A There were other visits also. There were also nurses who came to this same Block 50. In the month of October 1944 hospital attendants and nurses visited this block.
A Yes, personages, if you wish. Erbprinz Juwaldick, who was an Obergruppenfuehrer of the Waffen SS and a Polizeeifuehrer for Hessen and Thuringia, who visited the camp on several occasions, also Block 46 as well as Block 50.
He was greatly interested in the experiments. the liberation from the camp? come soon. They expected it in April even. There was perfect order in the camp, exemplary discipline. They hid, with extreme difficulties and in the greatest secrecy, arms, cases of hand grenades, and about 250 guns were distributed into lots, one lot for the hospital, about 100 guns, and another lot in Block 50, about 150 guns, and cases of hand grenades. about 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon the 11th of April, the political prisoners, who were in formation, took their arms and shot all those who resisted, most of the SS guards of the camp. These guards were greatly wounded. They tried to flee, but they had rucksacks which were filled with booty, thefts which they had made at the expense of the prisoners during the time they had been guards there. They tried to make away with these rucksacks of booty.
M. DUBOST: I have no further questions to submit to this witness.
THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now for ten minutes.
(Whereupon at 1535 hours a recess was taken).
M. DUBOST: I have no further questions to ask the witness, Your Honors.
THE PRESIDENT: Do any of the defendant's counsel want to ask any questions of this witness?
BY DR. KAUFFMANN (Counsel for Kaltenbrunner):
Q Are you a specialist in research?
A. Yes, I am a specialist in research questions. ment which was accorded these people?
A They had no scientific meaning. They only had a practical meaning.
They made it possible to verify the value of certain manufactures.
Q But do you have a judgment of your own? Did you in reality as a person see these people? charge of a part of this manufacture of vaccine. Consequently, I was quite well aware of the kind of experiment that was being made in Block 46 and the reasons for these experiments. SS doctors and the ease with which we were able to sabotage the sabotage of the German Army. before they died. certain experiments, notably Q (Interposing) Can you certify that through your own experience, or is that just hearsay?
burns, and it is not necessary to be a specialist nor a doctor to realize what patients whose flesh was burned to the bones have suffered, what they must have suffered.
Q Now, I'd like to ask you, what did you do with the order that went to your conscience, namely, the conscience to help the people? as a deportee, I did not decline my qualities. I simply specified that I was a laborant. Laborant means a man who is accustomed to the technique of a laboratory, having no defined speciality. I was sent to Dora. The SS regime made me lose 30 Kilos in two months. I became anemic.
Q Witness, I am just concerned with Buchenwald. I don't wish to know anything about Dora. to the camp itself who made me come back to Buchenwald. It was M. Julian Cint, the Frenchman, Director of the French National Library, who called attention to my presence to a German political prisoner, Walter Hummelschein, who was secretary in Block 50.
And this secretary of Block 50 called attention to my existence without my knowledge and without my having had anything to do with it, that there was a French specialist in Dora. That is why the SS called me back from Dora to work in Block 50.
Q Please pardon the interruption. We do not wish to amplify too much on these matters. I believe everything that you have just said, that that is the reason why you were sent to Dora and your return My purpose is a completely different one. I would like to ask you once more: You knew that these people, humanely speaking, were martyrs. Is that really the case? Please answer yes or no.
Q (Interposing) Please answer yes or no.
A I answer the question as I must answer it. I answer that when I arrived at Block 50 I knew nothing, either of the block or of the experiments. It was only later when I was in Block 50, with time, with the relations that I was able to make in the block, that I found out the details of the experiments.
Q Very well. And after you were sure about the particulars of the experiments, the way in which they were carried out, did not your conscience dictate sympathy for these poor creatures? sibility of having pity or not. One had to carry out to the letter the orders that were given or disappear.
Q Very well. Then you are stating that if in any way you had not followed the orders that you had received you might have been killed? Is that right?
