FORTY-FIFTH DAY Tuesday, 29 January 1946

Morning Session

MARSHAL: May it please the Court, I desire now to say that the Defendant Kaltenbrunner will be absent from this morning's session on account of illness.

M. DUBOST: In my capacity as representative of the French Prosecution, I wish to ask the Tribunal to consider this request. The witnesses that were interrogated yesterday are to be cross-examine by the Defense. The conditions under which they are here are rather precarious, for it takes 30 hours to return to Paris. We would like to know whether we are to keep them here; and, if the Defense really intends to cross-examine them, we should like to proceed with that as quickly as possible in order to ensure their return to France.

THE PRESIDENT: In view of what you said yesterday, M. Dubost, I said on behalf of the Tribunal that Herr Babel might have the opportunity of cross-examining one of your witnesses within the next two days. Is Herr Babel ready to cross-examine that witness now?

HERR BABEL: No, Mr. President, I have not yet received a copy of his interrogation and consequently have not been able to prepare my cross-examination. The time from yesterday to today is, naturally, also too short, Therefore, I cannot yet make a definite statement whether or not I shall want to cross-examine the witness. If I were given an opportunity during the course of the day to get the Record....

THE PRESIDENT: [Interposing] Well, that witness must stay until tomorrow afternoon, M. Dubost, but the other witnesses can go. M. Dubost, will you see, if you can, that a copy of the shorthand notes is furnished to Herr Babel as soon as possible?

M. DUBOST: Yes, Mr. President.

[The witness, Boix, took the stand.]

I shall have it done, My Lord. We continue. The Tribunal will remember that yesterday afternoon we projected six photographs of Mauthausen which were brought to us by the witness who is now before you and on which he offered his comments. This witness

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specifically stated under what conditions the photograph representing Kaltenbrunner in the quarry of Mauthausen had been taken. We offer these photographs as a French document, Exhibit Number RF-332.

Will you allow me to formulate one more question to the witness? Then I shall be through with him, at least concerning the important part of this testimony. Witness, do you recognize among the defendants anyone who visited the camp of Mauthausen during your internment there?

BOIX: Speer.

M. DUBOST: When did you see him?

BOIX: He came to the Gusen Camp in 1943 to arrange for some constructions and also to the quarry at Mauthausen. I did not see him myself as I was in the identification service of the camp and could not leave, but during these visits Paul Ricken, head of the identification department, took a roll of film with his Leica. which I developed. On this film I recognized Speer and some leaders of the SS as well, who came with him. Speer wore a light-colored suit.

M. DUBOST: You saw that on the pictures that you developed?

BOIX: Yes. I recognized him on the photos and afterward we had to write his name and the date because many SS always wanted to have collections of all the photos of visits to the camp.

I recognized Speer on 36 photographs which were taken by SS OberscharFuehrer Paul Ricken in 1943, during Speer's visit to the Gusen Camp and the quarry of Mauthausen. He always looked extremely pleased in these pictures. There are even pictures which show him congratulating ObersturmbannFuehrer Franz Ziereis, then commander of the Mauthausen Camp, with a cordial handshake.

M. DUBOST: One last question. Were there any officiating chaplains in your camp? How did the internees who wanted religious consolation die?

BOIX: Yes, from what I could observe, there were several. There was an order of German Catholics, known as "Bibelforscher," but officially . . .

M. DUBOST: But officially did the administration of the camp grant the internees the right to practice their religion?

BOIX: No, they could do nothing, they were absolutely forbidden even to live.

M. DUBOST: Even to live?

BOIX: Even to live.

M. DUBOST: Were there any Catholic chaplains or any Protestant pastors?

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BOIX: That sort of Bibelforscher were almost all Protestants. I do not know much about this matter.

M. DUBOST: How were monks, priests, and pastors treated?

BOIX: There was no difference between them and ourselves. They died in the same way we did. Sometimes they were sent to the gas chamber, at times they were shot, or plunged in freezing water; any way was good enough. The SS had a particularly harsh method of handling these people, because they knew that they were not able to work as normal laborers. They treated all intellectuals of all countries in this manner.

M. DUBOST: They were not allowed to exercise their functions?

BOIX: No, not at all.

M. DUBOST: Did the men who died have a chaplain before being executed?

BOIX: No, not at all. On the contrary, at times, instead of being consoled, as you say, by anyone of their faith, they received, just before being shot, 25 or 75 lashes with a leather thong even from an SS ObersturmbannFuehrer personally. I noticed especially the cases of a few officers, political commissars, and Russian prisoners of war.

M. DUBOST: I have no further questions to ask of the witness.

THE PRESIDENT: General Rudenko?

GEN. RUDENKO: Witness, please tell us what you know about the extermination of Soviet prisoners.

BOIX: I cannot possibly tell you all I know about it; I know so much that one month would not suffice to tell you all about it.

GEN. RUDENKO: Then I would like to ask you, Witness, to tell us concisely what you know about the extermination of Soviet prisoners in the camp of Mauthausen.

BOIX: The arrival of the first prisoners of war took place in 1941. The arrival of 2,000 Russian prisoners of war was announced. With regard to Russian prisoners of war, they took the same precautions as in the case of the Republican Spanish prisoners of war. They put machine guns everywhere around the barracks and expected the worst. As soon as the Russian prisoners of war entered the camp one, could see that they were in a very bad state, they could not even understand anything. They were human scarecrows. They were then put in barracks, 1,600 to a barracks. You must bear in mind these barracks were 7 meters wide by 50 long. They were divested of their clothes, of the very little they had with them; they could keep only one pair of drawers and one shirt. One has

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to remember that this was in November and in Mauthausen it was more than 10 degrees (centigrade) below zero.

Upon their arrival there were already 20 deaths, from walking only the distance of 4 kilometers between the station and camp of Mauthausen. At first the same system was applied to them as to us Republican Spanish prisoners. They left us with nothing to do, with no work.

They were left to themselves, but with scarcely anything to eat. At the end of a few weeks they were already at the end of their endurance. Then began the process of elimination. They were made to work under the most horrible conditions, they were beaten, hit, kicked, insulted; and out of the 7,000 Russian prisoners of war who came from almost everywhere, only 30 survivors were left at the end of three months. Of these 30 survivors photographs were taken by Paul Ricken's department as a document. I have these pictures and I can show them if the Tribunal so wishes.

GEN. RUDENKO: You do have these pictures?

BOIX: M. Dubost knows about that, yes. M. Dubost has them.

GEN. RUDENKO: Thank you. Can you show these pictures?

BOIX: M. Dubost has them.

GEN. RUDENKO: Thank you. What do you know about the Yugoslavs and the Poles?

BOIX: The first Poles came to the camp in 1939 at the moment of the defeat of Poland. They received the same treatment as everybody else did. At that time there were only ordinary German bandits there. Then the work of extermination was begun. There were tens of thousands of Poles who died under frightful conditions.

The position of the Yugoslavs should be emphasized. The Yugoslavs began to arrive in convoys, wearing civilian clothes; and they were shot in a legal way, so to speak. The SS wore even their steel helmets for these executions. They shot them two at a time. The first transport brought 165, the second 180, and after that they came in small groups of 15, 50, 60, 30; and even women came then.

It should be noted that once, among four women who were shot-and that was the only time in the camp of deportees-some of them spat in the face of the camp Fuehrer before dying. The Yugoslavs suffered as few people have suffered. Their position is comparable only to that of the Russians. Until the very end they were massacred by every means imaginable. I would like to say more about the Russians, because they have gone through so much ...

GEN. RUDENKO: Do I understand correctly from your testimony that the concentration camp was really an extermination camp?

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BOIX: The camp was placed in the last category, category 3; that is, it was a camp from which no one could come out.

GEN. RUDENKO: I have no further questions.

THE PRESIDENT: Does Counsel for Great Britain desire to cross-examine?

COLONEL H. J. PHILLIMORE (Junior Counsel for United Kingdom): No questions.

THE PRESIDENT: Counsel for the United States?

MR. THOMAS J. DODD (Executive Trial Counsel for the United States): No questions.

THE PRESIDENT: Do any counsel for the defendants wish to cross-examine?

HERR BABEL: Witness, how were you marked in the camp?

BOIX: The number? What kind of brand?

HERR BABEL: The prisoners were marked by variously colored stars, red, green, yellow, and so forth. Was this so in Mauthausen also? What did you wear?

BOIX: Everybody wore insignia. They were not stars; they were triangles and letters to show the nationality, Yellow and red stars were for the Jews, stars with six red and yellow points, two triangles, one over the other.

HERR BABEL: What color did you wear?

BOIX: A blue triangle with an "S" in it, that is to say "Spanish political refugee."

HERR BABEL: Were you a Kapo?

BOIX: No, I was an interpreter at first.

HERR BABEL: What were your tasks and duties there?

BOIX: I had to translate into Spanish all the barbaric things the Germans wished to tell the Spanish prisoners. Afterwards my work was with photography, developing the films which were taken all over the camp showing the full story -of what happened in the camp.

HERR BABEL: What was the policy with regard to visitors? Did visitors go only into the inner camp or to places where work was being done?

BOIX: They visited all the camps. It was impossible for them not to know what was going on. Exception was made only when high officials or other important persons from Poland, Austria, or Slovakia, from all these countries, would come. Then they would show them only the best parts. Franz Ziereis would say, "See for yourselves'' He searched out cooks, interned bandits, fat and

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well-fed criminals. He would select these so as to be able to say that all internees looked like these.

HERR BABEL: Were the prisoners forbidden to communicate with each other concerning conditions in the camp? Communication with the outside was, of course, scarcely possible.

BOIX: It was so completely forbidden that, if anyone was caught at it, it meant not only his death but for all those of his nationality terrible reprisals.

HERR BABEL: What observations can you make regarding-the Kapos? How did they behave toward your fellow internees?

BOIX: At times they were really worthy of being SS themselves. To be a Kapo, one had to be Aryan, pure Aryan. That means that they had a martial bearing and, like the SS, full rights over us; they had the right to treat us like beasts. The SS gave them carte blanche to do with us what they wished. That is why, at the liberation, the prisoners and deportees executed all the Kapos on whom they could lay their hands.

Shortly before the liberation the Kapos asked to enlist voluntarily in the SS and they left with the SS because they knew what was awaiting them. In spite of that we looked for them everywhere and executed them on the spot.

HERR BABEL: You said "they had to treat you like wild beasts." From what facts do you draw the conclusion that they were obliged to?

BOIX: One would have to be blind in order not to see. One could see the way they behaved. It was better to die like a man than to live like a beast; but they preferred to live like beasts, like savages, like criminals. They were known as such. I lived there four and a half years and I know very well what they did. There were many among us who could have become Kapos for their work, because they were specialists in some field or another in the camp. But they preferred to be beaten and massacred, if necessary, rather than become a Kapo.

HERR BABEL: Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Does any other member of the defendants' counsel wish to ask questions of the witness? M. Dubost, do you wish to ask any questions?

M. DUBOST: I have no further questions, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well.

GEN. RUDENKO: My Lord, the witness informed us that he had at his disposal the photographic documents of 30 Soviet prisoners of war, the sole survivors of several thousand internees in this camp. I would like to ask your permission, Mr. President,

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to present this photographic document to the witness so that he can confirm before the Tribunal that it is really this group of Soviet prisoners of war.

THE PRESIDENT: Certainly you may show the photograph to the witness if it is available.

GEN. RUDENKO: Yes. Witness, can you show this picture?

[The witness presented the picture to the Tribunal.]

THE PRESIDENT: Is this the photograph?

BOIX: Yes, I can assure you that these 30 survivors were still living in 1942. Since then, in view of the conditions of the camp, it is very difficult to know whether some of them are still alive.

THE PRESIDENT: Would you please give the date when this photograph was taken?

BOIX: It was at the end of the winter of 1941-42. At that time, it was still 10 degrees (centigrade) below zero. You can see from the picture the appearance of the prisoners because of the cold.

THE PRESIDENT: Has this book been put in evidence yet?

M. DUBOST: This book has been submitted as evidence, Your Honor, as official evidence.

THE PRESIDENT: Have the defendants got copies of it?

M. DUBOST: It was submitted as Exhibit Number RF-331 (Document F-321). The Defense have also received a copy of this book in German, but the pictures are not in the German version, Your Honor.

THE PRESIDENT: Well then, let this photograph be marked. It had better be marked with a French exhibit number, I think. What will it be?

M. DUBOST: We shall give it Exhibit Number RF-333.

THE PRESIDENT: Let it be marked in that way, and then hand it to Herr Babel.

GEN. RUDENKO: Thank you, Sir. I have no more questions.

THE PRESIDENT: Will you hand the photo to Dr. Babel.

[The photo was handed to Herr Babel.]

I think it should be handed about to the other defendants' counsel in case they wish to ask any question about it. M. Dubost, I think that an approved copy of this book, including the photographs, has been deposited in the defendants' Information Center.

M. DUBOST: The whole book, except for the pictures.

THE PRESIDENT: Why not the pictures?

M. DUBOST: At that moment we did not have them to submit. In our expose we have not mentioned the photographs.

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THE PRESIDENT: The German counsel ought to have the same documents as are submitted to the Tribunal. The photographs have been submitted to the Tribunal; therefore they should have been deposited in the Information Center.

M. DUBOST: Mr. President, the French text, including the pictures, was deposited in the Defense Information Center; and, in addition, a certain number of texts in German, to which the pictures were not added because we had that translation prepared for the use of the Defense. But there are French copies of the book that you have before you which include the pictures.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well.

M. DUBOST: We have here four copies of the picture which was shown yesterday afternoon, which we shall place before you. It shows Kaltenbrunner and Himmler in the quarry of Mauthausen, in accordance with the testimony given by Boix. One of these pictures will also be delivered to the Defense, that is, to the lawyer of the Defendant Kaltenbrunner.

HE PRESIDENT: Now the photograph has been handed around to the defendants' counsel. Do any members of the defendants' counsel wish to ask any questions of the witness about this photograph? No question? The witness can retire.

BOIX: I would like to say something more. I would like to note that there were cases when Soviet officers were massacred. It is worth noting because it concerns prisoners of war. I would like the Tribunal to listen to me carefully.

THE PRESIDENT: What is it you wish to say about the massacre of the Soviet prisoners of war?

