was employed to undress the young babies before they were taken into the gas chamber. They took the people, once they were undressed, into a room which was somewhat like a shower room, and through an opening in the ceiling they let the gas capsules come into the room. An SS would watch through a porthole the effect produced. At the end of five to seven minutes, when the gas had completed its work, he gave the signal to open the doors, and then with gas masks, men who were internees also, came inside the room and took out the corpses. They told us that the internees must have suffered before dying, because they were clasping one another in clusters and it was very difficult to break them apart. After that a team would come along; their task was to pull gold teeth. And again when the bodies had been reduced to ashes they would sift the ashes to seek to recuperate the gold it was not enough. The SS had large holes dug by the internees. They would put wood in there, sprinkle it with gasoline, and then set it to flame. Then they hurled the corpses into these pits. From our cell we saw about forty-five minutes or one hour after the arrival of a transport, I would say, large flames coming out of the crematory, and the sky was reddened by the light of the pits, the burning pits.
One night we were awakened by horrible cries. We learned the following day, from the men who were working in the sonderkommando, special kommando, that is, the gas kommando, that on the day preceding, not having had enough gas, they had hurled the children alive in the furnaces. beginning of winter? with large-scale selections in the infirmary, because the system seemed to be the following. I can that, because the time I spent in Auschwitz I could note that myself; and others who remained there even longer than I have also noted the same facts. in men and women, and they sent them to Auschwitz. They only kept those who were strong enough to work throughout the summer. During that period naturally many died every day, but those who lived, who succeeded in holding on for six months, at the end of that time were so exhausted that they too went into the infirmary. It was at that time that the large-scale selections were made in the autumn in order not to have to feed during the winter useless mouths. Those who were too weak then were sent to the gas chamber. During Christmas 1944 -- no, 1943, Christmas 1943, when we were in quarantine, we saw, because we were opposite block twenty-five, we saw the women brought there, stripped naked, into block twenty-five. They they brought the trucks without any covering and they stacked the naked women on those lorries, as many as the lorries could hold. Then each time the truck would start the famous Hessler, -- who was at the trial, he was one of the condemned at Luneburg, -- ran behind the trucks and with his stick he would thrash the naked women who were being taken to their death. They knew that they were going to the gas chamber so they tried to escape. Theywere massacred. They tried to jump from the truck, and we from our own block could see the truck going by, and we heard the lugubrious clammer of all of these women who were going, knowing that they were going to be gassed. Many of them could have lived on. They had some slight desease like the itch or suffering from malnutrition, that was all.
the very moment they were taken off the train even without being counted, sent to the gas chambers. What about their clothing and their baggage? their luggage was arranged in separate blocks. But as far as the Jews were concerned, they had to leave everything on the platform of the station on arrival. They were stripped before entering and their clothing and everything that they had brought with them, and which was left on the platform, was taken to a large barracks; were gone over by the so-called Kanada Kommando there. These things were looked over, and some of the objects were sent to Germany, like jewels or fur coats and various such other objects.
and they were told that that was a sort of a ghetto, and they should take with them everything that they possessed. They therefore carried considerable wealth with them. I remember with regard to the Jewish women from Salonica, that when they were arrived they were given a postal card written thereon Waldsee. Waldsee was the name given at the place of origin. That place does not exist. Then there was a printed text that they were to send to their families saying "Everything is fine; we have work to do; we were well treated; we are waiting for your arrival." I myself saw such cards, and the block secretaries had the order to distribute them among the internees in order that they might fill them out and send them to their families. And I know that following these incidents families -- I know of that only with respect to Greece; I don't know whether it happaned elsewhere -- but in the case of Greece and also Salonica, whole families came over at the recruiting office in Salonica to go and join the people who had been sent into Germany; their only relatives who had been sent into Germany. arrive there.
