Chapter X: Part 10

THE PRESIDENT: F-274?

M. DUBOST: Yes, Your Honor, F-274, on Page 35. The Document was submitted under Exhibit Number RF-301. The Tribunal will see that the prison at Cologne, where many Frenchmen were interned, was situated between the freight station and the main station so that the Chief Prosecutor in Cologne wrote, in a report which was used by the Ministry of Deportees and Prisoners of War when compiling the book which is before you, that the situation of that prison was so dangerous that no enterprise engaged in war work would undertake to furnish its precious materials to a factory in this area. The prisoners could not take shelter during the air attacks. They remained locked in their cells, even in case of fire.

The victims of air attacks in the prisons were numerous. The May 1944 raid claimed 200 victims in the prison at Alexander Platz in Berlin. At Aachen the buildings were always dirty, damp, and very small; and the prisoners numbered three or four times as many as the facilities permitted. In the Münster prison the women who were there in November 1943 lived underground without any air. In Frankfurt the prisoners had as cells a sort of iron cage, 2 by 1.5 meters. Hygiene was impossible. At Aachen, as in many other prisons, the prisoners had only one bucket in the middle of the room, and it was forbidden to empty it during the day.

The food ration was extremely small. As a rule, ersatz coffee in the morning with a thin slice of bread; soup at noon; a thin slice of bread at night with a little margarine or sausage or jam.

The prisoners were forced to do extremely heavy work in war industries, in food factories, in spinning mills. No matter what kind of work it was, at least twelve hours of labor were required—at Cologne, in particular, from 7 o’clock in the morning to 9 or 10 o’clock in the evening, that is to say, 14 or 15 consecutive hours. I am still quoting from the file of the Public Prosecutor of Cologne, a document, Number 87, sent to us by the Ministry of Prisoners. A shoe factory gave work to the inmates of 18 German prisons . . . I quote from the same document:

“Most of the French flatly refused to work in war industries,
for example, the manufacture of gas masks, filing of cast iron
plates, slides for shells, radio or telephone apparatus intended
for the Army. In such cases Berlin gave orders for the
recalcitrants to be sent to punishment camps. An example of this
was the sending of women from Kottbus to Ravensbrück on 13
November 1944. The Geneva Convention was, of course, not
applied.

“The political prisoners frequently had to remove unexploded
bombs.”

This is the official German text of the Public Prosecutor of Cologne.

There was no medical supervision. There were no prophylactic measures taken in these prisons in case of epidemics, or else the SS doctor intentionally gave the wrong instructions.

At the prison of Dietz-an-der-Lahn, under the eyes of the director, Gammradt, a former medical officer in the German Army, the SS or SA guards struck the prisoners. Dysentery, diphtheria, pulmonary diseases, and pleurisy were not reasons for stopping work; and those who were dangerously ill were forced to work to the very limit of their strength and were only admitted to the hospital in exceptional cases.

There were many petty persecutions. In Aachen the presence of a Jewish woman prisoner in a cell caused the other prisoners to lose half of their ration. At Amrasch they had to go to toilets only when ordered. At Magdeburg recalcitrants had to make one hundred genuflexions before the guards. Interrogations were carried out in the same manner as in France, that is, the victims were brutally treated and were given practically no food.

At Asperg the doctor had heart injections given to the prisoners so that they died. At Cologne those condemned to death were perpetually kept in chains. At Sonnenburg those who were dying were given a greenish liquor to drink which hastened their death. In Hamburg sick Jews were forced to dig their own graves until, exhausted, they fell into them. We are still speaking of French, Belgians, Dutch, Luxembourgers, Danes, or Norwegians interned in German prisons. These descriptions apply only to citizens of those countries. In the Börse prison in Berlin, Jewish babies were massacred before the eyes of their mothers. The sterilization of men is confirmed by German documents in the file of the Prosecutor of Cologne, which contains a ruling to the effect that the victims cannot be reinstated in their military rights. These files also contain documents which show the role played by children who were in prison. They had to work inside the prison. A German functionary belonging to the prison service inquired as to the decision to be taken with regard to a 4-month-old baby, which was brought to the prison at the same time as its father and mother.

What kind of people were the prison staff? They were “recruited amongst the NSKK (National Socialist Motor Corps) and the SA because of their political views and because they were above suspicion and accustomed to harsh discipline.” This is also to be found in the file of the Public Prosecutor at Cologne, Page 39, last paragraph.

At Rheinbach those condemned to death and to be executed in Cologne were beaten to death for breaches of discipline. We can easily imagine the brutality of the men who were in charge of the prisoners. The German official text will furnish us with details regarding the executions. The condemned were guillotined. Nearly all the condemned showed surprise, so say the German documents of which we are giving you a summary, and expressed their dissatisfaction at being guillotined instead of being shot for the patriotic deeds of which they were declared guilty. They thought they deserved to be treated as soldiers.