BOIX: In 1943 there was a transport of officers. On the very day of, their arrival in the camp they began to be massacred by every means. But it seems that from the higher quarters orders had come concerning these officers saying that something extraordinary had to be done. So they put them in the best block in the camp. They gave them new prisoner's clothing. They gave them *even cigarettes; they gave them beds with sheets; they were given everything they wanted to eat. A medical officer, SturmbannFuehrer Bresbach, examined them with a stethoscope.

They went down into the quarry, but they carried only small stones, and in fours. At that time OberscharFuehrer Paul Ricken, chief of the service, was there with his Leica taking pictures without stopping. He took about 48 pictures. These I developed and five copies of each, 13 by 18, with the negatives, were sent to Berlin. It is too bad I did not steal the negatives, as I did the others.

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When that was done, the Russians were made to give up their clothing and everything else and were sent to the gas chamber. The comedy was ended. Everybody could see on the pictures that the Russian prisoners of war, the officers, and especially the political commissars, were treated well, worked hardly at all, and were in good condition. That is one thing that should be noted because I think it is necessary.

And another thing, there was a barrack called Barrack Number 20. That barrack was inside the camp; and- in spite of the electrified barbed wire around the camp, there was an additional wall with electrified barbed wire around it. In that barrack there were prisoners of war, Russian officers and commissars, some Slavs, a few Frenchmen, and, they said, even a few Englishmen. No one could enter that barrack except the two Fuehrer who were in the camp prison, the commanding officers of the inner and outer camps. These internees were dressed just as we were, like convicts, but without number or identification of their nationality. One could not tell their nationality.

The service "Erkennungsdienst" must have taken their pictures. A tag with a number was placed on their chest. This number began with 3,000 and something. There -were numbers looking like Number 11 (two blue darts), and the numbers started at 3,000 and went up to 7,000. SS UnterscharFuehrer Hermann Schinlauer was the photographer then in charge. He was from the Berlin region, somewhere outside of Berlin, I do not remember the name. He had orders to develop the films and to do all work personally; but like all the SS of the interior services of the camp, they were men who knew nothing. They always needed prisoners to get their work done. That is why he needed me to develop these films. I made the. enlargements, 5 by 7. These were sent to ObersturmFuehrer Karl Schulz, of Cologne, the Chief of the Politische Abteilung. He told me not to tell anything to anybody about these pictures and about the fact that we developed these films; if we did we would be liquidated at once. Without any fear of the consequences I told all my comrades about it, so that, if one of us should succeed in getting out, he could tell the world about it.

THE PRESIDENT: I think we have heard enough of this detail that you are giving us. But come back for a moment to the case you were speaking of. I wish you would repeat the case of the Russian prisoners of war in 1943. You said that the officers were taken to the quarry to carry the heaviest stones.

BOIX: No, just very small stones, weighing not even 20 kilos, and they carried them in fours to show on the pictures that the Russian officers did not do heavy work but on the contrary, light

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work. That was only for the pictures, whereas in reality it was entirely different.

THE PRESIDENT: I thought you said they carried big, heavy stones.

BOIX: No.

THE PRESIDENT: Were the photographs taken while they were in their uniforms carrying these light stones?

BOIX: Yes, -Sir; they had to put on clean uniforms, neatly arranged, to show that the Russian prisoners were well and properly treated.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well. Is there any other particular incident you want to refer to?

BOIX: Yes, about Block 20. Thanks to my knowledge of photography I was able to see it; I had to be there to handle the lights while my chief took photographs. In this way I could follow, detail by detail, everything that took place in this barrack. It was an inner camp. This barrack, like all the others, was 7 meters wide and 50 meters long. There were 1,800 internees there, with a food ration less than one-quarter of what we would get for-food. They had neither spoons nor plates. Large kettles of spoiled food were emptied on the snow and left there until it began to freeze; then the Russians were ordered to get at it. The Russians were so hungry, they would fight for this food. The SS used these fights as a pretext to beat some of them with bludgeons.

THE PRESIDENT: Do you mean that the Russians were put directly into Block 20?

BOIX: The Russians did not come to the camp directly. Those who were not sent to the gas chamber right away were placed in Block 20. Nobody of the inner camp, not even the BlockFuehrer, was allowed to enter this barrack. Small convoys of 50 or 60 came several times a week and always one heard the noise of a fight going on inside.

In January 1945, when the Russians learned that the Soviet Armies were approaching Yugoslavia, they took one last chance. They seized fire extinguishers and killed soldiers posted under the watch tower. They seized machine guns and everything possible as weapons. They took blankets with them and everything they could find. They were 700, but only 62 succeeded in passing into Yugoslavia with the partisans.

That day, Franz Ziereis, camp commander, issued an order by radio to all civilians to co-operate, to "liquidate" the Russian criminals who had escaped from the concentration camp. He stated that everyone who could produce evidence that he had killed one

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of these men would receive an extraordinary sum of marks. This was why all the Nazi followers in Mauthausen went to work and succeeded in killing more than 600 escaped prisoners. It was not hard because some of the Russians could not drag themselves for more than 10 meters.

After the liberation one of the surviving Russians came to Mauthausen to see how everything was then. He told us all the details of his painful march.

THE PRESIDENT: I don't think the Tribunal wants to hear more details which you did not see yourself. Does any member of the Defense Counsel wish to ask any question of the witness upon the points which he has dealt with himself.

HERR BABEL: One question only. In the course of your testimony you gave certain figures, namely 165, then 180, and just now 700. Were you in a position to count them yourself?

BOIX: Nearly always the convoys came into the camp in columns of five. It was easy to count them. These transports were always sent from the Wehrmacht, from the Wehrmacht prisons somewhere in Germany. They were sent from all prisons in Germany, from the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the SD, or the SS.

THE PRESIDENT: Just answer the question and do not make a speech. You have said they were brought in in columns of five and it was easy to count them.

BOIX: Very easy to count them, particularly for those who wanted to be able to tell the story some day.

HERR BABEL: Did you have so much time that you were able to observe all these things?

BOIX: The transports always came in the evening after the deportees had returned to the camp. At this time we always had two or three hours when we could wander about in the camp waiting for the bell that was the signal for us to go to bed.

THE PRESIDENT: The witness may now retire.

[The witness left the stand.]

M. DUBOST: If the Tribunal permits, we shall now hear Mr. Cappelen, who is a Norwegian witness. The testimony of Mr. Cappelen will be limited to the conditions that were imposed on Norwegian internees in Norwegian camps and prisons.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well.

[The witness, Hans Cappelen, took the stand.]

THE PRESIDENT: I understand that you speak English.

M. HANS CAPPELEN (Witness): Yes, I speak English.

THE PRESIDENT: Will you take the English form of oath?

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CAPPELEN: Yes, I prefer to speak in English.

THE PRESIDENT: What is your name?

CAPPELEN: My name is Hans Cappelen.

THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me:

I swear that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

[The witness repeated the oath in English.]

THE PRESIDENT: [To the witness.] Raise your right hand and say "I swear."

CAPPELEN: I swear.

M. DUBOST: M. Cappelen, you were born 18 December 1903?

CAPPELEN: Yes.

M. DUBOST: In what town?

CAPPELEN: I was born in Kvitseid, province of Telemark, Norway.

M. DUBOST: What is your profession?

CAPPELEN: I was a lawyer, but now I am a business man.

M. DUBOST: Will you tell what you know of the atrocities of the Gestapo in Norway?

CAPPELEN: My Lord, I was arrested on 29 November 1941 and taken to the Gestapo prison in Oslo, Moellergata 19. After 10 days I was interrogated by two Norwegian NS, or Nazi police agents. They started in at once to beat me with bludgeons. How long this interrogation lasted I cannot remember, but it led to nothing. So after some days I was brought to 32 Victoria Terrace. That was the headquarters of the Gestapo in Norway. It was about 8 O'clock at night. I was brought into a fairly big room and they asked me to undress. I had to undress until I was absolutely naked. I was a little bit swollen after the first treatment I had by the Norwegian police agents, but it was not too bad.

There were present about six or eight Gestapo agents and their leader was Femer; Kriminalrat was his title. He was very angry and they started to bombard me with questions which I could not answer. So Femer ran at me and tore all the hair off my head, hair and blood were all over the floor around me. And so, all of a sudden, they all started to run at me and beat me with rubber bludgeons and iron cable-ends. That hurt me very badly and I fainted. But I was brought back to life again by their pouring ice water over me. I vomited naturally, because I was feeling very sick. But that only made them angry; and they said, "Clean up, you dirty dog!" And I had to make an attempt to clean up with my bare hands.

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In this way they carried on for a long, long time, but the interrogation led to nothing because they bombarded me with questions and asked me of persons whom I did not know or scarcely knew.

I suppose it must have been in the morning I was brought back again to the prison. I was placed in my cell and felt very sick and weak. All during the day I asked the guard if I could not have a doctor; that was the 19th. After some days-I suppose it must have been the day before Christmas Eve 1941-1 was again, in the night, brought to the Victoria Terrace. The same happened as last time, only this time it was very easy for me to undress because I had only a coat on me. I was swollen up from the last beating. Just like the last time, six, seven, or eight Gestapo agents were present.

THE PRESIDENT: German Gestapo, do you mean?

CAPPELEN: Yes, German Gestapo, all of them. And then there was Femer present -at that time, too. He had a rank in the SS and was criminal commissar. Then they started to beat me again, but it was useless to beat a man like me who was so swollen up and looking so bad. Then they started in another way, they started to screw and break my arms and legs. And my right arm was dislocated. I felt that awful pain, and fainted again. Then the same happened as last time; they poured water on me and I came back again to life.

Now all the Germans there were absolutely mad. They roared like animals and bombarded me with questions again, but I was so tired I could not answer.

Then they placed a sort of home-made-it looked to me like a sort of home-made-wooden thing, with a screw arrangement, on my left leg; and they started to screw so that all the flesh loosened from the bones. I felt an awful pain and fainted away again. But I came back to consciousness again; and I have still big marks here on my leg from the screw arrangement, now, four years afterwards. So that led to nothing and then they placed something on my neck-I still have marks here [indicating]-and loosened the flesh here, But then I had a collapse and all of a sudden I felt that I was sort of paralyzed in the right side. It has otherwise been proved that I had a cerebral hemorrhage. And I got that double vision; I saw two of each Gestapo agent, and all was going round and round for me. That double vision I have had 4 years, and when I am tired it comes back again. But I am better now, so I can move again on the right side; but the right side is a little bit affected from that.

Well, I cannot remember much more from that night, but the other prisoners who had to clean up the corridors in the prison had

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seen them bringing me back again in the morning. That must have been about 6 o'clock in the morning. They thought I was dead because I had no irons on my hands. If it had been for I day or 2 days, I can't tell, but one day I moved again and was a little bit clear; and then the guard at once was in my cell where I was lying on a cot in my own vomiting and blood, and afterwards there came a doctor.

He had, I suppose, quite a high rank; which rank I cant exactly say. He told me that I most probably would die, especially if I wasn't-I asked him, "Couldn't you bring me to a hospital, because..." He said, "No. Fools are not to be brought to any hospital, before you do just what we say you shall do. Like all Norwegians, you are a fool."

Well, they put my arm into joint again. That was very bad, but two soldiers held me and they drew it in, and I fainted away again. So the time passed and I rested a bit. I couldn't walk, because it all seemed to be going around for me. So I was lying on the cot. And so one day-it must have been in the end of February or in the middle of February 1942-they came again. It must have been about ten o'clock in the night, because the light in my cell had been out for quite a long time. They asked me to stand up, and I made an attempt, and fell down again because of the paralysis. Then they kicked me; but I said, "Is not it better to put me to death, because I can't move?"

Well, they dragged me out of the cell, and I was again brought up to Victoria Terrace; that is the headquarters where they made their interrogations. This time the interrogation was led by one SS man called Stehr. I could not stand so, naked as I was, I was lying on the floor. This Stehr had some assistants, four or five Gestapo agents; and they started to tramp on me and to kick me. So all of a sudden they brought me to my feet again and brought me to a table where Stehr was sitting. He took my left hand like this [indicating] and put some pins under my nails and started to break them up. Well, it hurt me badly; and all things began going around and around for me-the double vision-but the pain was so intense that I drew my hand back. I should not have done that, because that made them absolutely furious. I fainted away, collapsed, and I do not know for how long a time; but I came back to life again by the smelling of burned flesh or burned meat. And then one of the Gestapo agents was standing with a little sort of lamp burning me under my feet. It did not hurt me too much, because I was so feeble that I did not care; and I was so paralyzed my tongue could not work, so I could not speak, only groaned a bit, crying, naturally, always.

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Well, I don't remember much more of that time, but this was to me one of the worst things I went through with respect to interrogations. I was brought back again to the prison and time passed and I attempted to eat a little bit. I spewed most of it up again, I threw it up again, most of it. But little by little I recovered. I was still paralyzed in the side, so I couldn't stand up.

But I was also taken into interrogations again, and then I was confronted with other Norwegians, people I knew and people I did not know; and the most of them were badly treated. They were swollen up, and I remember especially two of my friends, two very good persons. I had been confronted with them, and they were looking very bad from torture, and when I came back again after my imprisonment I learned that they both were dead; they had died from the treatment.

Another incident which I aim to tell-I hope My Lord will permit me to do it-concerned a person called Sverre Emil Halvorsen. He was one day-that must have been in the autumn or in August or October 1943-a little bit swollen up and very unhappy; and he said they had treated him so bad, but he and some of his friends had been in some sort of a court where they had been told that they were to be shot the next day. They placed a sort of sentence upon them, just to set an example.

Well, Halvorsen had, naturally, a headache and felt very ill, and I asked the guard to bring-the head guard, that was a person named Herr Gotz. He came and asked what the devil I wanted. I said, "My comrade is very ill, could not he have some aspirins?" "Oh no," he said, "it is a waste to give him aspirin, because he is to be shot in the morning."

Next morning he was brought out of the cell, and after the war they found him up at Trondheim together with other Norwegians in a grave there with a bullet through his neck.

Well, the Moellergate 19, in Oslo, the prison where I was for about 25 months, was a house of horror. I heard every night nearly every night-people screaming and groaning. One day, it must have been in December 1943, about the 8th of December, they came into my cell and told me to dress. It was in the night. I put on my ragged clothes, what I had. Now I had recovered, practically. I was naturally lame on the one side, could not walk so well, but I could walk; and I went down in the corridor and there they placed me as usual against the wall, and I waited that they would bring me away and shoot me. But they did not shoot me; they brought me to Germany together with lots of other Norwegians. I learned afterward

s about some few of my friends-and by friends,

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I mean Norwegians. We were so-called "Nacht und Nebel" prisoners, "Night and Mist" prisoners. We were brought to a camp called Natzweiler, in Alsace. It was a very bad camp, I must say.