A There is no doubt of this. On the ether hand, my work consisted wholly in manufacturing vaccine, and neither I nor any other prisoners in Block 46 were able to make or to witness experiments directly. We knew what was going on only through cards that passed through Block 46. These were officially registered in Block 50.
Q Very well, but I believe there is no difference in consciennce whether you see suffering before your eyes or whether you have knowledge that in the same camp people are being murdered in such a way.
Now, I come to another question,
THE PRESIDENT: Did he answer the question you were putting? Will you confine yourself to the question.
DR. KAUFFMANN: That was not a question, Mr. Witness. I will put another question new.
THE WITNESS: I should like to answer this remark then.
DR. KAUFFMANN: I am not interested in your answer.
THE WITNESS: I am anxious to give it.
THE PRESIDENT: Answer the question, please.
THE WITNESS: These sufferings in the camp were everywhere. It was not only in the experimental blocks. It was in the quarantine blocks. It was in the hospitals. It was among all the men who every day died by the hundreds. Suffering reigned everywhere in the concentration camps. BY DR. KAUFFMANN: conversation about these experiments? cretion in regard to the experiments might bring penalty of death at any moment. I should add that there were very few of us who knew the details of these experiments.
German Red Cross members, or nurses, and members of the Wehrmacht visited the camp, and that vacations were granted political prisoners to leave the camp. Were you at any one time present at the visits? given, or did the visitors see that human skin was tanned? Were those visitors present while mistreatments were being given? behind closed doors. I can only speak of the visitors who came to my block. One had to pass all the way through the camp to pass my block. I don't know where the visitors might go either before or after the exit from my block, personally saw these excesses? Yes or no.
A I don't understand the question. Would you mind repeating it? camp were present at these excesses? kind or at excesses of this kind. The only thing I can say as to the condemned is what I saw with my own eyes, The SS, the non-commissioned or possibly the commissioned officers - I can't quite remember - I saw them come from the block too. These were SS men; these were not visitors to the camp. those experiments were medically completely worthless, or did they just visit the laboratories and the installations and just wish to look at them and inspect them? saw what was being done there, that is, the filling of the vials. I cannot say what they saw after or before. I only know that these visitors of whom I am speaking, Luftwaffe people or Red Cross people, visited the whole set-up of the blocks. They certainly knew, however, what the origin of this manufacture of vaccine was and that men might he used as subjects of experiments, since there were tables, graphs, which indicated the progress of the manufacture there for men; but one had to use blood as a basis coming from patients suffering from typhus and not obligatorily from patients artificially innoculated with typhus.
I think sincerely these visitors did not know the whole of the atrocities in the form of experiments that were being performed in Block 46, but it is impossible for visitors who went into the camp not to see the horrible conditions in which the population as a whole of the camp, of the prisoners, were held under, inmates who temporarily were permitted to leave the camp, were permitted to speak about their experiences within the camp and relate these experiences to the outside world? The population in them was renewed constantly. They passed from one camp to another, came and went. Consequently there were always new faces. But most of the time the prisoners who could pass, aside from their imprisonment we didn't know how many went into the camps and how many came out.
Q Perhaps I did not express myself clearly, I mean the following: to leave the camp temporarily. Did these inmates know about these medical excesses, and if they did know were they permitted to speak in the rest of Germany about these experiments? nationality. These were the only ones who could have leaves. They were prisoners whom the SS had confided important posts, who had been imprisoned at least ten years. This was the case, for instance, of the block chief of the canteen, the canteen of the Buchenwald Camp, the canteen of the Waffen SS, who had the responsibility for the canteen, and who was given a leave of two weeks to visit his family at home in the town of Zeitz. This chief of the canteen, consequently, was free for two weeks and was able to tell his family everything he had to say, but I don't know, of course, what he did. What I can say is that obviously he would have to be careful.
In any case, the prisoners who were allowed to leave the camp were old prisoners, as I have said, who knew approximately everything that was going on in the camps, including the experiments.