Among those executed in Cologne were some young people of eighteen and nineteen years of age and one woman. Some French women, who were political prisoners, were taken from the Lübeck prison in order to be executed in Hamburg. They were nearly always charged with the same thing, “helping the enemy.” The flies are incomplete, but we have those of the chief Prosecutor of Cologne. In every case the offenses committed were of the same nature. Keitel systematically rejected all appeals for mercy which were submitted to him.

Although the lot of those who were held in the prisons was very hard and sometimes terrible, it was infinitely less cruel than the fate of those Frenchmen who had the misfortune to be interned in the concentration camps. The Tribunal is well informed about these camps; my colleagues of the United Nations have presented a long statement on this matter. The Tribunal will remember that it has already been shown a map indicating the exact location of every camp which existed in Germany and in the occupied countries. We shall not, therefore, revert to the geographical distribution of the camps.

With the permission of the Tribunal I should now like to deal with the conditions under which Frenchmen and nationals of the western occupied countries were taken to these camps. Before their departure the victims of arbitrary arrests, such as I described to you this morning, were brought together in prisons or in assembly camps in France.

The main assembly camp in France was at Compiègne. It is from there that most of the deportees left who were to be sent to Germany. There were two other assembly camps, Beaune-La-Rolande and Pithiviers, reserved especially for Jews, and Drancy. The conditions under which people were interned in those camps were somewhat similar to those under which internees in the German prisons lived. With your permission, I shall not dwell any longer on this. The Tribunal will have taken judicial notice of the declarations made by M. Blechmann and Mme. Jacob in Document Number F-457, which I am now lodging as Exhibit Number RF-328. To avoid making these discussions too long and too ponderous with long quotations and testimonies which, after all, are very similar, we shall confine ourselves to reading to the Tribunal a passage from the testimony of Mme. Jacob concerning the conduct of the German Red Cross. This passage is to be found at the bottom of Page 4 of the French document:

“We received a visit from several German personalities, such as
Stülpnagel, Du Paty de Clam, Commissioner for Jewish Questions,
and Colonel Baron Von Berg, Vice President of the German Red
Cross. This Von Berg was very formal and very pompous. He always
wore the small insignia of the Red Cross, which did not prevent
his being inhuman and a thief.”

And on Page 6, the penultimate paragraph, Colonel Von Berg was, as we have already said earlier, very pompous. I skip two lines.

“In spite of his title of Vice President of the German Red
Cross, of which he dared to wear the insignia, he selected at
random a number of our comrades for deportation.”

Concerning the assembly center of Compiègne, the Tribunal will find, in Document F-274, Exhibit Number 301, Pages 14 and 15, some details about the fate of the internees. I do not think it is necessary to read them.

In Norway, Holland, and Belgium there were, as in France, assembly camps. The most typical of these camps, and certainly the best known, is the Breendonck Camp in Belgium, about which it is necessary to give the Tribunal a few details because a great many Belgians were interned there and died of privations, hardships, and tortures of all kinds; or were executed either by shooting or by hanging.

This camp was established in the Fortress of Breendonck in 1940, and we are now extracting from a document which we have already deposited under Document Number F-231 and which is also known under UK-76 (Exhibit Number RF-329), a few details about the conditions prevailing in that camp. It is the fourth document in your document book and is entitled “Report on the Concentration Camp of Breendonck.”

THE PRESIDENT: What did you say the name of the camp is?

M. DUBOST: Breendonck, B-r-e-e-n-d-o-n-c-k.

We will ask the Tribunal to be good enough to grant us a few minutes. Our duty is to expose in rather more detail the conditions at this camp, because a considerable number of Belgians were interned there and their internment took a rather special form.

The Germans occupied this fort in August 1940, and they brought the internees there in September. They were Jews. The Belgian Government has not been able to find out how many people were interned from September 1940 to August 1944, when the camp was evacuated and Belgium liberated. Nevertheless, it is thought that about 3,000 to 3,600 internees passed through the camp of Breendonck. About 250 died of privation, 450 were shot, and 12 were hanged.

But we must bear in mind the fact that the majority of the prisoners in Breendonck were transferred at various times to camps in Germany. Most of these transferred prisoners did not return. There should, therefore, be added to those who died in Breendonck, all those who did not survive their captivity in Germany. Various categories of prisoners were taken into the camp: Jews—for whom the regime was more severe than for the others—Communists and Marxists, of which there were a good many, in spite of the fact that those who interrogated them had nothing definite against them; persons who belonged to the resistance, people who had been denounced to the Germans, hostages—among them M. Bouchery, former minister, and M. Van Kesbeek, who was a liberal deputy, were interned there for ten weeks as a reprisal for the throwing of a grenade on the main square of Malines. These two died after their liberation as a result of the ill-treatment which they endured in that camp.

There were also in that camp some black market operators, and the Belgian Government says of them that “they were not ill-treated, and were even given preferential treatment.” That is in Paragraph (e) of Page 2.

The prisoners were compelled to work. The most repugnant collective punishments were inflicted on the slightest pretext. One of these punishments consisted in forcing the internees to crawl under the beds and to stand up at command; this was done to the accompaniment of whipping. You will find that at the top of Page 10.