We had to work to take stones out of the mountains. But I shall not bore you about my tales from Natzweiler, My Lord, I will only say that people of all other nations-French, Russians, Dutch, and Belgians-were there and we are about five hundred Norwegians who have been there. Between 60 and 70 percent died there or in other camps of concentration. Also, two Danes were there.

Well, we saw many cruel things there, so cruel that they need they are well known. The camp had to be evacuated in September 1944. We were then brought to Dachau near Munich, but we did not stay long there; at least, I didn't stay long there. I was sent to a Kommando called Aurich in East Friesland, where we were about-that was an under-Kommando of Neuengamme, near Hamburg. We were about fifteen hundred prisoners. We had to dig tank traps. Well, we had to walk every day about 3 or 4 hours, and go by train for 1 hour to the Panzer Graben where we worked. The work was so strong and so hard and the way they treated us so bad, that most of them died there. I suppose about half of the prisoners died of dysentery or of ill-treatment in the five or six weeks we were there. It was too much even for the SS, who had to take care of the camp, so they gave it up, I suppose; and I was sent from Neuengamme, near Hamburg, to a camp called GrossRosen, in Silesia; it is near Breslau. That was a very bad camp, too. We were about 40 Norwegians there; and of those 40 Norwegians we were about 10 left after 4 to 5 weeks.

THE PRESIDENT: You will be some little time longer, so I think we better adjourn now for 10 minutes.

[A recess was taken.]

M. DUBOST: M. Cappelen, will you continue to speak to us of your passage through those camps, particularly of what you know of the camp of Natzweiler and the role at Natzweiler of Dr. Hirt, Hirch, or Hirtz of the German medical faculty of Strasbourg?

CAPPELEN: Well, in Natzweiler, yes, there were also carried on experiments. Just beside the camp there was a farm they called Struthof. That was practically a part of the camp; and some of the prisoners had to work there to clean up the rooms; and-well not so often, but sometimes-they were taken out. For instance, one day, I remember, all the Gypsies were taken out, and then they were brought down to Struthof. They were very afraid of being brought down there.

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Well, one friend of mine, a Norwegian called Hvidding, who had a job in the hospital-so-called hospital-in the camp, told me the day after the Gypsies were taken and brought to Struthof, "I tell you something. They have, so far as I understand, tried some sort of gas on them."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"Well, come along with me."

And then, through the window of the hospital, I could see four of the Gypsies lying in beds. They did not look well, and it was not easy to look through the glass, but they had some mucus, I suppose, around their mouths. And he told me that they had Hvidding told me-that the Gypsies could not tell much because they were so ill, but so far as he understood, it was gas which they had used upon them. There had been 12 of them, and 4 were living; the other 8, so far as he understood, died down there at Struthof. Then he told further on, "You see that man who sometimes walks through the camp together with some others?"

"Well, I have seen him," I said.

"That is Professor Hirtz from the German University in Strasbourg."

I am quite sure Hvidding said that this man is Hirt or Hirtz. He is coming here now nearly daily with a so-called commission to see those who are coming back again from Struthof, to see the result. That is all I know about that so far.

M. DUBOST: How many Norwegians died at Gross-Rosen?

CAPPELEN: In Gross-Rosen, it is not possible for me to say here exactly; but I know about 40 persons who had been there, and I also know about ten who came back again. Well, Gross-Rosen was a bad camp. But nearly the worst of it all was the evacuation of Gross-Rosen. I suppose it must have been in the middle of February of that year. The Russians came nearer and nearer to Breslau.

THE PRESIDENT: You mean 1945?

CAPPELEN: Yes, 1945 1 mean. One day we were placed upon a so-called "Appellplatz" (roll call ground). We were very feeble, all of us. We had hard work, little food, and all sorts of ill-treatment. Well, we started to walk in parties of about 2,000 to 3,000. In the party I was with, we were about 2,500 to 2,800. We heard so and so many when they took up the numbers.

Well, we started to walk, and we had SS guards on each side. They were very nervous and almost like mad persons. Several were drunk. We couldn't walk fast enough, and they smashed in the heads of five who could not keep up. They said in German,

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"That is what happens to those who cannot walk." The others would have been treated in the same way if they had not been able to follow. We walked the best we could. We attempted to help one another, but we were all too exhausted. After walking for 6 to 8 hours we came to a station, a railway station. It was very cold and we had only striped prison clothes on, and bad boots; but we said, "Oh, we are glad that we have come to a railway' station. It is better to stand in a cow truck than to walk, in the middle of winter." It was very cold, 10 to 12 degrees below zero

(centigrade). It was a long train with open cars. In Norway we call them sand cars, and we were kicked on to those cars, about 80 on each car. We had to sit together and on this car we sat for about 5 days without food, cold, and without water. When it was snowing we made like this [indicating] just to get some water into the mouth and, after a long, long time-it seemed to me years-we came to a place which I afterwards learned was Dora. That is in the neighborhood of Buchenwald.

Well, we arrived there. They kicked us down from the cars, but many were dead. The man who sat next to me was dead, but I had no right to get away. I had to sit with a dead man for the last day. I didn't see the figures myself, naturally, but about one-third of us or half of us were dead, getting stiff. And they told us that one third-I heard the figure afterwards in Dora-that the dead on our train numbered 1,447.

Well, from Dora I don't remember so much, because I was more or less dead. I have always been a man of good humor and high spirited, to help myself first and my friends; but I had nearly given up.

I do not remember so much before, so I had a good chance, because Bernadotte's action came and we were rescued and brought to Neuengamme, near Hamburg; and when we arrived, there were some of my old friends, the student from Norway who had been deported to Germany, other prisoners who came from Sachsenhausen and other camps, and the few, comparatively few, Norwegian "NN" prisoners who *ere living, all in very bad condition. Many of my friends are still in the hospital in Norway. Some died after coming home.

That's what happened to me and my comrades in the three and three-quarter years I was in prison. I am fully aware that it is impossible for me to give details more than I have done; but I have taken, so to say, the parts of it which show, I hope, the way they behaved against Norwegians, and in Norway, the German SS.

M. DUBOST: For what reason were you arrested?

CAPPELEN: I was arrested the 29th of November 1941, in a place called then Hoistly. That is a sort of sanitarium where one goes skiing.

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M. DUBOST: What had you done? What was held against you? CAPPELEN: Well, what I had done. Like most of us Norwegians, we regarded ourselves to be at war with Germany in one way or another; and naturally we, most of us, were against them by feelings; and also, as the Gestapo asked me, I remember, "Mat do you think of Mr. Quisling?" I only answered, "What would you have done if a German officer-even a major-when your country was at war and your government had given an order of mobilization, he came and said, 'Better forget the Mobilization Order?"' A man can't do that with respect.

M. DUBOST: On the whole, did the German population know of, or were they unaware of, what went on in the camps?

CAPPELEN: That is, naturally, very difficult for me to answer. But in Norway, at least, even at the time when I was arrested, we knew quite a lot about how the Germans treated their prisoners.

And there is one thing I remember in Munich where I was working. I was not working; I was in Dachau for that short period. With some others, I was once brought to the town of Munich to go into the ruins to seek for persons and find bombs and things like that. I suppose that was the idea. They never told us anything, but we knew what was on. We were about one hundred persons, prisoners. We were looking like dead persons, all of us looking very bad. We went through the streets and people could see us; and they also could see what we were going to do, the sort of work which one should think was very dangerous and which should in some way help them; but it was no fun for them to see us. Some of them were hollering to us, "It is your fault that we are bombed."

M. DUBOST: Were there any chaplains in your camp? Were you allowed to pray?

CAPPELEN: Well, we had among the "NN" prisoners in Natzweiler a priest from Norway. He was, I suppose, what you call in English a Dean. He was of quite high rank. In Norwegian we call it "Prost." From the west coast of Norway. He was also brought to Natzweiler as an "NN" prisoner, and some of my comrades asked him if they could not meet sometimes so he could preach to them. But he said, "No, I don't dare to do it. I had a Bible. They have taken it from me and they joked about it and said, 'You dirty churchman, if you show the Bible and things like that..."' You know, therefore, we did not do anything in that way.

M. DUBOST: Those who were dying among you, did they have the consolation of their religion at the time of their death?

CAPPELEN: No.

M. DUBOST: Were the dead treated with decency?

CAPPELEN: No.

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M. DUBOST: Was there any religious service conducted? CAPPELEN: No.

M. DUBOST: I have no further questions to ask.

THE PRESIDENT: Does counsel for the U.S.S.R. desire to cross-examine?

GEN. RUDENKO: I have no question, Mr. President. THE PRESIDENT: Has the United States?

[No response.]

Then does any member of the defendants' counsel wish to ask the witness any questions?

DR. MERKEL: Witness, at your first interrogations which as a rule took place about ten days after arrest, were you interrogated by German or by Norwegian Gestapo men?

CAPPELEN: It was made by two Norwegians who belonged to, as I learned afterward, the so-called State Police. That was not the police in Norway. They were working together with the Gestapo; in fact, it was the same. But it was by them I was interrogated after the 10 days. But they, as I heard afterwards, usually did it in that way, because it was easy to do it in Norwegian; and some of the Germans could not speak Norwegian. Most of them could not. I think it was, therefore, that they took the Norwegian; and you can call them Gestapo, practically. They let them handle the persons first.

DR. MERKEL: Then at the Victoria Terrace, which name I believe you used to designate the Gestapo headquarters in Oslo, were there Norwegian or German officials present during your interrogation?

CAPPELEN: I dare say there may have been one Norwegian as a sort of interpreter; but as I spoke the German language, I cannot, with 100 percent surety, say if there were one or two Norwegian policemen there. It is difficult. But as Victoria Terrace was the headquarters of the Gestapo, naturally they had some Norwegian Nazis to help them there. But most of them were German.

DR. MERKEL: Were the persons who interrogated you in uniform or in civilian clothes?

CAPPELEN: During my interrogation I have sometimes seen them in uniform, too. But when they tortured me they were mostly in civilian clothes. So far as I remember, there was only one person in uniform during one of the torture interrogations.

DR. MERKEL: You stated that you were then treated by a physician. Did this physician come of his own free will or was he asked to come?

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CAPPELEN: The first time I asked for a doctor, but then I did not get any. But at the time when I came back to consciousness, when I was supposed perhaps to be dead, the guard possibly had been looking at me because he was then running away; and afterwards they came with a doctor.

DR. MERKEL: Did you know that in the German concentration camps there was an absolute prohibition against talking about the conditions in the camp-among the prisoners as well as to outsiders, of course-and that any violation of the order not to talk was subject to most severe penalties?

CAPPELEN: Well, in the camps it was like this: It was naturally more or less understood that it was more or less forbidden to talk about the tortures we had gone through; but naturally in the camps, the Nacht und Nebel Camps where I was, the situation was so bad that even torture sometimes seemed to be better than dying slowly away like that, so almost the only thing we spoke about was: "When shall the war end; how to help our comrades; and are we to get some food tonight or not?"

DR. MERKEL: Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Does any other defendant's counsel wish to ask any questions? Mr. Dubost, have you anything you wish to ask?

M. DUBOST: I have nothing further to ask, Mr. President. I thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Then the witness can retire.

[The witness left the stand.]

M. DUBOST: If the Tribunal will permit, we will now hear a witness, Roser, who will give a few details on the conditions under which they kept French prisoners of war in reprisal camps.

[The witness, Paul Roser, took the stand.]

THE PRESIDENT: What is your name?

M. PAUL ROSER (Witness): Roser, Paul.

THE PRESIDENT: You swear to speak without hate or fear, to state the truth, all the truth, only the truth? Raise the right hand and say "I swear."

[The witness raised his right, hand and repeated the oath in French.]

THE PRESIDENT: You may sit. down.

M. DUBOST: Your name is Paul Roser, R-o-s-e-r?

ROSER: R-o-s-e-r.

M. DUBOST: You were born on the 8th of May 1903? You are of French nationality?

ROSER: I am French.

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M. DUBOST: You were born of French parents?

ROSER: I was born of French parents.

M. DUBOST: You were a prisoner of war?

ROSER: Yes.

M. DUBOST: You were taken prisoner in battle?

ROSER: Yes, I was.

M. DUBOST: In what year?

ROSER: 14 June 1940.

M. DUBOST: You sought to escape?

ROSER: Yes, several times.

M. DUBOST: How many times?

ROSER: Five times.

M. DUBOST: Five times. You were transferred finally to a disciplinary camp?

ROSER: Yes.

M. DUBOST: Will you indicate the regime of such a camp? Will you indicate your rank, and the treatment which French people of your rank in those disciplinary camps had to submit to, and for what reasons?

ROSER: Very well, I was an "aspirant," a rank which, in France, is between a first sergeant and a second lieutenant. I was in several disciplinary camps. The first was a small camp which the Germans called Strafkommando, in Linzburg in Hanover. It was in 1941. There we re about thirty of us.

While I was in that camp during the summer of 1941, we attempted to escape. We were recaptured by our guards at the very moment when we were leaving the camp. We- were naturally unarmed. The Germans, our guards, having recaptured one of us, attempted to make him reveal the others who also had sought to escape. The man remained silent. The guards hurled t

hemselves upon him, beating him with the butts of their pistols in the face, with bayonets, with the butts of their rifles. At that moment, not wishing to let our comrade be killed, several of us stepped forward and revealed that we sought to escape. I then received a beating with bayonets applied to my head and fell into a swoon. When I recovered consciousness one of the Germans was kneeling on my leg and was continuing to strike me. Another one, raising his gun, was seeking to strike my head. I was saved on that occasion through the intervention of my comrades, who threw themselves between the Germans and myself. That night we were beaten for exactly 3 hours with rifle butts, with bayonet blows, and with pistol butts in the face. I lost consciousness three times.

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The following day we were taken to work, nevertheless. We dug trenches for the draining of the marshes. It was a very hard sort of work, which started at 6:30 in the morning, to be completed at 6 o'clock at night. We had two stops, each of a half-hour. We had nothing to eat during the day. Soup was given to us, when we came back at night, with a piece of bread, a small sausage or 2 cubic centimeters of margarine, and that was all.

Following our attempted escape, our guards held back from us all the parcels which our families sent to us for a month. We could not write nor could we receive mail.

