Chapter XIV: Part 14

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.

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 Götz. 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 afterwards about some few of my friends—and by friends, 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 Gräben 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 Gross-Rosen, 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.

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 I 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, “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 were 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.

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, “What 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.

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?

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.

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 were 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 themselves 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.

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 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 1 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-Lahn, 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 1 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 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 Kraków. 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 roll calls for assembly; 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 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._]

_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 I 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.

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 semi-official 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.

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?

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?

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 airfield, 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 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?

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.

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 I 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._]

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-a-c-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 Compiègne? 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-2’s—the “Vergeltungswaffen” (reprisal weapons)—the aerial torpedoes which the Germans launched on England. That is why 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.