In the same page is a description of the conditions of the prisoners who were isolated from the others and kept in solitary confinement. They were forced to wear hoods every time they had to leave their cells or when they had to come in contact with other prisoners.

THE PRESIDENT: This is a long report, is it not?

M. DUBOST: That is why I am summarizing it rather than reading it; and I do not think I can make it any shorter, as it was given to me by the Belgian Government, which attaches a great importance to the brutalities, excesses, and atrocities that were committed by the Germans in the Camp of Breendonck and suffered by the whole of the population, especially the Belgian elite.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well, I understand. You are summarizing it?

M. DUBOST: I am now summarizing it, Mr. President. I had reached, in my summary, the description of the life of these prisoners who had been put into cells and who sometimes wore handcuffs and had shackles on their feet attached to an iron ring in the wall. They could not leave their cells without being forced to wear hoods.

One of these prisoners, M. Paquet, states that he spent eight months under such a regime; and when, one day, he tried to lift the hood to see his way, he received a violent blow with the butt of a gun which broke three vertebrae in his neck.

Page 12 concerns the following: discipline, labor, acts of brutality, murders. We are told that the work of the prisoners consisted in removing the earth covering the fort and carrying it outside the moat. This work was done by hand. It was very laborious and dangerous and caused the loss of a great many human lives. Small trucks were used. The trucks were hurled along the rails by the SS and often broke the legs of the prisoners who were not warned of their approach. The SS made a game of this, and at the slightest stoppage of work they would rush at the internees and beat them.

On the same page we are told that frequently, for no reason at all, the prisoners were thrown into the moat surrounding the fort. According to the report of the Belgian Government, dozens of prisoners were drowned. Some prisoners were killed after they had been buried up to their necks, and the SS finished them off by kicking them or beating them with a stick. Food, clothing, correspondence, and medical care—all this information is given in this report as in all the other similar reports which I have already read to you.

The conclusion is important and should be read in part—second paragraph:

“The former internees of Breendonck, many of whom have had
experience of the concentration camps in Germany—Buchenwald,
Neuengamme, Oranienburg—state that, generally speaking, the
conditions prevailing at Breendonck in regard to discipline and
food were worse. They add that in the camps in Germany, which
were more crowded, they felt less under the domination of their
guards and had the feeling that their lives were less in
danger.”

The figures given in this report are only minimum figures. To give but one example (last paragraph of the last page), M. Verheirstraeten declares that he put 120 people in their coffins during the two months of December 1942 and January 1943. If one bears in mind the executions of the 6th and 13th of January, each of which accounted for the lives of 20 persons, we see that at that time, that is to say, over a period of two months, 80 persons died of disease or ill-treatment. From these camps the internees were transported to Germany in convoys, and a description of these should be given to the Tribunal.

The Tribunal should know, first of all, that from France alone, excluding the three Departments of the Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin, and Moselle, 326 convoys left between 1 January 1944 and 25 August of the same year, that is to say, an average of ten convoys a week. Now each convoy transported from 1,000 to 2,000 persons; and we know now, from what our witness said just now, that each truck carried from 60 to 120 individuals. It appears that there left from France, excluding the above-mentioned three northern departments, 3 convoys in 1940, 19 convoys in 1941, 104 convoys in 1942, and 257 convoys in 1943. These are the figures given in the documents submitted under Number F-274, Exhibit Number RF-301, Page 14. These convoys nearly always left from the Compiègne Camp where more than 50,000 internees were registered and from there 78 convoys left in 1943 and 95 convoys in 1944.

The purpose of these deportations was to terrorize the populations. The Tribunal will remember the text already read; how the families, not knowing what became of the internees, were seized with terror and advantage was taken of this to round-up more workers to help German labor which had become depleted owing to the war with Russia.

The manner in which these deportations were carried out not only made it possible more or less to select this labor; but it constituted the first stage of a new aspect of German policy, that is, purely and simply the extermination of all racial or intellectual categories whose political activity appeared as a menace to the Nazi leaders.

These deportees, who were locked up 80 or 120 in each truck, in any season, could neither sit nor crouch and were given nothing whatsoever to eat or drink during their journey. In this connection we would particularly like to bring Dr. Steinberg’s testimony taken by Lieutenant Colonel Badin of the Office for Inquiry into War Crimes in Paris, Document Number F-392, which we submit as Exhibit Number RF-330, which is the 12th in your document book. We will read only a few paragraphs on Page 2:

“We were crowded into cattle trucks, about 70 in each. Sanitary
conditions were frightful. Our journey lasted two days. We
reached Auschwitz on 24 June 1942. It should be noted that we
had been given no food at all when we left and that we had to
live during those two days on what little food we had taken with
us from Drancy.”

The deportees were at times refused water by the German Red Cross. Evidence was taken by the Ministry of Prisoners and Deportees, and this appears in Document RF-301, Page 18. It is about a convoy of Jewish women which left Bobigny station on 19 June 1942:

“They travelled for three days and three nights, dying of
thirst. At Breslau they begged the nurses of the German Red
Cross to give them a little water, but in vain.”