At the end of three and a half months, in September 1941, we were shipped to the regular Kommandos. I, personally, was quite ill at that time and I came back to Stalag X B at Sandbostel.

M. DUBOST: Why were you subjected to such a special regime, although you were an "aspirant"?

ROSER: Certainly because of my attempted escape.

M. DUBOST: Had you agreed to work?

ROSER: No, not at all. Like all my comrades of the same rank and like most of the noncommissioned officers and like all "aspirants," I had refused to work, invoking the provision of the Geneva Convention, which Germany had signed and which prescribed that noncommissioned officers who were prisoners cannot be forced to perform any labor without their consent. The German Army, into whose hands we had fallen, practically speaking, never respected that agreement undertaken by Germany.

M. DUBOST: Are you familiar with executions that took place in Oflag XI B?

ROSER: I was made familiar with the death of several French or Allied prisoners, specifically at Oflag XI at Grossborn in Pomerania. A French prisoner, Lieutenant Robin, who with some of his comrades- had prepared an escape and for that purpose had dug a tunnel, was killed in the following manner: The Germans having had information that the tunnel had been prepared, Hauptmann Buchmann, who was a member of the officer staff of the camp, watched with a few German guards for the exit of the would-be escapees. Lieutenant Robin, who was first to emerge, was killed with one shot while obviously he could in no manner attack anyone or defend himself.

Other cases of this type occurred. One of my friends, a French Lieutenant Ledoux, who was sent to Graudenz Fortress where he was subjected to a hard detention regime, saw his best friend, British Lieutenant Anthony Thomson, killed by Hauptfeldwebel Ostreich with one pistol shot in the neck, in their own cell. Lieutenant Thomson had just sought to escape and had been recaptured

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by the Germans on the airfield. Lieutenant Thomson belonged to the RAF.

I should like to state also that in the camp of Rawa-Ruska in Galicia, where I spent 5 months, several of our comrades ...

M. DUBOST: Would you tell us why you were at Rawa-Ruska?

ROSER: In the course of the winter, 1941-42, the Germans wanted to intimidate, first, the noncommissioned officers who were refractory in labor; second, those who had sought to escape; and third, the men who were being employed in Kommandos (labor gangs) and who were caught in the act of performing, sabotage. The Germans warned us that from I April 1942 onward all these escapees who were recaptured would be sent to a camp, a special camp called a Straflager, at Rawa-Ruska in Poland.

It was following another attempt to escape that I was taken to Poland with about two thousand other Frenchmen. I was at Limburg- an-der-Lahii, Stalag XII A, where we were regrouped and placed in railway cars. We were stripped of our clothes, of our shoes, of all the food which some of us had been able to keep. We were placed in cars, in each of which the number varied from 53 to 56. The trip lasted 6 days. The cars were open generally for a few minutes in the course of a stop in the countryside. In 6 days we were given soup on 2 occasions only, once at Oppel, and another time at Jaroslan, and the soup was not -edible. We remained for 36 hours without anything to drink in the course of that trip, as we had no receptacle with us and it was impossible to get a supply of water.

When we reached Rawa-Ruska on I June 1942, we found other prisoners-most of them French, who had been there for several weeks-extremely discouraged, with a ration scale much inferior to anything that we had experienced until then, and no International Red Cross or family parcel for anyone.

At that time there were about twelve to thirteen thousand in that camp. There was for that number one single faucet which supplied, for several hours a day, undrinkable water. This situation lasted until the visit of two Swiss doctors, who came to the camp in September, I think. The billets consisted of 4 barracks, where rooms contained as many as 600 men. We were stacked in tiers along the walls, 3 rows of them, 30 to 40 centimeters for each of us.

During our stay in Rawa-Ruska there were many attempts at escape, more than five hundred in 6 months. Several of our comrades were killed. Some were killed at the time when a guard noticed them. In spite of the sadness of such occurrences, no one of us contested the rights of our guards in such cases, but several were

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murdered. In particular, on 12 August 1942, in the Tarnopol Kommando, a soldier, Lavesque, was found bearing evidence of several shots and several large wounds caused by bayonets.

On the 14th of August, in the Verciniec Kommando, 93 Frenchmen, having succeeded in digging a tunnel, escaped. The following morning three of them, Conan, Van den Boosch, and Poutrelle, were caught by German soldiers, who were searching for them. Two of them were sleeping; the third, Poutrelle, was not asleep. The Germans, a corporal and two enlisted men, verified the identity of the three Frenchmen. Very calmly they told them: "Now we are obliged to kill you." The three wretched men spoke of their families, begged for mercy. The German corporal gave the following reply, which we heard only too often: "Befehl ist Befehl" ("An order is an order"); and they shot down immediately two of the French prisoners, Van den Boosch and Conan. Poutrelle was left like a madman and by sheer luck was not caught again. But he was captured a few days later in the region of Krakow. He was then brought back to Rawa-Ruska proper, where we saw him in a condition close to madness.

On the 14th of August, once again in the Stryj Kommando, a team of about twenty prisoners accompanied by several guards, were on their way to work ....

M. DUBOST: Excuse me, you are talking about French prisoners of war?

ROSER: Yes, French prisoners of war, so far.

Going along a wood, the German noncommissioned officer, who for some time had been annoying two of them, Pierrel and Ondiviella, directed them into the woods. A few moments later the others heard shots. Pierrel and Ondiviella had just been killed.

On 20 September 1942, at Stryj once again, a Kommando was at work under the supervision of German soldiers and German civilian foremen. One of the Frenchmen succeeded in escaping. Without waiting, the German noncommissioned officers selected two men, if my memory is correct, Saladin and Duboeuf, and shot them on the spot. Incidents of this type occurred in other circumstances. The list of them would be long indeed.

M. DUBOST: Can you speak of the conditions under which the refractory noncommissioned officers who were with you at camp at Rawa-Ruska lived?

ROSER: The noncommissioned officers who refused to work were grouped together in one section of the camp, in two of the large stables which served as billets. They were subjected to a regime of most severe repression; frequent toll calls for assembly;

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lying-down and standing-up exercise which after a while leaves one quite exhausted.

One day Sergeant Corbihan, having refused Captain Fournier-a German captain with a French name-to take a tool to work with, the German captain made a motion and one of the German soldiers with him ran Corbihan through with his bayonet; Corbihan by miracle escaped death.

M. DUBOST: How many of you disappeared?

ROSER: At Rawa-Ruska, in the 5 months that I spent there, we buried 60 of our comrades who had died from disease or had been killed in attempted escapes. But so far, 100 of those who were with us and sought to escape have not been found.

M. DUBOST: Is this all that you have witnessed?

ROSER: No, I should say that our stay at the punishment camp, Rawa-Ruska, involved one thing more awful than anything else we prisoners saw and suffered. We were horrified by what we knew was taking place all about us. The Germans had transformed the area of Lvov-Rawa-Ruska into a kind of immense ghetto. Into that area, where the Jews were already quite numerous, had been brought the Jews from all the countries of Europe. Every day for 5 months, except for an interruption of about six weeks in August and September 1942, we saw passing about 150 meters from our camp, one, two, and sometimes three convoys, made up of freight cars in which there were crowded men, women and children. One day a voice coming from one of these cars shouted: "I am from Paris. We are on our way to the slaughter." Quite frequently, comrades who went outside the camp to go to work found corpses along the railway track. We knew in a vague sort of way at that time that these trains stopped at Belcec, which was located about 17 kilometers from our camp; and at that point they executed these wretched people, by what means I do not know.

One night in July 1942 we heard shots of submachine guns, throughout the entire night and the moans of women and children. The following morning bands of German soldiers were going through the fields of rye on the very edge of our camp, their bayonets pointed downward, seeking people hiding in the fields. Those of our comrades who went out that day to go to their work told us that they saw corpses everywhere in the town, in the gutters, in the barns, in the houses. Later some of our guards, who had participated in this operation, quite good-humoredly explained to us that 2,000 Jews had been killed that night under the pretext that two SS men had been murdered in the region.

Later on, in 1943, during the first week of June, there occurred a pogrom which in Lvov caused the death of 30,000 Jews. I was

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not personally in Lvov, but several French military doctors, Major Guiguet and Lieutenant Levin of the French Medical Corps, described this scene to me.

THE PRESIDENT: The witness appears to be not finishing and therefore I think we had better adjourn now until 2 o'clock.

[The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours.]

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Afternoon Session

MARSHAL: I desire to announce that the Defendant Kaltenbrunner will be absent from this afternoon's session on account of illness.

M. DUBOST: With the permission of the Tribunal, we shall continue examining the witness, M. Roser.

M. Roser, this morning you finished the description of the conditions under which you witnessed the pogrom of Rawa-Ruska and you wanted to give us some details on another pogrom. You told us that a German soldier, who had taken a part in it, made a statement to you which you wanted to relate to us. Is that right?

ROSER: Yes.

M. DUBOST: We are listening to you.

ROSER: At the end of 1942 1 was taken to Germany, and I, together with a French doctor, had the opportunity of meeting the chauffeur of the German physician who was head of the infirmary where I was at that time. This soldier, whose name I have forgotten, said to me as follows:

"In Poland, in a town the name of which I have forgotten, a sergeant from our regiment went with a Jewess. A few hours later he was found dead. Then"--said the German soldier,'my battalion was called out. Half of it cordoned off the ghetto, and the other half, two companies, to one of which I belonged, forced its way into the houses and threw out of the windows, pell-mell, the furniture and the inhabitants."The German soldier finished his story by saying-"Poor fellow! It was terrible, horrible!"-We asked him then- "How could you do such a thing?"-He gave us the fatalistic reply"Orders are orders."

This is the example which I previously mentioned.

M. DUBOST: If I remember rightly, when speaking of Rawa-Ruska you started describing the treatment of Russian prisoners who were in this camp before you.

ROSER: Yes. That is correct. The first French batch which arrived in Rawa-Ruska the 14th or 15th of April 1942, followed a group of 400 Russian prisoners of war, who were the survivors of a detachment of 6,000 men decimated by typhus. The few medicines found by the French doctors upon arrival at Rawa-Ruska came from the infirmary of the Russian prisoners. There were a few aspirin tablets and other drugs; absolutely nothing against typhus. The camp had not been disinfected after the sick Russians had left.

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I cannot speak here of these wretched Russian survivors of Rawa-Ruska, without asking the Tribunal for permission to describe the terrible picture we all-I mean all the French prisoners who were in the stalags of Germany in the autumn or winter of 1941 saw when the first batches of Russian prisoners arrived. It was on a Sunday afternoon that I watched this spectacle, which was like a nightmare. The Russians arrived in rows, five by five, holding each other by the arms, as none of them could walk by themselves "walking skeletons" was really the only fitting expression. Since then we have seen photographs of those camps of deportation and death. Our unfortunate Russian comrades. had been in that condition since 1941. The color of their faces was not even yellow, it was green. Almost all squinted, as they had not strength enough to focus their sight. They fell by rows, five men at a time. The Germans rushed on them and beat them with rifle butts and whips. As it was Sunday afternoon the prisoners were at liberty, inside the camp, of course. Seeing that, all the French started shouting and the Germans made us return to the barracks. Typhus spread immediately in the Russian camp, where, out of the 10,000 who had arrived in November, only 2,500 survived by the beginning of February.

These figures are accurate. I have them from two sources. First,' from a semiofficial source, which was the kitchen of the camp. In front of the kitchen a big chart was posted where the Germans recorded the ridiculously small rations and the number of men in the camp. This number decreased daily by 80 to 100, in the Russian camp. On the other hand, French comrades employed in the camp's reception office, called "Aufnahme," also knew the figures, and from them I got the figure of 2,500 survivors in February. Later, particularly at Rawa-Ruska, I had the opportunity of seeing French prisoners from all parts of Germany. All those who were in stalags, that is, in the central. camps, at the time mentioned, saw the same thing. Many of the Russian prisoners were thrown in a common grave, even before they were dead. The dead and the dying were piled up between the barracks and thrown into carts. The first few days we could see the corpses in the carts, but as the German camp commandant did not like to see French soldiers salute their fallen Russian comrades, he had them covered with canvas after that.

M. DUBOST: Were your camps guarded by the German Army or by the SS?

ROSER: By the Wehrmacht.

M. DUBOST: Only by the German Army?

ROSER: I was never guarded by anybody but the German Army and once by the Schutzpolizei, after I had tried to escape.

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M. DUBOST: And were you recaptured?

ROSER: Yes.

M. DUBOST: One last question. You were kept in a number of prisoner-of-war camps in Germany, were you not?

ROSER: Yes.

M. DUBOST: In all those camps did you have the opportunity to practice your religion?

ROSER: In the camps...

M. DUBOST: What is your religion?

ROSER: I am a Protestant. In the camps where I was kept, Protestants and Catholics were generally allowed to practice their religion. But I was detailed to working squads, particularly to an agricultural group in the Bremen district, called "Maiburg," I think, where there was a Catholic priest. There were about sixty of us in this group. This Catholic priest could not say Mass-they would not let him.

M. DUBOST: Who?

ROSER: The sentries-the "Posten."

M. DUBOST: Who were soldiers of the German Army?

ROSER: Yes, always.

M. DUBOST: I have no further questions.

THE PRESIDENT: Does the British Prosecutor wish to ask any questions?

BRITISH PROSECUTOR: No.

THE PRESIDENT: Or the United States?

AMERICAN PROSECUTOR: No.

THE PRESIDENT: Do any of the Defense Counsel wish to ask any questions?

DR. NELTE: Witness, when were you taken prisoner?

ROSER: I was taken prisoner on 14 June 1940.

DR. NELTE: In which camp for prisoners of war were you put?

ROSER: I was immediately sent to the Oflag, XI D, at Grossborn- Westfalenhof in Pomerania.

DR. NELTE: Oflag?

ROSER: Yes.

DR. NELTE: What regulations were made known to you in the prisoner-of-war camp regarding a possible attempt at escape?

ROSER: We were warned that we would be shot at and that we should not try to escape.

DR. NELTE: Do you think that this warning was in agreement with the Geneva Convention?

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ROSER: This one certainly.

DR. NELTE: You mentioned, if I heard correctly, the case of Robin from Oflag XI D. You said that there was an officer who dug a tunnel in order to escape from the camp, and that as he was the first to emerge from the tunnel, he was shot. Is that right?

ROSER: Yes; I said so.

DR. NELTE: Were you with those officers who tried to escape?