Q Will you tell us about the Bohemian camps? wire, three metres apart, were two camps; one for Gypsies, which in 1944, about August or so, was completely gassed. These Gypsies came from all over Europe under the domination of Germany. On the other aide also there was the so-called family camp. They were jews from the ghetto of Theresienstadt who had been taken there. Contrary to our case, they had nothing to do nor were they shaved. Their clothes were not taken away from them, and they didn't have to work. They lived that way for about six months, and at the end of six months they gassed the whole family camp. And a few days later another camp was gassed, and these were Jews; and a few days later another large transport came from Theresienstadt, also Jewish families, and at the end of six months they too were gassed away as were the first. able to see when you were on the point of leaving the camp? Under what circumstances you left the camp.
Q When was that?
A We were in quarantine for ten months; from the 15th of July 1943, yes, until 1944, May 1944. And then for two months in the camp, and then we went to Revensbruch.
Q These were all the French women survivors of your convoy?
A Yes, that's right. From the Jewish woman who came from France in July 1944 we learned that a large campaign had been carried out by the London radio in which they spoke of our convoy, naming Marie Politzer, Helene SolomonLangevin, and myself. And following this we know that orders were given from Berlin to put the transport of French women under better conditions. We therefore were put in quarantine. That was a block situated opposite the camp outside the barbed wire. I must say, that it is to this quarantine that the forty-nine survivors owe their survival, because at the end of four months there were only fifty-two of us. Therefore, we could not have survived eighteen months of this regime had we not had the ten months of the so-called quarantine. This quarantine was organized because typhus was then in the camp. One could not leave the camp without being authorized to do so. You had to spend fifteen days in quarantine because of the typhus, and that was the normal duration from the incubation period for this type of typhus. Therefore, as soon as the papers arrived announcing that an internee was probably going to be set free she was sent to quarantine, where she remained until the order of liberation was completed. That sometimes took several months. During this period, the minimum of two weeks, there was a policy of liberating the common-law criminals and the German anti-social characters in order to send them as laborers in factories of Germany. It is therefore impossible to imagine that in Germany they could have been unaware of the fact that there were camps of concentration and what was taking place in those camps such as those women had come out of. And it is difficult to imagine that they had never spoken about it. Moreover, in the factories where the internees were working the team leaders were German civilians who were in contact with the internees, and they were able to talk to them.
had been free laborers at Siemens in Berlin -- they were with the supervisors whom they had known in Berlin. And right in our presence they told them what they had seen at Auschwitz. Therefore it is not imaginable that it was not known in Germany. was gripped when we saw that small group of forty-nine women. And we thought of the 250 who had come in eighteen months earlier. And it seemed to us that we were emerging from hell itself; and that for the first time one hope of survival was given to us.
Q Where were you sent then?
A When we came out of Auschwitz we were sent to Ravensbruch. There we were escorted to the NN block, which meant Nacht and Nebel, that is, incommunicado. In that block with us were Polish women, 7,000 or so, who were called the rabbits, because they had been used as guinea pigs. They selected from their transports the young girls who had straight legs and who were sound of body and they were exposed to various types of operations. Some of them had parts of their bones removed from the legs; others had inoculations. I could not tell what was employed. Among those who were the subject of experiments there was a very high mortality rate. So when they came to fetch the others they refused to go to the infirmary. They were led by force to the cells, and there the professor who had come from Berlin performed the operations upon them wearing his uniform without any sort of aseptic precaution; without putting on a blouse or washing his hands or anything. There are some survivors of these rabbits. They are still undergoing great suffering. They have running wounds now, and inasmuch as the treatment to which they were exposed is unknown it is very difficult to cure them.
Q These internees, were they tattooed on their arrival?
A No. No. No. At Ravensbruch we were not tattooed; but on the other hand we had to take gynecological examination, and it was then without precaution, and with instruments frequently diseased from contact with commonlaw criminals and political prisoners who were mixed together.
Russian women prisoners of war who had refused to work voluntarily in ammunition factories. They had been led because of that to Ravensbruch. As they persisted in their refusal they were subjected to all sorts of brutality, such as to make them stand in front of the block the whole day long without feeding them. Some of them were sent on a transport to the bunker and to the strafblock. In the strafblock and the bunker there were internees who refused to work in war factories.
Q You are now speaking of the prisons of the camp?