Q Now I come to my last question. If I assume that the people just mentioned told members of their families, even on the pledge of secrecy, and the leadership of the camp would have been informed or would have known about this indiscretion, don't you believe that for this indiscretion the death penalty might have been incurred? part of the family, at least, if these indiscretions had become known by SS men, for indiscretions of this kind could be made known to people - but if they had reached the ears of the Waffen SS, it is obvious that these prisoners risked the penalty of death.
DR. KAUFFMANN: Thank you very much.
THE PRESIDENT: Is there any other defense counsel who wants to ask any questions?
DR. BABEL: Attorney Babel, defending the SS and the SD.
I am protesting. I was told that I will have a poor press. I am not here about the poor or good opinion of the press, but doing my duty as a defense attorney
THE PRESIDENT: You are going too fast.
DR. BABEL: (Continuing) and I am of the opinion that it will not want to be made harder by any one participating in this proceeding, even the press. who was responsible for the unhappy fate of these people, of the whole people
THE PRESIDENT: Will you kindly resume your seat?
DR. BABEL: (Continuing) anyone who is guilty in this respect, and I will not try to keep any one guilty in this regard from his proper punishment. I am only concerned with the most just sentence possible, and that any one guilty will not be sentenced.
THE PRESIDENT: I said kindly resume your seat. It is not fit for you to make a speech, You have been making a speech, as I understood it, this isn't the occasion for it.
DR, BABEL: I find it necessary because I was not protected against the Prosecution.
(Dr. Babel started to resume his seat)
THE PRESIDENT: One moment; come back.
(Dr. Babel came before the microphone again) I don't know what you mean about not being protected.
I don't know what you mean by not being protected against the Prosecution. The Prosecution called this witness, and the defendants counsel had the fullest opportunity to cross-examine, and we understood you went to the Tribunal for the purpose of cross-examining the witness. I don't understand your protest.
DR, BABEL: Mr. President, I am not familiar with legal proceedings in the United States and Great Britain, but according to German criminal law and regulations, it is customary that accusations which are made without reason, and unjustly, be referred back to the President, and I expected that that might take place in this instance, but since it did not take place, I took occasion to call attention to it. If I committed any injustice or any error, I wish to be excused.
THE PRESIDENT: What unjust accusations are you referring to?
BY DR. BABEL: were weapons, fifty guns, if I remember or understood correctly. Who brought these weapons in?
Q For what purpose? is, of defending ourselves to the death rather than to be exterminated like most of our comrades in the camp with the flame throwers or machine guns. In this way we could protect ourselves, defend ourselves in any case.
Q You said "we prisoners"; who were these prisoners?
Q In the main they were supposed to have been German?
A They were all nationalities. There were in the camps, which the SS didn't know, internal secret organizations of defense with shock battalions.
Q There were German inmates who wanted to help you? political prisoners, particularly old German Communists who had been imprisoned for ten years, who were excellent elements in the last moments.
Q Very well, that's what I wanted to know. Then with the exception of the criminals who were with the great triangle, you and the other inmates, who were of German origin, you were on friendly terms and helped each other; is that right?
A The question of Vere didn't present itself because the Germans evacuated the Vere in the last moments. They exterminated almost all of them. They exterminated all of them. They left the camp, and we don't know what became of them. No doubt they're now hiding with the German population, the few who survived.
relationship you had to the German political prisoners. Belgians, Luxembourgers formed within the camp shock battalions that were secret, which took the weapons at the last minute and collaborated in the liberation of the camp. These weapons were concealed. These weapons came from the gun manufacturers which were close to the camp. These weapons were stolen by the workers who worked in this factory, and each day they would bring either a butt hidden intheir clothes or a barrel or a trigger secretly. With immense difficulties these guns were put together with the different pieces, and then we hid these guns. These guns are the ones that we used in the last days.
DR. BABEL: Thank you. I have no further questions.