ROSER: I said before that this was related to me by Lieutenant Ledoux who was still in Oflag XI D when that happened.

DR. NELTE: I only wanted to ascertain that this officer, Robin, met his death while trying to escape.

ROSER: Yes, but here I should like to mention one thing, namely, all the prisoners of war who escaped knew they risked their lives. Everyone attempting to escape, knew that he risked a bullet. But it is one thing to be killed trying to climb the barbed wire, for instance, and it is another thing to be ambushed and murdered at a moment when one cannot do anything, when one is unarmed and at the mercy of somebody, as was the case with Lieutenant Robin. He was in a low tunnel, flat on his stomach, crawling along, and was killed. That was not in accordance with international rules.

DR. NELTE: I see what you mean, and you may rest assured that I respect every prisoner of war who tried to do his duty as a patriot. In this case, however, which you did not witness, I wanted to make the point that this courageous officer who left the tunnel might not have answered when challenged by the guards and was therefore shot.

ROSER: No.

DR. NELTE: Though you have just given a vivid description of the incident, I think it was a product of your imagination because, according to your own testimony, you did not see it yourself; is that correct?

ROSER: There are not 36 different ways of getting out of an escape tunnel: You lie flat on

your stomach, you crawl, and if you are killed before you get out of the tunnel, I call that murder.

DR. NELTE: And then you saw the officer ...

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Nelte, we do not want argument in cross-examination. The witness has already stated that he was not there and did not see it, and he has explained the facts.

DR. NELTE: Thank you. The incident in respect to Lieutenant Thomson is not quite clear to me. In this case too, I believe you said you had no direct knowledge, but were informed by a friend. Is that correct?

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ROSER: I cannot but repeat what I said before. I related the story of the French lieutenant, Ledoux, who told me that he was in the fortress of Graudenz together with an R.A.F. lieutenant called Anthony Thomson. This English officer escaped from the fortress. He was recaptured on the air field, taken back to the fortress, put into the same cell as Lieutenant Ledoux, and Ledoux saw him killed by a revolver shot in the back of the neck. Ledoux gave me the name of the murderer. I think I mentioned him just now, Hauptfeldwebel Ostereich. This is the story told me by an eyewitness.

DR. NELTE: Was that Hauptfeldwebel Ostereich a guard at the camp, or to what formation did he belong?

ROSER: I don't know.

DR. NELTE: Do you know that you, as prisoner of war, had a right to complain?

ROSER: Certainly; I personally knew the Geneva Convention which was signed by Germany in 1934.

DR. NELTE: Knowing those regulations you also knew, did you not, that you could complain to the camp commander? Did you avail yourself of that?

ROSER: I tried to do so, but without success.

DR. NELTE: May I ask you for the name of the camp commander who refused to hear you?

ROSER: I do not know the name, but I will tell you when en I tried to complain. It was when I was in the infamous Linzburg Strafkommando (punishment squad) in the province of Hanover. This squad belonged to Stalag XC. In the morning following the night I have just described, when, after an unsuccessful attempt at escape, we were beaten for 3 hours running, some of us were kept in the barracks. We then saw the immediate superior of the commander of the squad. It was an Oberleutnant, whose name I do not know, who saw that we were injured, particularly about the head, and he considered it quite all right. In the afternoon we went to work. When we returned at 7 o'clock we had the visit of a major, a very distinguished-looking man, who also thought that, as we had tried to escape, it was quite in order that we should be punished.

As to our complaint, it went no further.

DR. NELTE: Did you know that the German Government had made an agreement with the-Vichy Government regarding prisoners of war?

ROSER: Yes, I have heard of that, but they did not inspect squads of this kind.

DR. NELTE: You mean to say that only the camps were inspected, but not the labor squads?

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ROSER: There were inspections of the labor squads, but not of the punishment squads where I was. That is the difference.

DR. NELTE: You were not always in a disciplinary squad, were you?

ROSER: No.

DR. NELTE: When were you put in a disciplinary squad?

ROSER: In April 1941, for the first time. It was a squad to which only officer cadets and priests were sent without any obvious reasons. This was the Linzburg Strafkommando squad which did not receive any visits. At Rawa-Ruska we received the visit of two Swiss doctors; I think it was in September 1942.

DR. NELTE: In September 1942?

ROSER: Yes, in September 1942.

DR. NELTE: Did you complain to the Swiss doctors?

ROSER: Not I personally, but our spokesman was able to talk to them.

DR. NELTE: And were there any results?

ROSER: Yes, certainly.

DR. NELTE: Do you -not think that a complaint made through the camp commander would likewise have been successful, if you had wished to resort to it?

ROSER: We were not on very friendly terms with the German staff at Rawa-Ruska.

DR. NELTE: I do not quite understand you.

ROSER: I said we were not on friendly terms with the German commander of the Rawa-Ruska Camp.

DR. NELTE: It is -not a question of good terms, but of a complaint which could be made in an official manner. Do you not think so?

[The witness shrugged his shoulders.]

DR. NELTE: When did you leave Rawa-Ruska?.

ROSER: At the end of October 1942.

DR. NELTE: If I remember rightly, you mentioned the number of victims counted or observed by you, did you not?

ROSER: Yes.

DR. NELTE: How many victims were there?

ROSER: It was a figure given to me by Dr. Lievin, a French doctor at Rawa-Ruska. There were, as I said, about sixty deaths in the camp itself, to which approximately one hundred must be added who disappeared.

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DR. NELTE: Are you speaking of French victims or victims in general?

ROSER: When I was at Rawa-Ruska there were only Frenchmen there, with a few Poles and a few Belgians.

DR. NELTE: I am putting this question because an official French report I have before me, dated 14 June 1945, states that the victims up to the end of July were 14 Frenchmen, and therefore for the period from August to September the number seems to me very high. Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Does any other German counsel want to put any questions to this witness? [There was no response.] M. Dubost?

M. DUBOST: I have finished with this witness, Mr. President. If the Tribunal will permit me, I shall now call another witness, the last one.

THE PRESIDENT: One moment, M. Dubost, the witness can retire.

[The witness left the stand.]

M. Dubost, could you tell the Tribunal whether the witness you are about to call is going to give us any evidence of a different nature from the evidence which has already been given? Because you will remember that we have in the French document, of which we shall take judicial notice-a very large French document; I forget the number, 321 1 believe it is, Document Number RF-321; we have a very large volume of evidence on the conditions in concentration camps. Is the witness you are going to call going to prove anything fresh?

M. DUBOST: Your Honors, the witness whom we are going to call is to testify to a certain number of. experiments which he witnessed. He has even submitted certain documents.

THE PRESIDENT: Are these experiments about which the witness is going to speak all recorded, in the Document Number RF- 321?

M. DUBOST: They are referred to, but not reported in detail. Moreover, in view of the importance attached to statements of witnesses in the French presentation concerning the camps, I shall considerably curtail my work and will dispense with reading the documentary evidence, a large amount of which I shall merely submit after these witnesses have been heard.

THE PRESIDENT: You may call the witness, but try not to let him be too long.

M. DUBOST: I shall do my best, Mr. President.

[The witness, Dr. Alfred Balachowsky, took the stand.]

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THE PRESIDENT: What is your name?

DR. ALFRED BALACHOWSKY (Witness): Alfred Balachowsky.

THE PRESIDENT: Are you French?

BALACHOWSKY: French.

THE PRESIDENT: Will you take this oath? Do you swear to speak without hate or fear, to say the truth, all the truth, only the truth?

[The witness repeated the oath in French.]

Raise your right hand and swear.

BALACHOWSKY: I swear.

THE PRESIDENT: You may sit if you wish.

M. DUBOST: Your name is Balachowsky; Alfred B-a-l-ac-h-o-w-s-k-y?

BALACHOWSKY: That is correct.

M. DUBOST: You are head of a laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in Paris?

BALACHOWSKY: That is correct.

M. DUBOST: Your residence is at Viroflay? You were born 15 August 1909 at Korotcha in Russia?

BALACHOWSKY: That is correct.

M. DUBOST: You are French?

BALACHOWSKY: Yes.

M. DUBOST: By birth?

BALACHOWSKY: Russian by birth, French by naturalization.

M. DUBOST: When were you naturalized?

BALACHOWSKY: 1932.

M. DUBOST: Were you deported on 16 January 1944 after being arrested on 2 July 1943, and were you 6 months in prison first at Fresnes, then at Compiegne? Were you then transferred to the Dora Camp?

BALACHOWSKY: That is correct.

M. DUBOST: Can you tell us rapidly what you know about the Dora Camp?

BALACHOWSKY: The Dora Camp is situated 5 kilometers north of the town of Nordhausen, in southern Germany. This camp was considered by the Germans as a secret detachment, a Geheimkommando, which prisoners who were kept there could never leave.

This secret detachment had as its task the manufacture of V-1's and V-2s-the "Vergeltungswaffen" (reprisal weapons)-the aerial torpedoes which the Germans launched on England. That is why

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Dora was a secret detachment. The camp was divided into two parts: one outer part contained one-third of the total number of persons in the camp, and the remaining two-thirds were concentrated in the underground factory. Dora, consequently, was an underground factory for the manufacture of V-1's; and V-2's. I arrived at Dora on 10 February 1944, coming from Buchenwald.

M. DUBOST: Please speak more slowly. You arrived at Dora from Buchenwald on ... ?

BALACHOWSKY: On 10 February 1944, that is at a time when life in the Dora Camp was particularly hard.

On 10 February we were loaded, 76 men, onto a large German lorry. We were forced to crouch down, four SS guards occupying the seats at the front of the lorry. As we could not all crouch down, being too many, whenever a man raised his head he got a blow with a rifle butt, so that in the course of our 4-hour journey several of us were injured.

After our arrival at Dora, we spent a whole day and night without food, in the cold, in the snow, waiting for all the formalities of registration in the camp-completing forms, with names and surnames, and so on.

In comparison with Buchenwald, we found a considerable change at Dora, as the general management of the' Dora Camp was entrusted to a special category of prisoners who were criminals. These criminals were our block leaders, served our soup, and looked after us. In contrast to the political prisoners who wore a red triangular badge, these criminals were distinguished by a green triangular badge on which was a black S. We called them the "S" men (Sicherheitsverband). They were people convicted of crimes by German courts long before the war, but who, instead of being sent home after having served their terms, were kept for life in concentration camps to supervise the other prisoners. Needless to say prisoners of that kind, these criminals with the green triangles, were asocial elements. Sometimes they had been 5, 10, even 20 years in prison, and afterwards, 5 or 10 years in concentration camps. These asocial outcasts no longer had any hope of ever getting out of the concentration camps. These criminals, however, thanks to the support and co-operation they were offered by the SS management of the camp, now had the chance of a career. This career consisted in stealing from and robbing the other prisoners, and obtaining from them the maximum output demanded by the SS. They beat us from morning till night. We got up at 4 o'clock in the morning and had to be ready within 5 minutes in the underground dormitories where we were crammed, without ventilation in foul air, in blocks about as large as this room, into which 3,000 to 3,500 internees were crowded. There were five tiers of bunks

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with rotting straw mattresses. Fresh ones were never issued. We were given 5 minutes in which to get up, for we went to bed completely dressed. We were hardly able to get any sleep, for there was a continuous coming and going, and all sorts of thefts took place among the prisoners. Furthermore, it was impossible to sleep because we were covered with lice; the whole Dora Camp swarmed with vermin. It was virtually impossible to get rid of the lice. In 5 minutes we had to be in line in the tunnel and march to a given place.

THE PRESIDENT: [To the witness] Just a minute, please. M. Dubost, you said you were going to call this witness upon experiments. He is now giving us all the details of camp life which we have already heard on several occasions.

M. DUBOST: So far nobody has spoken about the Dora Camp, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but every camp we have heard of has got the same sort of brutalities, hasn't it, according to the witnesses who have been called?

You were going to call this witness because he was going to deal with experiments.

M. DUBOST: If the Tribunal is convinced that all the camps had the same regime, then my point has been proved and the witness will now testify to the experiments at the Buchenwald Camp. However, I wanted to show that all German camps were the same. I think this has now been proved.

THE PRESIDENT: If you were going to prove that, you would have to call a witness from every camp, and there are hundreds of them.

M. DUBOST: This question has to be proved because it is the uniformity of the system which establishes the culpability of these defendants. In every camp there was one responsible person who was the camp commander. But we are not trying the camp commander, but the defendants here in the dock and we are trying them for having conceived ...

THE PRESIDENT: I have already pointed out to you that there has been practically no cross-examination, and I have asked you to confine this witness, as far as possible, to the question of experiments.

M. DUBOST: The witness will then confine himself to experiments at Buchenwald as this is the Tribunal's wish. The Tribunal will consider the uniformity of treatment in all German internment camps as proved.

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[Turning to the witness] Will you now testify to the criminal practices of the SS Medical Corps in the camps, criminal practices in the form of scientific experiments?

BALACHOWSKY: I was recalled to Buchenwald the 1st of May 1944, and assigned to Block 50, which was actually a factory for the manufacture of vaccines against exanthematous typhus. I was recalled from Dora to Buchenwald, because, in the meantime, the management of the camp had learned that I was a specialist in this sort of research, and consequently they wished to utilize my services in Block 50 for the manufacture of vaccines. However, I was unaware of it until the very last moment.

I came to Block 50 on the 1st of May 1944, and I stayed there until the liberation of the camp on the 11th of April 1945. Block 50, which was the block where vaccines were manufactured, was under SturmbannFuehrer Schuler, who was a doctor was with the rank of a SturmbannFuehrer, equal to SS major. He in charge of the block and was responsible for the manufacture of the vaccines. This same SturmbannFuehrer Schuler was also in charge of another block in the Buchenwald Camp. This other block was Block 46, the infamous block for experiments, where the internees were utilized as guinea pigs.'

Blocks 46 and 50 were both run by one office; it was the "Geschaftszimmer." All archives, index cards pertaining *to the experiments-as well as Block 50, were sent to the Geschaftszimmer, that is, to the office of Block 50.

The secretary of Block 50 was an Austrian political prisoner, my friend, Eugene Kogon. He and a few other comrades had, consequently, opportunities of looking through all the archives of which they had charge. Therefore they were able to know, day by day, exactly what went on either in Block 50, our block, or in Block 46. 1 myself was able to get hold of most of the archives of Block 46, and even the book in which the experiments were recorded has been saved. It is in our possession, and has been forwarded to the Psychological Service of the American Forces.