Moreover, Lieutenant Geneste and Dr. Bloch have testified to the same facts and other different facts; and in Document Number F-321, Exhibit Number RF-331, entitled “Concentration Camps,” which we have been able to submit to you in French, Russian, and German, the English version having been exhausted, on Page 21, you will find, “In the station of Bremen water was refused to us by the German Red Cross, who said that there was no water.” This is the testimony by Lieutenant Geneste of O.R.C.G. Concerning this conduct of the German Red Cross and to finish dealing with the subject, there is one more word to be said. Document RF-331 gives you, on Page 162, the proof that that was an ambulance car bearing a red cross which carried gas in iron containers destined for the gas chambers of Auschwitz Camp.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn now until Monday.

[_The Tribunal adjourned until 28 January 1946 at 1000 hours._]

FORTY-FOURTH DAY
Monday, 28 January 1946

_Morning Session_

M. DUBOST: With the authorization of the Court, I should like to proceed with this part of the presentation of the French case by hearing a witness who, for more than 3 years, lived in German concentration camps.

[_The witness, Mme. Vaillant-Couturier, took the stand._]

THE PRESIDENT: Would you stand up, please? Do you wish to swear the French oath? Will you tell me your name?

MADAME MARIE CLAUDE VAILLANT-COUTURIER (Witness): Claude Vaillant-Couturier.

THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me: I swear that I will speak without hate or fear, that I will tell the truth, all the truth, nothing but the truth.

[_The witness repeated the oath in French._]

THE PRESIDENT: Raise your right hand and say, “I swear.”

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: I swear.

THE PRESIDENT: Please, will you sit down and speak slowly. Your name is?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Vaillant-Couturier, Marie, Claude, Vögel.

M. DUBOST: Is your name Madame Vaillant-Couturier?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes.

M. DUBOST: You are the widow of M. Vaillant-Couturier?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes.

M. DUBOST: You were born in Paris on 3 November 1912?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes.

M. DUBOST: And you are of French nationality, French born, and of parents who were of French nationality?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes.

M. DUBOST: You are a deputy in the Constituent Assembly?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes.

M. DUBOST: You are a Knight of the Legion of Honor?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes.

M. DUBOST: You have just been decorated by General Legentilhomme at the Invalides?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes.

M. DUBOST: Were you arrested and deported? Will you please give your testimony?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: I was arrested on 9 February 1942 by Petain’s French police, who handed me over to the German authorities after 6 weeks. I arrived on 20 March at Santé prison in the German quarter. I was questioned on 9 June 1942. At the end of my interrogation they wanted me to sign a statement which was not consistent with what I had said. I refused to sign it. The officer who had questioned me threatened me; and when I told him that I was not afraid of death nor of being shot, he said, “But we have at our disposal means for killing that are far worse than merely shooting.” And the interpreter said to me, “You do not know what you have just done. You are going to leave for a concentration camp in Germany. One never comes back from there.”

M. DUBOST: You were then taken to prison?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: I was taken back to the Santé prison where I was placed in solitary confinement. However, I was able to communicate with my neighbors through the piping and the windows. I was in a cell next to that of Georges Politzer, the philosopher, and Jacques Solomon, physicist. Mr. Solomon is the son-in-law of Professor Langevin, a pupil of Curie, one of the first to study atomic disintegration.

Georges Politzer told me through the piping that during his interrogation, after having been tortured, he was asked whether he would write theoretical pamphlets for National Socialism. When he refused, he was told that he would be in the first train of hostages to be shot.

As for Jacques Solomon, he also was horribly tortured and then thrown into a dark cell and came out only on the day of his execution to say goodbye to his wife, who also was under arrest at the Santé. Hélène Solomon-Langevin told me in Romainville, where I found her when I left the Santé, that when she went to her husband he moaned and said, “I cannot take you in my arms, because I can no longer move them.”

Every time that the internees came back from their questioning one could hear moaning through the windows, and they all said that they could not make any movements.

Several times during the 5 months I spent at the Santé hostages were taken to be shot. When I left the Santé on 20 August 1942, I was taken to the Fortress of Romainville, which was a camp for hostages. There I was present on two occasions when they took hostages, on 21 August and 22 September. Among the hostages who were taken away were the husbands of the women who were with me and who left for Auschwitz. Most of them died there. These women, for the most part, had been arrested only because of the activity of their husbands. They themselves had done nothing.

M. DUBOST: When did you leave for Auschwitz?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: I left for Auschwitz on 23 January 1943, and arrived there on the 27th.

M. DUBOST: Were you with a convoy?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: I was with a convoy of 230 French women; among us were Danielle Casanova who died in Auschwitz, Maï Politzer who died in Auschwitz, and Hélène Solomon. There were some elderly women . . .

M. DUBOST: What was their social position?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: They were intellectuals, school teachers; they came from all walks of life. Maï Politzer was a doctor, and the wife of the philosopher Georges Politzer. Hélène Solomon is the wife of the physicist Solomon; she is the daughter of Professor Langevin. Danielle Casanova was a dental surgeon and she was very active among the women. It is she who organized a resistance movement among the wives of prisoners.