THE PRESIDENT: Does any other German counsel wish to ask questions? Have you any questions, M. Dubost?
M. DUBOST: I have no further questions. length the reading of documents, since it seems in the eyes of the Tribunal that it seems to be accepted that in all the camps the crimes which have been described to you by witnesses were repeated identically, and they have this way proved a superior determination within the government itself, a systematic will to exterminate and to create terror throughout Europe, which the whole of Europe, suffered from. We shall now submit briefly the documents that we have gathered together without reading them to you, further limiting ourselves to a very brief analysis when they may bring you -
THE PRESIDENT: M. Dubost, you understand, of course, that the Tribunal is satisfied with the evidence which it has heard to date, but, of course, it is expecting to hear evidence or possibly may hear evidence from the defendants, and it naturally will suspend its judgment until it has heard that evidence and, as I pointed out to you yesterday, I think under Article 24-E of the Charter you will have the opportunity of applying to the Tribunal if you think it right to call rebuttal evidence in answer to any evidence which the defendants may call. All I mean to indicate to you now is, the Tribunal is not making up its mind at the present moment. It will wait until it has heard the evidence for the defense.
M. DUBOST: I understand you, Mr. President, but I think that the testimony that we have given you during these two days constitutes one of the essential elements of our accusation, and this will allow us to abbreviate the presentation of our documents. We shall simply present them to you by analysis or very brief extracts.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
M. DUBOST: We had described the transportation of prisoners, the conditions under which these were made at the time when we were beginning the hearing of witnesses. In order to establish which among these defendants are the ones especially responsible for these transportations, I present Document UK-56, signed "Yodl", and organizing the deportation of Jews from Denmark. This appears among our documents under No. 335.
M. DUBOST: They were handed to you on Saturday. They were supplied on Saturday. when the sessions were suspended at noon. "Secret Document." It is the 8th in your first book. Paragraph 2. Second page. There is the number, 1969, at the bottom of the page -- second page that is. Perhaps our secretary-interpreter can help the Tribunal to find the document.
"(Reading) The deportation of Jews must be undertaken by the Reichsfuehrer SS who to this effect will send two battalions to Denmark. Authorization signed: Jodl." or at least by a chief belonging to a military organization of the German General Staff. This charge therefore affects Jodl and the General Staff.
We have submitted under No.324 in the Saturday afternoon session an extract from the document of the Dutch Government. The Tribunal will find in this report a passage which relates to the transport of Dutch Jews transported from a Dutch town to Auschwitz. On the first page, second paragraph -
THE PRESIDENT: Is that the same book? And what number?
M. DUBOST:F-224, which has become 224. 3 -- paragraphs 2 and 3:
"All Dutch Jews seized by the Germans were assembled at the camp of Westerburg" -- this is paragraph 3 -- "and little by little all prisoners of Westerburg were deported to Poland." witnesses. Do they need to be recalled, when three witnesses have come to tell you that each time the cars were opened numerous corpses were first taken out and a few survivors were found behind them? also will be found in your first document book. It is No. 115 in your first book. Page 6. Professor Richet repeats what our witnesses have said, that there were 75 to 100 deportees per car, that in each transport men died, 25 per cent of the men at least had succumbed in coming from Compiegne in the course of a 70- hour trip.
This testimony agrees with that of Blaha, with that of Madame Vaillant Coutourier, with that of Professor Dupont.
Blaha's testimony appears in your document book under No. D6-3249 It is the second declaration -- statement -- of Blaha. It is the second document in your book. We have heard Blaha. I don't think that it is necessary to re-read what he has already stated to us in your presence. August and September, 1944, when numerous convoys which had left France generally from the camps in Brittany arrived in this camp with four to five hundred dead out of about two thousand men per train. This information has . been given us in Document S-40, which is in your first document book. the first page of this document indicates -- and I quote so. that I will not have to return to it again -- in the fourth paragraph which has to do with Auschwitz, that "About seven million persons died in this camp." Document 406. It is not necessary to submit this, after the testimony that was given today which simply repeats the conditions under which the transports were made.