In this book all experiments are entered which were made in Block 46. B lock 46 was established in October 1941 by a high commission subordinate to the medical service of the Waffen SS; and we see as members of its administrative council, a certain number of names, for this Block 46 came under the Research Section Number 5 (Versuchsabteilung Number 5 of Leipzig) of the Supreme Command of the Waffen SS. Inspector Mrugowski, ObergruppenFuehrer of the Waffen SS, was in charge of this section. The administrative council which set up Block 46 was composed of the following members:

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Dr. Genzken, ObergruppenFuehrer (the highest rank in the Waffen SS); Dr. Poppendiek, GruppenFuehrer of the Waffen SS; and finally we see among these names also that of Dr. Handloser of the Wehrmacht and of the Military Academy of Berlin, who was also associated with the initiation of experiments on human beings.

Thus, in this administrative council there were members of the SS, and also Dr. Handloser. The experiments proper were carried out by SturmbannFuehrer Schuler, but all the orders and directives concerning the different types of experiments, which I shall speak about to you, were issued by Leipzig, that is, by the Research Section (Versuchsabteilung) of the Waffen SS. So there was no personal initiative on the part of Schuler or the management of the camp.

As to the experiments, all orders came directly from the Supreme Command in Berlin. Among these experiments, which we could follow step by step (at least some of them) through the cards, the results, the registration number of people admitted to and discharged from Block 46, were, first of all, numerous exanthematous typhus experiments; second, experiments on phosphorus burns; third, experiments on sexual hormones; fourth, experiments on starvation edema or avitaminosis; finally, fifth, I can tell you of experiments in the field of forensic medicine. So we have five different types of experiments.

M. DUBOST: Were the men who were subjected to these experiments volunteers or not?

BALACHOWSKY: The human beings subjected to experiments were recruited, not only in the Buchenwald Camp, but also outside the camp. They were not volunteers; in most cases they did not know that they would be used for experiments until they entered Block 46. The recruitment took place among criminals, perhaps in order to reduce their large numbers in that way. But the recruitment was also carried out among political prisoners and I have to point out that recruits for Block 46 came also from Russian prisoners of war. Among the political prisoners and prisoners of war who were used for experimental purposes at Block 46, the Russians were always in the majority, for the following reasons:

Of all the prisoners who could exist in concentration camps it was the Russians who had the greatest physical resistance, which was obviously superior to that of the French or other people of western Europe. They could withstand hunger and ill-treatment, and, generally speaking, showed physical resistance in every respect. For this particular reason, Russian political prisoners were recruited for experiments in greater numbers than others. However, there were people of other nationalities among them, particularly

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French. I should now like to deal with details of the experiments themselves.

M. DUBOST: Do not go too much into details, because we are not specialists. It will suffice us to know that these experiments were carried out without any regard to humanity and on nonvoluntary subjects. Will you please describe to us the atrocious character of these experiments and their results.

BALACHOWSKY: The experiments carried out in Block 46 did without doubt serve a medical purpose, but for the greater part they were of no service to science. Therefore, they can hardly be called experiments. The men were used for observing the effects of drugs, poisons, bacterial cultures, et cetera. I take, as an example, the use of vaccine against exanthematous typhus. To manufacture this vaccine, it is necessary to have bacterial cultures of typhus. For experiments such as are carried out at the Pasteur Institute and the other similar institutes of the world, cultures are not necessary as typhus patients can always be found for samples of infected blood. Here it was quite different. From the records and the chart you have in hand, we could ascertain in Block 46 12 different cultures of typhus germs, designated by the letter BU, (meaning Buchenwald) and numbered Buchenwald I to Buchenwald 12. A constant supply of these cultures was kept in Block 46 by means of the contamination of healthy individuals through sick ones; this was achieved by artificial inoculation of typhus germs by means of intravenous injections of 0.5 to I cubic centimeter of infected blood drawn from a patient at the height of the crisis. Now, it is well-known that artificial inoculation of typhus by intravenous injection is invariably fatal. Therefore all these men who were used for bacterial culture during the whole time such cultures were required (from October 1942 to the liberation of the camp) died, and we counted 600 victims sacrificed for the sole purpose of supplying typhus germs.

M. DUBOST: They were literally murdered to keep typhus germs alive?

BALACHOWSKY: They were literally murdered to keep typhus germs alive. Apart from these, other experiments were made as to the efficacy of vaccines.

M. DUBOST: What is this document?

BALACHOWSKY: This document contains a record of the typhus cultures.

M. DUBOST: This document was taken by you from the camp?

BALACHOWSKY: Yes, I took this document from the camp, and its contents were summarized by me in the experiment book of Block 46.

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M. DUBOST: Is this the document you handed to us?

BALACHOWSKY: We have actually made a more complete document-which is in the possession of the American Psychological Service-as we have the entire record, and this represents only one page of it.

M. DUBOST: I ask the Tribunal to take note that the French Prosecution submits this document, Document Number RF-334, as appendix to the testimony of Dr. Balachowsky.

BALACHOWSKY: [Continuing] In 1944, experiments were also made on the effects of vaccines. One hundred and fifty men lost their lives in these experiments. The vaccines used by the German Army were not only those manufactured in our Block 46, but also ones which came from Italy, Denmark, Poland, and the Germans wanted to ascertain the value of these different vaccines. Consequently, in August 1944 they began experiments on 150 men who were locked up in Block 46.

Here, I should like to tell you how this Block 46 was run. It was entirely isolated and surrounded by barbed wire. The internees had no roll call and no permission to go out. All the windows were kept closed, the panes were of frosted glass. No unauthorized person could enter the block. A German political prisoner was in charge of the Block. This German political prisoner was Kapo Dietzsch, an asocial individual who had been in prisons and in camps for 20 years and who worked for the SS. It was he who gave the injections and the inoculations and who executed people upon order. Strangely enough, there were weapons in the block, automatic pistols, and hand grenades, to quell any possible revolt, either outside or inside the block.

I can also tell you that an order slip for Block 46, sent to the office (Geschaftszimmer) at Block 50 in January 1945, mentioned three strait jackets to be used for those who refused to be inoculated.

Now I come back to the typhus and vaccine experiments. You will see how they were carried out.

The 150 prisoners were divided into 2 groups: those who were to be used as tests and those who were to- be the subjects. The latter only received (ordinary) injections of the different type; of vaccines to be tested. Those used for testing were not given any injections. Then, after the vaccination of the subjects, inoculations were given (always by means of intravenous injections) to everybody selected for this experiment, those for testing as well as the subjects. Those used for tests died about two weeks after the inoculation-as such is approximately the period required before the disease develops to its fatal issue. As for the others, who

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received different kinds of vaccines, their deaths were in proportion to the efficacy of the vaccines administered to them. Some vaccines had excellent results, with a very low death rate-such was the case with the Polish vaccines. Others, on the contrary, had a much higher death rate. After the conclusion of the experiments, no survivors were allowed to live, according to the custom prevailing in Block 46. All the survivors of the experiments were "liquidated" and murdered in Block 46, by the customary methods which some of my comrades have already described to you, that is by means of intracardiac injections of phenol. Intracardiac injections of 10 cubic centimeters of pure phenol was the usual method of extermination in Buchenwald.

THE PRESIDENT: We are not really concerned here with the proportion of the particular injections.

BALACHOWSKY: Will you repeat that please?

THE PRESIDENT: As I have said, we are not really concerned here with the proportions in which these injections were given, and will you kindly not deal with these details?

M. DUBOST: You might try and confine the witness.

BALACHOWSKY: [Continuing] Then I will speak of other details which may interest you. They are experiments of a psychotherapeutic nature, utilization of chemical products to cure typhus, in Block 46, under the same conditions as before. German industries co-operated in these experiments, notably the I. G. Farben Industrie which supplied a certain number of drugs to be used for experiments in Block 46. Among the professors who supplied the drugs, knowing that they would be used in Block 46 for experimental purposes, was Professor Lautenschlager of Frankfurt. So much for the question of typhus.

I now come to experiments with phosphorus, particularly made on prisoners of Russian origin. Phosphorus bums were inflicted in Block 46 on Russian prisoners for the following reason. Certain bombs dropped in Germany by the Allied aviators caused bums on the civilians and soldiers which were difficult to heal. Consequently, the Germans tried to find a whole series of drugs which would hasten the healing of the wounds caused by these burns. Thus, experiments were carried out in Block 46 on Russian prisoners who were artificially burned with phosphorus products and then treated with different drugs supplied by the German chemical industry.

Now as to experiments on sexual hormones ...

M. DUBOST: What were the results of these experiments?

BALACHOWSKY: All these experiments resulted in death.

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M. DUBOST: Always in death? So each experiment is equivalent to a murder for which the SS are collectively responsible?

BALACHOWSKY: For which those who established this institution are responsible.

M. DUBOST: That is the SS as a whole, and the German medical corps in particular?

BALACHOWSKY: Definitely so, as the orders came from the Versuchsabteilung 5 (Research Section 5). The SS were responsible as the orders were issued by that section at Leipzig and, therefore, came from the Supreme Command of the Waffen SS.

M. DUBOST: Thank you. What were the results of the experiments made on sexual hormones?

BALACHOWSKY: They were less serious. Besides, these were ridiculous experiments from the scientific point of view. There were, at Buchenwald, a number of homosexuals, that is to say, men who had been convicted by German tribunals for this vice. These homosexuals were sent to concentration camps, especially to Buchenwald, and were mixed -with the other prisoners.

M. DUBOST: Especially with the so-called political prisoners, who in reality were patriots?

BALACHOWSKY: With all kinds of prisoners.

M. DUBOST: All were in the company of these German inverts?

BALACHOWSKY: Yes. They wore a pink triangle to distinguish them.

M. DUBOST: Was the wearing of this triangle a well-established custom, or on the contrary, was there much confusion in classification?

BALACHOWSKY: At the very first, before my arrival, from what I heard, order was kept with respect to triangular badges; but when I arrived at Buchenwald, in January of 1944, there was the greatest confusion in the badges, and many prisoners wore no badge at all.

M. DUBOST: Or did they wear badges of a category different from their own?

BALACHOWSKY: Yes, this was the case with many Frenchmen, who were sent to Buchenwald because they were ordinary criminals and who finally wore the red triangle of political prisoners.

M. DUBOST: What was the color of the triangle -worn by the ordinary German criminals?

BALACHOWSKY: They had a green triangle.

M. DUBOST: Did they not wear eventually a red triangle?

BALACHOWSKY: No, because they had more privileges than the others and they wore the green triangle distinctly.

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M. DUBOST: And in the working groups?

THE PRESIDENT: We have heard that they were all mixed up.

M. DUBOST: The fact will not have escaped the Tribunal that these questions are put to counter other questions which were asked this morning by the Counsel for the Defense with the intent to confuse not the Tribunal, but the witnesses.

BALACHOWSKY: I repeat that we had a complete conglomeration of nationalities and categories of prisoners.

THE PRESIDENT: That is exactly what he said, that these triangles were completely mixed up.

M. DUBOST: I think, that the statement by this second witness will definitively enlighten the Tribunal on this point, whatever the efforts of the Defense might be to mislead us.

[Turning to the witness] Do you know anything about the fate of tattooed men?

BALACHOWSKY: Yes, indeed.

M. DUBOST: Will you please tell us what you know about them?

BALACHOWSKY: Tattooed human skins were stored in Block 2, which was called at Buchenwald the Pathological Block.

M. DUBOST: Were there many tattooed human skins in Block 2?

BALACHOWSKY: There were always tattooed human skins in Block 2.1 1 cannot say whether there were many, as they were continuously being received and passed on, but there were not only tattooed human skins, but also I tanned human skins-simply tanned, not tattooed.

M. DUBOST: Did they skin people?

BALACHOWSKY: They removed the skin and then tanned it.

M. DUBOST: Will you continue your testimony on that point?

BALACHOWSKY: I saw SS men come out of Block 2, the Pathological Block, carrying tanned skins under their arms. I know, from my comrades who worked in Pathological Block 2, that there were orders for skins; and these tanned skins were given as gifts to certain guards and to certain visitors, who used them to bind books.

M. DUBOST: We were told that Koch, who was the head at that time, was sentenced for this practice.

BALACHOWSKY: I was not a witness of the Koch affair, which happened before I came to the camp.

M. DUBOST: So that even after he left there were still tanned and tattooed skins?

BALACHOWSKY: Yes, there were constantly tanned and tattooed skins, and when the camp was liberated by the Americans,

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they found in the camp, in Block 2, tattooed and tanned skins on 11 April 1945.

M. DUBOST: Where were these skins tanned?

BALACHOWSKY: These skins were tanned in Block 2, and perhaps also in the crematorium buildings, which were not far from Block 2.

M. DUBOST: Then, according to your testimony, it was a customary practice which continued even after Koch's execution?

BALACHOWSKY: Yes, this practice continued, but I do not know to what extent.

M. DUBOST: Did you witness any inspections made at the camp by German officials, and if so, who were these officials?

BALACHOWSKY: I can tell you something about Dora, concerning such visits,

M. DUBOST: Excuse me, I have one more thing to ask you about the skins. Do you know anything about Koch's conviction?

BALACHOWSKY: I heard rumors and remarks about Koch's conviction from my old comrades, who were in the camp at that time. But I personally was not a witness of the affair.

M. DUBOST: Never mind. It is enough for me to know that after his conviction skins were still tanned and tattooed.

BALACHOWSKY: Exactly.

M. DUBOST: You expressly state it?

BALACHOWSKY: Absolutely. Even after his conviction, tanned and tattooed skins were still seen.

M. DUBOST: Will you tell us now what visits were made to the camp by German officials, and who these officials were?

BALACHOWSKY: Contacts between the outside-that is German civilians and even German soldiers-and the interior of the camp were made possible by departures and furloughs that some political prisoners were able to obtain from the SS in order to spend some time with their families; and, vice versa, there were visits to the camp by members of the Wehrmacht. In Block 50 we had a visit of Luftwaffe cadets. These Luftwaffe cadets, members of the regular German armed forces, passed through the camp and were able to see practically everything that went on there.

M. DUBOST: What did they do in Block 50?

BALACHOWSKY: They just came to see the equipment at the invitation of SturmbannFuehrer Schuler. We received several visits.

M. DUBOST: What was the equipment?

BALACHOWSKY: Equipment for the manufacture of vaccines, laboratory equipment.

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M. DUBOST: Thank you.