A I have visited the prisons of the camp. It was like any other prison; like any other civilian prison.
Q How many French women were put in that camp?
Q How many women were there all told? or more. There were executions in the camp. They were called -- the selection was made by the calling of numbers in the morning, and then they were sent to the commandant, and then one never saw them again. A few days later the clothing was brought back to the selection room where they kept part of the clothing of the internees, and after a while their tags would--their file would disappear from the filing room of the camp.
Q The system of internment was the same as in Auschwitz?
A No. In Auschwitz obviously quite visibly the purpose was extermination they did'nt worry about the total yield, they cared--all you had to do was to be able to stand up from morning to night; whether you carried one brick or ten bricks. We realized that the labor was insignificant. They used human beings as slaves; to really kill them. That was the purpose of the whole camp. It was a camp of selection. When the transports arrived at Ravensbruch they were shipped quite rapidly to ammunition factories, to powder factories, or to build landing fields, and to dig trenches.
To leave for the ammunition factories, this was the procedure: The factory managers came themselves, and accompanied by SS, to select the people they wanted. It seemed like a slave market. They would feel the muscle; they would look at the countenance of the inmate; and then they made their selection. Then they would pass a medical examination. They were stripped, of course, and they decided whether or not one was physically fit to go to work in the factories. After a while the medical examination was really a formality, because they took anyone. The work was most exhausting because of the lack of nourishment end of sleep, and also the twelve full hours of labor which had to be performed. Then in addition to that we had to stand roll call in the morning and in the evening. In Ravensbruch proper there was the Siemens factory where they manufactured telephone equipment and various instruments for Radio. Then there were shops inside of the camp for camouflage and for the fabrication of various utensils used by soldiers.
THE PRESIDENT: I think we better break off now for ten minutes.
(A recess was taken from 1130 to 1140 hours.)
or Auschwitz? officials came to visit these camps?
Q You do not know whom?
Q Who are the guards at these camps? follow you.
AAt the beginning it was only SS men but from '44, the Spring of '44 on the young SS, many companies were replaced by elder men of the Wehrmacht at Auschwitz and at Ravensbrueck, also, we were guarded by soldiers of the Wehrmacht from 1944 on. Staff, the German Army was connected with the atrocities which you have described? could not be without their orders. Wehrmacht? Hungarian Jews who had been arrested on masse? You were in Ravensbrueck at that time?
Q So you can give testimony as to this period?
A Yes. There was no longer any room in the blocks and the prisoners were already sleeping four in a bed, so there was raised, in the middle of the camp, a large tent. In this tent staw was placed and the Hungarian women prisoners were led into this tent.
They were in a frightful condition. There were many frozen feet because they made a good part of the trip - they had been evacuated from Budapest and a good part of the trip they had made on foot in the snow. A great number had died on the way. died. Every day a squad came to fetch the corpses in the tent. One day, on coming back to my block
THE PRESIDENT: Madam, are you speaking of Ravensbrueck or of Auschwitz?
THE WITNESS: Now I am speaking of Ravensbrueck. It was in the winter of 1944, I think about November or December - I can't be too exact about this because in the concentration camps it is very difficult to give a precise date, since a day of torture followed a day of torture like the last. The monotony made it very difficult to keep track of the time. when it was being cleaned and I saw in front of it a pile of smoking manure. All of a sudden I realized that it was human manure, for the unfortunate women no longer had the strength to drag themselves to the comfort station and so they had to live in this filth. which the uniforms were made? This was the workshop of the camp wasn't it?
A Yes, it was called the "Schneiderei eins." They made two hundred trousers per day. There were two crews; one day and one night crew; twelve hours of work per crew. they were given a piece of bread. This afterwards was eliminated. The work was at a very rapid pace. The prisoners didn't even have time to go to the toilets. During the night and in the daytime, they were terribly beaten by the SS, the SS women as well as the SS men, because a needle broke or because the thread was of bad quality or because the machinery stopped or simply because these men or women didn't like their looks. that every movement was painful to them. Their brows were beaded with pers peration; they could hardly see.