THE PRESIDENT: Is that 716 -
M. DUBOST: That is this book of documents. This document indicates -page 16 -- that in the convoy of the 2nd of July, 1944, which left from Compiegne, terrific scenes occurred -- scenes of violence; that more than 600 of these people died between Compiegne and Dachau, in this convoy. This is discussed in the following document: F-83, which we submit under 337, and which indicates in the minutes of Dr. Bouvier, 10 February 1943, page 3 of Document F-83, in the first document book, which indicates that these prisoners - it is T-24 in your first document book -- by the time they reached Rheims -- 4th paragraph of the 5th page -- were already half dead of thirst by the time they reached Reims -- second page of this document. 2nd paragraph -- eight dying, one of whom was a priest. He had already been taken out of the train by the time they reached Rheims.
This convoy was going as far as Dachau. A few kilometers from Compiegne there were already numerous deaths.
Document RF-321, page 21: In this book, submitted Saturday and placed before you as official document, under No.321, pages 21 to 24, you will find numerous examples of the atrocious conditions under which our compatriots were transported to the concentration camps in Germany. Page 21, at the top of the page: "At the station of Rheims water was refused us by the German Red Cross." In the second paragraph: "We were dead of hunger in Breslau. The prisoners again begged the nurses of the German Red Cross to give us a little water. They remained adamant to our pleas."
natural dealings of modesty, the deportees were obliged to strip themselves of all their clothes, and thus they travelled for many hours entirely naked from France to Germany. A testimony to this effect is given by our official document already submitted under No. 214, page 17 of the French text, second paragraph to -
THE PRESENT: What paragraph, 174?
M. DUBOST: I beg your pardon, 274, page 17, second paragraph, one: The means they used to prevent escape, or reprisals for them, was to unclothe the prisoners completely, and they offered this arrangement also which was meant to bring about a moral degradation of the individuals. The most authoritative testimony reports are these piles of naked men barely having room to breathe, which was a condition of horror. When escapes occurred in spite of the precaution, hostages were taken in the camps, and they were shot. Testimony to this effect is provided by the same document, page 18. At the top of page 6 deportees were executed. Thus, near Omerancy five deportees from a train were executed, were shot by officers of the Wehrmacht, shot with pistols. It is necessary to add to this quotation that all other official documents, including 320, which we have already submitted, page 20, which was already read, and page 11 of the German Text.
THE PRESIDENT: What document?
M. DUBOST: Page 20 of document 321, page 11, of the German Text. Those people were rapidly chosen the moment they reached the trench. These policemen would seize one of the prisoners, push him against the wall of the trench, and fire a pistol shot into the hack of his neck. It was the same rule that prevailed in the deportation of prisoners from Denmark. The Danish Jews were particularly badly treated, for a certain number of them had been able to escape and to help the Danish compatriots, and unfortunately eight to nine persons were apprehended by Germans and deported. It is estimated that 415 of them were transported by boat and truck under inhuman conditions, and arrived more dead than alive at the original stop. This is from Danish document submitted under No. 666, The Tribunal will find it in the first volume of this document book, and the quotation which I have just made is on page two of this document.
That is the sixteenth document in the first document book. It is the one before the last. For this country it is necessary to make known to the Tribunal of the deportation of the frontier guards, page 3, the third paragraph, and of the police, of the last paragraph. In most places the police men were sent back immediately after havint been unarmed; only in Copenhagen and at provincial towns they were held and sent by truck to the south of Germany, and for the frontier guards the following paragraph:
THE PRESIDENT: Pare five is that?
M. DUBOST: Page 3, document 666.
THE PRESIDENT: Which paragraph?