M. DUBOST: How many of you came back out of 230?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Forty-nine. In the convoy there were some elderly women. I remember one who was 67 and had been arrested because she had in her kitchen the shotgun of her husband, which she kept as a souvenir and had not declared because she did not want it to be taken from her. She died after a fortnight at Auschwitz.

THE PRESIDENT: When you said only 49 came back, did you mean only 49 arrived at Auschwitz.

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: No, only 49 came back to France.

There were also cripples, among them a singer who had only one leg. She was taken out and gassed at Auschwitz. There was also a young girl of 16, a college girl, Claudine Guérin; she also died at Auschwitz. There were also two women who had been acquitted by the German military tribunal, Marie Alonzo and Marie-Thérèse Fleuri; they died at Auschwitz.

It was a terrible journey. We were 60 in a car and we were given no food or drink during the journey. At the various stopping places we asked the Lorraine soldiers of the Wehrmacht who were guarding us whether we would arrive soon; and they replied, “If you knew where you are going you would not be in a hurry to get there.”

We arrived at Auschwitz at dawn. The seals on our cars were broken, and we were driven out by blows with the butt end of a rifle, and taken to the Birkenau Camp, a section of the Auschwitz Camp. It is situated in the middle of a great plain, which was frozen in the month of January. During this part of the journey we had to drag our luggage. As we passed through the door we knew only too well how slender our chances were that we would come out again, for we had already met columns of living skeletons going to work; and as we entered we sang “The Marseillaise” to keep up our courage.

We were led to a large shed, then to the disinfecting station. There our heads were shaved and our registration numbers were tattooed on the left forearm. Then we were taken into a large room for a steam bath and a cold shower. In spite of the fact that we were naked, all this took place in the presence of SS men and women. We were then given clothing which was soiled and torn, a cotton dress and jacket of the same material.

As all this had taken several hours, we saw from the windows of the block where we were, the camp of the men; and toward the evening an orchestra came in. It was snowing and we wondered why they were playing music. We then saw that the camp foremen were returning to the camp. Each foreman was followed by men who were carrying the dead. As they could hardly drag themselves along, every time they stumbled they were put on their feet again by being kicked or by blows with the butt end of a rifle.

After that we were taken to the block where we were to live. There were no beds but only bunks, measuring 2 by 2 meters, and there nine of us had to sleep the first night without any mattress or blanket. We remained in blocks of this kind for several months. We could not sleep all night, because every time one of the nine moved—this happened unceasingly because we were all ill—she disturbed the whole row.

At 3:30 in the morning the shouting of the guards woke us up, and with cudgel blows we were driven from our bunks to go to roll call. Nothing in the world could release us from going to the roll call; even those who were dying had to be dragged there. We had to stand there in rows of five until dawn, that is, 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning in winter; and when there was a fog, sometimes until noon. Then the commandos would start on their way to work.

M. DUBOST: Excuse me, can you describe the roll call?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: For roll call we were lined up in rows of five; and we waited until daybreak, until the Aufseherinnen, the German women guards in uniform, came to count us. They had cudgels and they beat us more or less at random.

We had a comrade, Germaine Renaud, a school teacher from Azay-le-Rideau in France, who had her skull broken before my eyes from a blow with a cudgel during the roll call.

The work at Auschwitz consisted of clearing demolished houses, road building, and especially the draining of marsh land. This was by far the hardest work, for all day long we had our feet in the water and there was the danger of being sucked down. It frequently happened that we had to pull out a comrade who had sunk in up to the waist.

During the work the SS men and women who stood guard over us would beat us with cudgels and set their dogs on us. Many of our friends had their legs torn by the dogs. I even saw a woman torn to pieces and die under my very eyes when Tauber, a member of the SS, encouraged his dog to attack her and grinned at the sight.

The causes of death were extremely numerous. First of all, there was the complete lack of washing facilities. When we arrived at Auschwitz, for 12,000 internees there was only one tap of water, unfit for drinking, and it was not always flowing. As this tap was in the German wash house we could reach it only by passing through the guards, who were German common-law women prisoners, and they beat us horribly as we went by. It was therefore almost impossible to wash ourselves or our clothes. For more than 3 months we remained without changing our clothes. When there was snow, we melted some to wash in. Later, in the spring, when we went to work we would drink from a puddle by the road-side and then wash our underclothes in it. We took turns washing our hands in this dirty water. Our companions were dying of thirst, because we got only half a cup of some herbal tea twice a day.

M. DUBOST: Please describe in detail one of the roll calls at the beginning of February.

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: On 5 February there was what is called a general roll call.

M. DUBOST: In what year was that?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: In 1943. At 3:30 the whole camp . . .