BALACHOWSKY: There were other visits also, and some German Red Cross nurses visited that block in October 1944.

M. DUBOST: Do you know the names of German personalities who visited the camp?

BALACHOWSKY: Yes, such personalities as the Crown Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont, who was an ObergruppenFuehrer of the Waffen SS and the Chief of Police of Hesse and Thuringia, who visited the camp on several occasions, including Block 46 as well as Block 50. He was greatly interested in the experiments.

M. DUBOST: Do you know what the attitude of mind of the prisoners was shortly before their liberation by -the American forces?

BALACHOWSKY: The prisoners of the camp expected the liberation to come at any moment. On the 11th of April, in the morning, there was perfect order In the camp and exemplary discipline. We hid, with extreme difficulty and in the greatest secrecy, some weapons: cases of hand grenades, and about two hundred and fifty guns which were divided in 2 lots, 1 lot of 100 guns in the hospital, and another lot of about one hundred and fifty guns in my Block 50. As soon as the Americans began to appear below the camp of Buchenwald, about 3 o'clock in the afternoon of the 11th of April 1945, the political -prisoners assembled in line, seized the weapons and made prisoners of most of the SS guards of the camp or shot all those who resisted. These guards had great difficulty in escaping as they carried rucksacks filled with booty- objects they had stolen from the prisoners during the time they guarded the camp.

M. DUBOST: Thank you. I have no further questions to put to the witness.

THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now for ten minutes.

[A recess was taken.]

THE PRESIDENT: Do any of-the defendants' counsel want to ask any questions of this witness?

DR. KAUFFMANN: Are you a specialist in research concerning the manufacture of vaccines?

BALACHOWSKY: Yes, I am a specialist in matters of research.

DR. KAUFFMANN: According to your opinion, was there any sense in the treatment to which these *people were subjected?

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BALACHOWSKY: It had no scientific significance; it only had a practical purpose. I permitted the verification of the efficacy of certain products.

DR. KAUFFMANN: You must have your own opinion, as you were in contact with these men. Did you really see these people?

BALACHOWSKY: I saw these people at very close hand, since in Block 50 1 was in charge of a part of this manufacture of vaccine. Consequently, I was quite able to realize what kind of experiments were being made in Block 46 and the reasons for these experiments. Further, I also realized the almost complete inefficiency of the SS doctors and how easy -it was for us to sabotage the vaccine for the German Army.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Now, these people must have gone through much misery and, suffering before they died.

BALACHOWSKY: These people certainly suffered terribly, especially in the case of certain experiments.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Can you certify that through your own experience, or is that just hearsay?

BALACHOWSKY: I saw in Block 50 photographs taken in Block 46 of phosphorus burns, and it was not necessary to be a specialist to realize what these patients, whose flesh was burned to the bone, must have suffered.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Then, your conscience certainly revolted at these things.

BALACHOWSKY: Absolutely

DR. KAUFFMANN: Well then, I would like to ask you, how your conscience allowed you to obey orders to help these people in some way?

BALACHOWSKY: That is quite simple. When I arrived at Buchenwald as a deportee, I did not hide my qualifications. I simply specified that I was a "laborant"-that is a man who is trained in laboratory work, but who has no special definite qualification. I was sent to Dora, where the SS regime made me lose 30 kilos in weight in two months. I became anaemic...

DR. KAUFFMANN: Witness, I am just concerned with Buchenwald. I do not wish to know anything about Dora. I ask you ...

BALACHOWSKY: It was the prisoners at Buchenwald who, by their connections within the camp, were the cause of my return to the Buchenwald Camp. It was M. Julien Cain, a Frenchman, the Director of the French National Library, who called my presence to the attention of a German political prisoner, Walter Kummelschein, who was a secretary in Block 50. He drew attention to my

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presence without my knowing it and without my having spoken in Dora of being a French specialist. That is the reason why the SS called me back from Dora to work in Block 50.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Please pardon the interruption. We do not wish to elaborate too much on these matters. I believe everything that you have just said is true-the reason why you were sent to Dora and why you were sent back to Buchenwald-but my point is a completely different one. I would like to ask you once more: You knew that these men were practically martyrs. Is that correct? Please answer yes or no.

BALACHOWSKY: I will answer the question. When I arrived at Block 50 1 knew nothing, either of the Block 50 or of the experiments. It was only later when I was in Block 50, that little by little, and through the acquaintances I was able to make in the block, I found out the details of the experiments.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Very well. And after you had learned about the details of the experiments, as you were a doctor, did you not feel great pity for these poor creatures?

BALACHOWSKY: My pity was very great, but it was not a question of having pity or not; one had to carry out to the letter the orders that were given, or be killed.

DR. KAUFFMANN: 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?

BALACHOWSKY: There is no doubt about that. On the other hand, my work consisted in manufacturing vaccine, and neither I nor any other prisoners in Block 50 could ever enter Block 46 and actually witness experiments. We knew what went on concerning the experiments only through the index cards which were sent from Block 46 to be officially registered in Block 50.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Very well, but I do not think it makes any difference to one's conscience whether one sees suffering with one's own eyes, or whether one has direct knowledge that in the same camp people are being murdered in such a way. Now, I come to another question.

THE PRESIDENT: Was that a question you were putting there? Will you confine yourself to questions.

BALACHOWSKY: I beg your pardon. I should like to answer the last question.

DR. KAUFFMANN: That was not a question. I will put another question now.

BALACHOWSKY: I should like to reply to this remark then.

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DR. KAUFFMANN: I am not interested in your answer.

BALACHOWSKY: I am anxious to give it.

THE PRESIDENT: Answer the question, please.

BALACHOWSKY: Suffering was everywhere in the camps, and not only in the experimental blocks. It was in the quarantine blocks; it was among all the men who died every day by the hundreds. Suffering reigned everywhere in the concentration camps.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Were there any injunctions that there was to be no talk about these experiments?

BALACHOWSKY: As a rule the experiments were kept absolutely secret. An indiscreet remark with regard to the experiments might entail immediate death. I must add that there were very few of us who knew the details of these experiments.

DR. KAUFFMANN: You mentioned visits to this camp, and you also mentioned that German Red Cross nurses, and members of the Wehrmacht visited the camp, and that furloughs were granted to political prisoners. Were you ever present at one of these visits inside the camp?

BALACHOWSKY: Yes, I was present at the visits inside the camp of which I spoke.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Did the visitors at this camp see that cardiac injections were being given? Or did the visitors see that human skin was tanned? Did those visitors witness any ill-treatment?

BALACHOWSKY: I cannot answer this question in the affirmative, and I can say only that visitors passed through my block. One had to pass almost through the entire camp. I do not know where the visitors went either before or after visiting my block.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Did one of your own comrades tell you perhaps whether the visitors personally saw these excesses? Yes or no.

BALACHOWSKY: I do not understand the question. Would you mind repeating it?

DR. KAUFFMANN: Did perhaps one of your comrades tell you that the visitors at the camp were present at these excesses?

BALACHOWSKY: I never heard that visitors were present at experiments or witnessed excesses of that kind. The only thing I can say, concerning the tanned skins is that I saw, with my own eyes, SS noncommissioned officers or officers-I cannot remember exactly whether they were officers or noncommissioned officers come out of Block 2, carrying tanned skins under their arms. But these were SS men; they were not visitors to the camp.

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DR. KAUFFMANN: Did these visitors, and in particular Red Cross nurses, know that these experiments were medically completely worthless, or did they just wish to inspect the laboratories and the equipment?

BALACHOWSKY: I repeat again that these visitors came to my laboratory section, where they saw what was being done, that is, the sterilized filling of the shears. I cannot say what they saw before or after. I know only that these visitors of whom I am speaking, the Luftwaffe cadets or the Red Cross people, visited the whole installation of the block. They certainly knew, however, what was the source of this culture, and that men might be used for experiments, as there were charts and graphs showing the stages of cultures originating with men; but -it could have been from blood initially taken from typhus patients and not necessarily from patients artificially inoculated with typhus.

I really think that these visitors did not generally know about the atrocities in the form of experiments that were being performed in Block 46, but it was impossible for visitors who went into the camp not to see the horrible conditions in which the prisoners were kept.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Do you perhaps know whether people who received leave, that is, inmates who temporarily were permitted to leave the camp, were permitted to speak about their experiences inside the camp and relate these experiences to-the outside world?

BALACHOWSKY: All the concentration camps were, after all, vast transit camps. The inmates were constantly changing, passing from one camp to another, coming and going. Consequently there were always new faces. But most of the time, apart from those whom we knew before our arrest, or a few other comrades, we knew nothing about those who came and went.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Perhaps I did not express myself clearly. I mean the following: As you said before, political prisoners were permitted to leave the camp temporarily from time to time. Did these inmates know about these excesses, and if they did know, were they permitted to speak about these experiments in the rest of Germany?

BALACHOWSKY: The political prisoners (very few and all of German nationality) who ever obtained leave were prisoners whom the SS had entrusted with important posts in the camp and who had been imprisoned for at least 10 years in the camp. This was so, for instance, in the case of Karl, the Kapo, head of the canteen of the Buchenwald Camp, the canteen of the Waffen SS, who was responsible for the canteen. He was given a fortnight's leave to visit his family at his home in the town of Zeitz. Consequently this

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Kapo was free for 10 days and was able to tell his family anything he wanted to; but I do not know, of course, what he did. What I can say is that obviously he had to be careful. In any case, the prisoners who were allowed to leave the camp were old inmates, as I have said, who knew approximately everything that was going on, including the experiments.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Now, one last question. If I -assume that the people you just described told anything to members of their families, even on the pledge of secrecy, and the leaders of the camp came to know of these Indiscretions, do you not believe that the death penalty might have been incurred?

BALACHOWSKY: If there were indiscretions of that kind on the part of the family (for such indiscretions may be repeated among one's acquaintances), or at least, if such indiscretions came to the knowledge of the SS, it is obvious that those prisoners risked the death penalty.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Thank you very much.

THE PRESIDENT: Is there any other Defense Counsel who wants to ask any questions?

HERR BABEL: I protest against the prosecutor's declaration that I tried to confuse witnesses with my questions. I am not here to worry about the good opinion or otherwise of the press, but to do my duty as a defense attorney ...

THE PRESIDENT: You are going too fast.

HERR BABEL: [Continuing] ... and I am of the opinion that things should not be made more difficult by anyone taking part in this Trial-not even the press.

This war has brought me so much misfortune and sorrow that I have no reason to vindicate anyone who was responsible for this personal suffering or for the misfortune that fell on all our people. I will not try to prevent any such person from receiving his proper punishment. I am concerned only with helping the Tribunal to determine the truth, so that just sentences may be pronounced, and that innocent people may not be condemned.

THE PRESIDENT: 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 is not the occasion for it.

HERR BABEL: I find it necessary because I was not protected against the Prosecution's reproach.

[Herr Babel left the stand to resume his seat.]

THE PRESIDENT: One moment; come back. I do not know what you mean about not being protected. Well! Listen to me. I

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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 do not understand your protest.

HERR BABEL: Your Honor, unfortunately I do not know the court procedure customary in England, America, and other countries. According to the German penal code and to German trial regulations, it is customary that unjustified and unfounded attacks of this kind made against a participant of a trial are rejected by the presiding judge. I therefore expected that perhaps this would be done here too, but as it did not happen, I took the occasion to.... If by doing so, I violated the rules of court procedure, I beg to be excused.

THE PRESIDENT: What unjust accusations are you referring to?

HERR BABEL: The Prosecuting Attorney implied that I put questions to witnesses calculated to confuse them, in order to prevent the witnesses from testifying in a proper manner. This is an accusation against the Defense which is an insult to us, at least to myself-I do not know what the attitude of the other Defense Counsel is.

THE PRESIDENT: I am afraid I do not understand what you mean.

HERR BABEL: Your Honor, I am sorry. I think I cannot convince you as you probably do not know this aspect of German mentality, for our German regulations are entirely different. I do not wish to reproach our President in any way. I merely wanted to point out that I consider this accusation unjust and that I reject it.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Babel, I understand you are saying that the Prosecuting Attorney said something to you? Now, what is it you say the Prosecuting Attorney said to you?

HERR BABEL: The Prosecuting Attorney said that I wanted to confuse witnesses by my questions and, in my opinion that means I am doing something improper. I am not here to confuse witnesses, but to assist the Court to find the truth, and this cannot be done by confusing the witnesses.

THE PRESIDENT: I understand now. I do not think that the Prosecuting Attorney meant to make accusations against your professional conduct at all. If that is only what you wish to say, I quite understand the point you wish to make. Do you want to ask this witness any questions?

HERR BABEL: Yes, I have one question. [Turning to the witness] You testified that weapons, 50 guns, if I understood

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correctly, were brought into either Block 46 or 50. Who brought these weapons in?

BALACHOWSKY: We, the prisoners, brought them in and hid them.

HERR BABEL: For what purpose?

BALACHOWSKY: To save our skins.

HERR BABEL: I did not understand you.

BALACHOWSKY: I said that we hid these guns because we meant to sell our lives dearly at the last moment-that is, to defend ourselves to the death rather than be exterminated, as were most of our comrades in the camps, with flame-throwers and machine guns. In that case we would have defended ourselves with the guns we had hidden.

HERR BABEL: You said "we prisoners"; who were these prisoners?

BALACHOWSKY: The internees inside the camp.

HERR BABEL: What internees?

BALACHOWSKY: We, the political prisoners.

HERR BABEL: They were supposed to have been mostly German concentration camp prisoners? I

BALACHOWSKY: They were of all nationalities. Unknown to the SS, there was an international secret defense organization with shock battalions within the camp.

HERR BABEL: There were German concentration camp prisoners who wanted to help you?

BALACHOWSKY: German prisoners also belonged to these shock battalions-German political prisoners, and in particular former German Communists who had been imprisoned for 10 years and who were of great help towards the end.

HEAR BABEL: Very well, that's what I wanted to know. Then, with the exception of the criminal who wore the green triangle, you and the other inmates, even these of German origin, were on friendly terms and helped each other; is that right?

BALACHOWSKY: The question of the "greens" did not arise, because the SS evacuated the "greens" in the last few days before the liberation of the camp. They exterminated most of them; in any case they left the camp, and we do not know what became of them. No doubt some are still hiding among the German population.

HERR BABEL: My question did not refer to those with the green badges, but to your relations with the German political prisoners.