M. DUBOST: The third paragraph now. Second for the police, and third for the frontier guards. The fourth line, or the end of the line, the police led the guards to Buchenwald concentration camp, and they were right there in an indescribable sanitary condition, and a very large portion of them fell ill and about one hundred police members and frontier guards died, and several still bear traces of their death. At the end of this deportation all the citizens of the subjected countries of the West of Europe find themselves in the company of their comrades of unfortunates in the concentration camps of Germany. These camps are means of realization of the policy of extermination which Germany pursued from the time it seized power -- from the time the National Socialists seized power. This policy of extermination lent itself and seemed to be the only policy that Hitlers 225,000,000 Germans, and over the territories adjoining Germany, seemed to constitute in the vital spaces of Germany. The police of the Germany Army no longer dare to shoot their hostage They were transported at a faster and faster pace from 1943 to German concentration camps. Everything is done to make them disappear from the extenuating labor to the death chambers. The figures which we have gathered in France do not enable us to estimate, but they were more than 250,000 deportees among the French and only 5,000 returned. Document 417 under No 339, which is the third in the first document book, indicates that.
We had 600,000 arrests with which the Germans proceeded in France. Out of these arrests 350,000 were carried out with a view of internment in France or in Germany. This document is, as the Tribunal, -
THE PRESIDENT: Where is this document 417.
M. DUBOST: In the first document book, the third, it is No. 497.
THE PRESIDENT: It is 417.
M. DUBOST: It was the fifth document, fourth paragraph. The total number deported 250,000, and the deportee number returned 35,000, Following are a few persons deported of prominence: M. Bussieres, and M. Bonnefoy, who disappeared, de Lestraing, who was executed at Dachau. M. Job executed at Auschwitz. M. Frere died at Strutthof. M. Bardi de Fourtou, died at Neuengamme. Colonel Roger Masse, died at Auschwitz. The high officials: Marquis de Moustier, died at Neuengamme. Inspector General Boulloche, inspector of bridges and roads, died at Buchenwald. His wife died at Ravensburck. His son died as a deportee, and his other son returned from Flossenburg. Jean Deveze engineer of bridges and roads, died at Aushchwitz. Mmme Getting, founder of the social service in France, disappeared at Auschwitz. One of the University professors of the College of France died at Buchenwald. Georges Bruhat, director of the l'Ecole Normale Superierue, died at Oranienburg. Professor Vielle died at Buckenwald. I can not quote every one, I can not read the names of all the intellectuals who died in concentration camps. Among the doctors, we should point out the director of the Hospital Rothschild, Dr. Zadoc-Kahn, director, murdered at Auschwitz.
As concerns Holland, one hundred ten Dutch citizens were arrested. Of the Jewish religion, only five thousand returned; sixteen thousand compatriots were arrested, only six thousand returned. Total out of 126,000 deported, 11,000 returned to their native land after liberation. ing the war prisoners. In Luxembourg, 7,000 deportees plus seven hundred Jews, Four thousand Luxembourgers of this number approximately died. These are from documents S-681, S-231, S-659, which we submit under Nos. 340, 341 and 342. were interned and more than five hundred died. Germany, most of the camps, served simply for the selecting of prisoners, and I have already spoken to you of this. Certain functions like those in Germany Vesterborg and Holland have been pointed out.
This is dealt with in S-222, now submitted under No. 324, which is the report of the Netherland Government, of Camp No. 4, in Document No. 6670.
No. 344; this is the eleventh document in your first document book, There is also the camps still in Holland and in Norway.
There is the camp of Falstad, the one of Ulven and of Espekand.
These were Government, document No. 240, which is the second in your document book No. 1, on which we have already submitted facts.
The Tribunal 11, which has continuous pages in this document No. 1063-PS, which we submit under RS-346, page 11 of your second document book.
We concentration camps according to the personality of the prisoners' degree of danger which they represent to Germany.
Secondly, the Category 1: for the prisoners guilty of minor crimes.
Category 1-A: for old prisoners according to their Category 2: (page 12, second document book) Category 3: for all prisoners whose charges are particularly this question with geographical maps.