M. DUBOST: In the morning at 3:30?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: In the morning at 3:30 the whole camp was awakened and sent out on the plain, whereas normally the roll call was at 3:30 but inside the camp. We remained out in front of the camp until 5 in the afternoon, in the snow, without any food. Then when the signal was given we had to go through the door one by one, and we were struck in the back with a cudgel, each one of us, in order to make us run. Those who could not run, either because they were too old or too ill were caught by a hook and taken to Block 25, “waiting block” for the gas chamber. On that day 10 of the French women of our convoy were thus caught and taken to Block 25.

When all the internees were back in the camp, a party to which I belonged was organized to go and pick up the bodies of the dead which were scattered over the plain as on a battlefield. We carried to the yard of Block 25 the dead and the dying without distinction, and they remained there stacked up in a pile.

This Block 25, which was the anteroom of the gas chamber, if one may express it so, is well known to me because at that time we had been transferred to Block 26 and our windows opened on the yard of Number 25. One saw stacks of corpses piled up in the courtyard, and from time to time a hand or a head would stir among the bodies, trying to free itself. It was a dying woman attempting to get free and live. The rate of mortality in that block was even more terrible than elsewhere because, having been condemned to death, they received food or drink only if there was something left in the cans in the kitchen; which means that very often they went for several days without a drop of water.

One of our companions, Annette Épaux, a fine young woman of 30, passing the block one day, was overcome with pity for those women who moaned from morning till night in all languages, “Drink. Drink. Water!” She came back to our block to get a little herbal tea, but as she was passing it through the bars of the window she was seen by the Aufseherin, who took her by the neck and threw her into Block 25. All my life I will remember Annette Épaux. Two days later I saw her on the truck which was taking the internees to the gas chamber. She had her arms around another French woman, old Line Porcher, and when the truck started moving she cried, “Think of my little boy, if you ever get back to France.” Then they started singing “The Marseillaise.”

In Block 25, in the courtyard, there were rats as big as cats running about and gnawing the corpses and even attacking the dying who had not enough strength left to chase them away.

Another cause of mortality and epidemics was the fact that we were given food in large red mess tins, which were merely rinsed in cold water after each meal. As all the women were ill and had not the strength during the night to go to the trench which was used as a lavatory, the access to which was beyond description, they used these containers for a purpose for which they were not meant. The next day the mess tins were collected and taken to a refuse heap. During the day another team would come and collect them, wash them in cold water, and put them in use again.

Another cause of death was the problem of shoes. In the snow and mud of Poland leather shoes were completely destroyed at the end of a week or two. Therefore our feet were frozen and covered with sores. We had to sleep with our muddy shoes on, lest they be stolen, and when the time came to get up for roll call cries of anguish could be heard: “My shoes have been stolen.” Then one had to wait until the whole block had been emptied to look under the bunks for odd shoes. Sometimes one found two shoes for the same foot, or one shoe and one sabot. One could go to roll call like that but it was an additional torture for work, because sores formed on our feet which quickly became infected for lack of care. Many of our companions went to the Revier for sores on their feet and legs and never came back.

M. DUBOST: What did they do to the internees who came to roll call without shoes?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: The Jewish internees who came without shoes were immediately taken to Block 25.

M. DUBOST: They were gassed then?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: They were gassed for any reason whatsoever. Their conditions were moreover absolutely appalling. Although we were crowded 800 in a block and could scarcely move, they were 1,500 to a block of similar dimensions, so that many of them could not sleep or even lie down during the whole night.

M. DUBOST: Can you talk about the Revier?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: To reach the Revier one had to go first to the roll call. Whatever the state was . . .

M. DUBOST: Would you please explain what the Revier was in the camp?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: The Revier was the blocks where the sick were put. This place could not be given the name of hospital, because it did not correspond in any way to our idea of a hospital.

To go there one had first to obtain authorization from the block chief who seldom gave it. When it was finally granted we were led in columns to the infirmary where, no matter what weather, whether it snowed or rained, even if one had a temperature of 40° (centigrade) one had to wait for several hours standing in a queue to be admitted. It frequently happened that patients died outside before the door of the infirmary, before they could get in. Moreover, lining up in front of the infirmary was dangerous because if the queue was too long the SS came along, picked up all the women who were waiting, and took them straight to Block Number 25.

M. DUBOST: That is to say, to the gas chamber?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: That is to say to the gas chamber. That is why very often the women preferred not to go to the Revier and they died at their work or at roll call. Every day, after the evening roll call in winter time, dead were picked up who had fallen into the ditches.

The only advantage of the Revier was that as one was in bed, one did not have to go to roll call; but one lay in appalling conditions, four in a bed of less than 1 meter in width, each suffering from a different disease, so that anyone who came for leg sores would catch typhus or dysentery from neighbors. The straw mattresses were dirty and they were changed only when absolutely rotten. The bedding was so full of lice that one could see them swarming like ants. One of my companions, Marguerite Corringer, told me that when she had typhus, she could not sleep all night because of the lice. She spent the night shaking her blanket over a piece of paper and emptying the lice into a receptacle by the bed, and this went on for hours.