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BALACHOWSKY: The political prisoners, whether they were German, French, Russian, Dutch, Belgian or from Luxembourg, formed inside the camp secret shock battalions which took up arms at the last minute, and took part in the liberation of the camp. The arms that were hidden came from the Gustloff armament factory, which was located near the camp. These arms were stolen by the workers employed in this factory, who every day brought back with them either a butt hidden in their clothes, or a gull barrel, or a breech. And, in secret, with much difficulty, the guns were assembled from the different pieces and hidden. These were the guns we used in the last days of the camp.

HERR 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, Your Honor.

THE PRESIDENT: Then the witness can retire.

[The witness left the stand.]

M. DUBOST: These two days of testimony will obviate my reading the documents any further, since it seems established in the eyes of the Tribunal, that the excesses, ill-treatment, and crimes which our witnesses have described to you, occurred repeatedly and were identical in all the camps; and therefore are evidence of a higher will originating in the government itself, a systematic will of extermination and terror under which all occupied Europe had to suffer.

Therefore I shall submit to you only, without reading them, the documents we have collected, and confine myself to a brief analysis whenever they might give you...

THE PRESIDENT: M. Dubost, you understand, of course, that the Tribunal is satisfied with the evidence which it has heard up 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 24e 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 that the Tribunal is mot 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 evidence we submitted in the form of testimony during these 2 days constitutes an essential part of our accusation. It will allow

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us to shorten the presentation of our documents, of which we shall simply submit an analysis or very brief extracts.

We had stopped at the description of the transports and under what conditions they were made, when we started calling our witnesses.

In order to establish who, among the defendants, are those particularly responsible for these transports, I present Document UK-56, signed by Jodl and ordering the deportation of Jews from Denmark. It appears in the first book of documents as Exhibit Number RF- 335.

I will now continue presenting a question which was interrupted on Friday, when the session was suspended at 1700 hours. This Document Number UK-56 is a telegram transmitted en clair marked "Top Secret." It is the 8th in the first book. Its second paragraph reads as follows:

"The deportation of Jews is to be carried out by the ReichsFuehrer SS, who is to detail two police battalions to Denmark for this purpose. "Signed: Jodl."

Here we have the carrying out of a political act by a military organization or at least by a leader belonging to a military organization-the German General Staff. This charge therefore affects both Jodl and the German General Staff.

We submitted under Exhibit Number RF-324 (Document Number F-224), during the Friday afternoon session, an extract from the report of the Dutch Government. The Tribunal will find in this report a passage concerning the transport of Dutch Jews detained in Westerbork-which I quote, Paragraph 2:

"All Jewish Netherlanders, whom the Germans could lay their hands on . . . were brought together here . . . ."Paragraph 3-"Gradually all those interned in Westerbork were deported to Poland."

Is it necessary to recall the consequences of these transports, carried out in the conditions described to you, when witnesses have come to tell you 'that each time the cars were opened numerous corpses had first to be taken out before a few survivors could be found?

The French Document Number F-115 (Exhibit Number RF-336), is the report of Professor Richet. In it Professor Richet repeats what our witnesses have said, that there were 75 to 120 deportees in each car. In every transport men died. The fact is known that on arriving in Buchenwald from Compiegne, after an average journey of 60 hours, at least 25 percent of the men had succumbed. This testimony corroborates those of Blaha, Madame Vaillant-Couturier and Professor Dupont.

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Blaha's testimony appears in your document book under the Number 3249-PS. It is the second statement of Blaha. We have heard Blaha. I do not think it necessary to read what he has already stated to us.

Especially infamous is the transport to Dachau, during the months of August and September 1944, when numerous trains which had left France, generally from the camps in Brittany, arrived at this camp with four to five hundred dead out of about two thousand men in a train. The first page of Document Number F-140 states and I quote so as not to have to return to it again-in the fourth paragraph which deals with Auschwitz: "About seven million persons died in this camp." It repeats the conditions under which the transports were made and which Madame Vaillant-Couturier has described to you. On the train of 2 July 1944, which left from Compiegne, men went mad and fought with each other and more than six hundred of them died between Compiegne, and Dachau. It is with this convoy that Document Number F-83 deals, which we submit as Exhibit Number RF-337, and which indicates in the minutes of Dr. Bouvier, Rheims, 20 February 1945-that these prisoners by the time they reached Rheims were already half-dead of thirst: "Eight dying men were taken out already at Rheims; one of them was a priest." This convoy was to go to Dachau. A few kilometers past Compiegne, there were already numerous dead in every car.

Document F-32, Exhibit Number RP-331, Page 21, contains many other examples of the atrocious conditions under which our compatriots were transported from France to Germany:

"At the station at Bremen water was refused us by the German Red Cross. We were dying of thirst. At Breslau the prisoners again begged German Red Cross nurses to give us a little water. They took no notice of our appeals. "

To prevent escape, in disregard of the most natural and elementary feelings of modesty, the deportees were forced in many convoys to strip themselves of all their clothes, and they travelled like that for many hours, entirely naked, from France to Germany. A testimony to this effect is given by our official document already submitted under Document Number RF-301:

"One of the means used to prevent escapes, or as reprisal for them, was to unclothe the prisoners completely."-And the author of the report adds---"This reprisal was also aimed at the moral degradation of the individual."

The most restrained testimonies report that this crowding together of naked men barely having room to breathe, was a horrible sight. When escapes occurred in spite of the precautions, hostages were taken from the cars and shot. Testimony to this

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effect is provided by the same document - five deportees - were executed:

"That was how, near Montmorency, five deportees from the train of 15 August 1944 were buried, and five others of the same train were killed by pistol shots by German police and officers of the Wehrmacht at Dompremy (Marne)."

Added to this quotation is that of another official document, which we have already submitted under F-321, Exhibit Number 331:

"Several young men were rapidly chosen. The moment they reached the trench the policemen each seized a prisoner, pushed him against the side of the trench, and. fired a pistol into the nape of his neck."

The same thing prevailed in deportations from Denmark. The Danish Jews were particularly affected. A certain number, warned in time, had been able to escape to Sweden with the help of Danish patriots. Unfortunately, eight to nine thousand persons were arrested by the Germans and deported. It is estimated that 475 of them were transported by boat and truck under inhuman conditions to Bohemia and Moravia to Theresienstadt. This is stated in the Danish document submitted under Document Number F-666, Exhibit Number RF-338.

In connection -with this country it is necessary to inform the Tribunal of the deportation of the frontier guards:

"At most places, however, the policemen were dismissed as soon as they had been disarmed. Only in Copenhagen and in the large provincial towns were they retained, and partly by ship and partly by goods vans, taken southwards to Germany.

"The policemen were taken via Neuengamme to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. They were quartered there under indescribably insanitary conditions; a very large proportion of them were taken ill; about one hundred policemen and frontier guardsmen died and several still bear traces of the sojourn."

When these deportations had been carried out, all the citizens of the subjugated countries of the west of Europe found themselves in the company of their comrades of misfortune of the east, in the concentration camps of Germany. These camps were merely a means of realizing the policy of extermination which Germany had pursued ever since the National Socialists seized power. This policy of extermination would lead, according to Hitler, to installing 250 million Germans in Europe in the territories adjoining Germany, which constituted her vital space.

The police, the German Army, no longer dared to shoot their hostages, but neither of the two had any mercy on them. More

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and more were transported in ever increasing numbers from 1943 to German concentration camps, where all means were used to annihilate them-from exhausting labor to the gas chambers.

Censuses taken at various times in France enable us to ascertain that there were more than 250,000 French deportees, of which only 35,000 returned. Document Number F-497, submitted as Exhibit Number RF-339, indicates that out of 600,000 arrests which the Germans made in France, 350,000 were carried out with a view to internment in France or in Germany:

"Total number deported, 250,000; number of deportees returned, 35,000."

On the following page are a few names of deported French personages.

"Prefects: M. Bussieres, M. Bonnefoy, disappeared in the Cap Arcona, Generals: de Lestraing, executed at Dachau; Job, executed at Auschwitz; Frere, died at Struthof; Bardi de Fourtou died at Neuengamme; Colonel Roger Masse died at Auschwitz. "High officials: Marquis of Moustier, died at Neuengamme; Bouloche, Inspector General of Roads and Bridges died at Buchenwald; his wife died at Ravensbruck, one of his sons died during deportation, his other son alone returned from Flossenburg; Jean Deveze, engineer of roads and bridges, disappeared at Nordhausen; Pierre Block, engineer of roads and bridges, died at Auschwitz; Mme. Getting, founder of the social service in France, disappeared at Auschwitz.

"Among university professors, names well-known in France, such as: Henri Maspero, Professor at the College de France, died at Buchenwald; Georges Bruhat, Director of the Ecole Normale Superieure, died at Oranienburg; Professor Vieille died at Buchenwald. . . ."

It is impossible to name each of the intellectuals exterminated by German fury. Among the doctors we must, however, mention the disappearance of the Director of the Rothschild Hospital and of Professor Florence, both murdered, one at Auschwitz, the other at Neuengamme.

As to Holland: 110,000 Dutch citizens of the Jewish faith were arrested, only 5,000 returned; 16,000 patriots were arrested, only 6,000 returned. Out of a total of 126,000 deportees, 11,000 were repatriated after the liberation.

In Belgium, there were 197,150 deportees, not including prisoners of war; including prisoners of war, 250,000.

In Luxembourg, 7,000 deportees-more than 700 were Jews There were 4,000 Luxembourgers; out of these, 500 died.

In Denmark (Exhibit Number RF-338, Document Number F-666 already submitted) 6,104 Danes were interned; 583 died..

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There were camps within and outside Germany. Most of the latter were used only for the sorting of prisoners, and I have already spoken about them. Ho,% ever, some of them functioned like those in Germany and among them, that of Westerbork in Holland must be mentioned. This camp is dealt with in Document Number F-224, already submitted under Exhibit Number RF-324, which is the official report of the Dutch Government. The camp of Amersfoort, also in Holland, is the subject of Document Number F-677, which will be submitted as Exhibit Number RF-344.

What we already know through direct testimony of the regime of the Nazi internment camps makes it unnecessary for me to read the whole report, which is rather voluminous, and which does not bring any noticeably new facts on the regime of these camps.

There is also the camp of Vught in Holland. Then in Norway the camps of Grini, of Falstad, of Viven; that of Espeland, and that of Sydspissen, which are described in a document provided by the Norwegian Government-Document Number F-240, Exhibit Number RF-292, which we have already submitted. The Tribunal will excuse me for not reading this document, which does not give us any information that we have not heard before from the witnesses.

The camps inside Germany, like all those outside Germany which were not transit camps only, should be divided into three categories-which is in accordance with German instructions themselves which fell into our hands. You will find these instructions in your second document book, Page 11. The pages follow in regular order. It is Document Number 1063-PS, USA-492. We read:

"The ReichsFuehrer SS and Chief of' the German Police has given his approval for the classification of the concentration camps into various categories which. take into account the prisoner's character and the degree of danger which he represents to the State. Accordingly, the concentration camps will be classified in the following categories:

"Category 1: For all prisoners accused of minor delinquencies....

"Category 1a: For aged prisoners and those able to work under only certain conditions.

"Category 2: For prisoners with more serious charges, but still capable of re-education and improvement.

"Category 3: For major offenders charged with particularly serious crimes ......

On 2 January 1941, the date of this document, the German administration, in dividing the camps into three categories, made an enumeration of the principal German camps throughout Germany

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in each category. It seems unnecessary to me to -revert to the geographical location of these camps within Germany, since my American colleagues, with the help of geographical maps, have already dealt fully with this question.

The organization and functioning of these camps had a double purpose: The first, according to Document Number F-285, was to make good the labor shortage, and obtain a maximum output at a minimum cost. This document is submitted as Exhibit Number RF- 346. I shall not read it in extenso, but from Page 14 of your second document book, I shall read the first paragraph:

"For important military reasons.. ."-this is dated 17 December 1942 and coincides with the difficulties encountered in the course of the Russian campaign-" . . . because of great difficulties of a military nature, which cannot be stated, the ReichsFuehrer SS and Chief of the German Police ordered on 14 December 1942 that, by end of January 1943 at the latest, at least 35,000 internees, fit for work, shall be sent to concentration camps.

"To obtain this number the following is ordered:

"As from this date and to I February 1943, all Eastern or foreign workers who escaped or broke their contracts, and who do not belong to allied, friendly or neutral states, shall be sent back to concentration camps by the quickest means possible."

Arbitrary internments with a view to procuring, at the least possible cost, the maximum output from labor which had already been deported to Germany but which had to be paid since it was under labor contracts.

The organization of these camps was further intended to exterminate all unproductive forces which could no longer be exploited by German industry, and which in general might hinder Nazi expansion. Evidence for this is furnished by Document Number R-91, Pages 20 and 21 of the second document book, submitted as Exhibit Number RF-347, which is a telegram from the Chief of Staff of the ReichsFuehrer SS, received at 2:10 o'clock on 16 December 1942 from Berlin.

"In connection with the increased allocation of labor to concentration camps, ordered to be completed by 30 January 1943, the following procedure may be applied regarding the Jews:

1) Total number: 45,000 Jews.

2) Start of transportation: 11 January 1943. End of transportation: 31 January 1943....

3 )The most important part of the document--- The figure of 45,000 Jews is to consist of 30,000 Jews from the district

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of Bialystok; 10,000 Jews from the ghetto of Theresienstadt, 5,000 of which are capable of work and until now have been used for light tasks in the ghetto; and 5,000 Jews generally unfit for work, including those over 60 years of age. In order to use this opportunity for reducing the number of inmates now amounting to 48,000 which is too high for the ghetto, I ask that special powers be given to me.

At the very end of this paragraph:

"The number of 45,000 includes those unfit for work"-underlined (italics)-"(old Jews and children included). By applying suitable methods, the screening of newly-arrived Jews in Auschwitz should yield at least 10,000 to 15,000 people fit for work."

This is underlined in the text.

And here is an official document which corroborates the testimony of Mme. Vaillant-Couturier, among various other testimonies on the same question, as to how the systematic selections were made from each convoy arriving at Auschwitz, not by the will of the chief of the camp of Auschwitz, but the result of higher orders coming from the German Government itself.

If it please the Tribunal, my report will cease here this evening, and will be continued tomorrow, dealing with the utilization of this manpower, which I shall endeavor to treat as quickly as possible. in the light of the testimonies we have already had.

[The Tribunal adjourned until 30 January 1946 at 1000 hours.]

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