There were practically no medicines. Consequently the patients were left in their beds without any attention, without hygiene, and unwashed. The dead lay in bed with the sick for several hours; and finally, when they were noticed, they were simply tipped out of the bed and taken outside the block. There the women porters would come and carry the dead away on small stretchers, with heads and legs dangling over the sides. From morning till night the carriers of the dead went from the Revier to the mortuary.

During the big epidemics, in the winters of 1943 and 1944, the stretchers were replaced by carts, as there were too many dead bodies. During those periods of epidemics there were from 200 to 350 dead daily.

M. DUBOST: How many people died at that time?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: During the big epidemics of typhus in the winters of 1943 and 1944, from 200 to 350; it depended on the days.

M. DUBOST: Was the Revier open to all the internees?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: No. When we arrived Jewish women had not the right to be admitted. They were taken straight to the gas chamber.

M. DUBOST: Would you please tell us about the disinfection of the blocks?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: From time to time, owing to the filth which caused the lice and gave rise to so many epidemics, they disinfected the blocks with gas; but these disinfections were also the cause of many deaths because, while the blocks were being disinfected with gas, the prisoners were taken to the shower-baths. Their clothes were taken away from them to be steamed. The internees were left naked outside, waiting for their clothing to come back from the steaming, and then they were given back to them all wet. Even those who were sick, who could barely stand on their feet, were sent to the showers. It is quite obvious that a great many of them died in the course of these proceedings. Those who could not move were washed all in the same bath during the disinfection.

M. DUBOST: How were you fed?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: We had 200 grams of bread, three-quarters or half a liter—it varied—of soup made from swedes, and a few grams of margarine or a slice of sausage in the evening, this daily.

M. DUBOST: Regardless of the work that was exacted from the internees?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Regardless of the work that was exacted from the internee. Some who had to work in the factory of the “Union,” an ammunition factory where they made grenades and shells, received what was called a “Zulage,” that is, a supplementary ration, when the amount of their production was satisfactory. Those internees had to go to roll call morning and night as we did, and they were at work 12 hours in the factory. They came back to the camp after the day’s work, making the journey both ways on foot.

M. DUBOST: What was this “Union” factory?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: It was an ammunition factory. I do not know to what company it belonged. It was called, the “Union.”

M. DUBOST: Was it the only factory?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: No, there was also, a large Buna factory, but as I did not work there I do not know what was made there. The internees who were taken to the Buna plant never came back to our camp.

M. DUBOST: Will you tell us about experiments, if you witnessed any?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: As to the experiments, I have seen in the Revier, because I was employed at the Revier, the queue of young Jewesses from Salonika who stood waiting in front of the X-ray room for sterilization. I also know that they performed castration operations in the men’s camp. Concerning the experiments performed on women I am well informed, because my friend, Doctor Hadé Hautval of Montbéliard, who has returned to France, worked for several months in that block nursing the patients; but she always refused to participate in those experiments. They sterilized women either by injections or by operation or with rays. I saw and knew several women who had been sterilized. There was a very high mortality rate among those operated upon. Fourteen Jewesses from France who refused to be sterilized were sent to a Strafarbeit kommando, that is, hard labor.

M. DUBOST: Did they come back from those kommandos?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Very seldom. Quite exceptionally.

M. DUBOST: What was the aim of the SS?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Sterilization—they did not conceal it. They said that they were trying to find the best method for sterilizing so as to replace the native population in the occupied countries by Germans after one generation, once they had made use of the inhabitants as slaves to work for them.

M. DUBOST: In the Revier did you see any pregnant women?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes. The Jewish women, when they arrived in the first months of pregnancy, were subjected to abortion. When their pregnancy was near the end, after confinement, the babies were drowned in a bucket of water. I know that because I worked in the Revier and the woman who was in charge of that task was a German midwife, who was imprisoned for having performed illegal operations. After a while another doctor arrived and for 2 months they did not kill the Jewish babies. But one day an order came from Berlin saying that again they had to be done away with. Then the mothers and their babies were called to the infirmary. They were put in a lorry and taken away to the gas chamber.

M. DUBOST: Why did you say that an order came from Berlin?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Because I knew the internees who worked in the secretariat of the SS and in particular a Slovakian woman by the name of Hertha Roth, who is now working with UNRRA at Bratislava.

M. DUBOST: Is it she who told you that?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes, and moreover, I also knew the men who worked in the gas kommando.

M. DUBOST: You have told us about the Jewish mothers. Were there other mothers in your camp?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes, in principle, non-Jewish women were allowed to have their babies, and the babies were not taken away from them; but conditions in the camp being so horrible, the babies rarely lived for more than 4 or 5 weeks.

There was one block where the Polish and Russian mothers were. One day the Russian mothers, having been accused of making too much noise, had to stand for roll call all day long in front of the block, naked, with their babies in their arms.

M. DUBOST: What was the disciplinary system of the camp? Who kept order and discipline? What were the punishments?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Generally speaking, the SS economized on many of their own personnel by employing internees for watching the camp; SS only supervised. These internees were chosen from German common-law criminals and prostitutes, and sometimes those of other nationalities, but most of them were Germans. By corruption, accusation, and terror they succeeded in making veritable human beasts of them; and the internees had as much cause to complain about them as about the SS themselves. They beat us just as hard as the SS; and as to the SS, the men behaved like the women and the women were as savage as the men. There was no difference.

The system employed by the SS of degrading human beings to the utmost by terrorizing them and causing them through fear to commit acts which made them ashamed of themselves, resulted in their being no longer human. This was what they wanted. It took a great deal of courage to resist this atmosphere of terror and corruption.

M. DUBOST: Who meted out punishments?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: The SS leaders, men and women.

M. DUBOST: What was the nature of the punishments?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Bodily ill-treatment in particular. One of the most usual punishments, was 50 blows with a stick on the loins. They were administered with a machine which I saw, a swinging apparatus manipulated by an SS. There were also endless roll calls day and night, or gymnastics; flat on the belly, get up, lie down, up, down, for hours, and anyone who fell was beaten unmercifully and taken to Block 25.

M. DUBOST: How did the SS behave towards the women? And the women SS?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: At Auschwitz there was a brothel for the SS and also one for the male internees of the staff, who were called “Kapo.” Moreover, when the SS needed servants, they came accompanied by the Oberaufseherin, that is, the woman commandant of the camp, to make a choice during the process of disinfection. They would point to a young girl, whom the Oberaufseherin would take out of the ranks. They would look her over and make jokes about her physique; and if she was pretty and they liked her, they would hire her as a maid with the consent of the Oberaufseherin, who would tell her that she was to obey them absolutely no matter what they asked of her.

M. DUBOST: Why did they go during disinfection?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Because during the disinfection the women were naked.

M. DUBOST: This system of demoralization and corruption—was it exceptional?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: No, the system was identical in all the camps where I have been, and I have spoken to internees coming from camps where I myself had never been; it was the same thing everywhere. The system was identical no matter what the camp was. There were, however, certain variations. I believe that Auschwitz was one of the harshest; but later I went to Ravensbrück, where there also was a house of ill fame and where recruiting was also carried out among the internees.

M. DUBOST: Then, according to you, everything was done to degrade those women in their own sight?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes.

M. DUBOST: What do you know about the convoy of Jews which arrived from Romainville about the same time as yourself?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: When we left Romainville the Jewesses who were there at the same time as ourselves were left behind. They were sent to Drancy and subsequently arrived at Auschwitz, where we found them again 3 weeks later, 3 weeks after our arrival. Of the original 1,200 only 125 actually came to the camp; the others were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Of these 125 not one was left alive at the end of 1 month.

The transports operated as follows:

When we first arrived, whenever a convoy of Jews came, a selection was made; first the old men and women, then the mothers and the children were put into trucks together with the sick or those whose constitution appeared to be delicate. They took in only the young women and girls as well as the young men who were sent to the men’s camp.

Generally speaking, of a convoy of about 1,000 to 1,500, seldom more than 250—and this figure really was the maximum—actually reached the camp. The rest were immediately sent to the gas chamber.

At this selection also, they picked out women in good health between the ages of 20 and 30, who were sent to the experimental block; and young girls and slightly older women, or those who had not been selected for that purpose, were sent to the camp where, like ourselves, they were tattooed and shaved.

There was also, in the spring of 1944, a special block for twins. It was during the time when large convoys of Hungarian Jews—about 700,000—arrived. Dr. Mengele, who was carrying out the experiments, kept back from each convoy twin children and twins in general, regardless of their age, so long as both were present. So we had both babies and adults on the floor at that block. Apart from blood tests and measuring I do not know what was done to them.

M. DUBOST: Were you an eye witness of the selections on the arrival of the convoys?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes, because when we worked at the sewing block in 1944, the block where we lived directly faced the stopping place of the trains. The system had been improved. Instead of making the selection at the place where they arrived, a side line now took the train practically right up to the gas chamber; and the stopping place, about 100 meters from the gas chamber, was right opposite our block though, of course, separated from us by two rows of barbed wire. Consequently, we saw the unsealing of the cars and the soldiers letting men, women, and children out of them. We then witnessed heart-rending scenes; old couples forced to part from each other, mothers made to abandon their young daughters, since the latter were sent to the camp, whereas mothers and children were sent to the gas chambers. All these people were unaware of the fate awaiting them. They were merely upset at being separated, but they did not know that they were going to their death. To render their welcome more pleasant at this time—June-July 1944—an orchestra composed of internees, all young and pretty girls dressed in little white blouses and navy blue skirts, played during the selection, at the arrival of the trains, gay tunes such as “The Merry Widow,” the “Barcarolle” from “The Tales of Hoffman,” and so forth. They were then informed that this was a labor camp and since they were not brought into the camp they saw only the small platform surrounded by flowering plants. Naturally, they could not realize what was in store for them. Those selected for the gas chamber, that is, the old people, mothers, and children, were escorted to a red-brick building.

M. DUBOST: These were not given an identification number?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: No.

M. DUBOST: They were not tattooed?

MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: No. They were not even counted.

M. DUBOST: You were tattooed?