STARVATION AND INHUMAN BARBARITY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 99, 28 April 1945, Page 6

STARVATION AND INHUMAN BARBARITY

BUCHENWALD CAMP

Horrors Confirmed ByParty Of British M.P.'s British Official Wireless Rec. 12.30 p.m. RUGBY, May 27. Ten members of the British Parliament, nine men and one woman, to-day issued their report on Buchenwald concentration camp, which requires no comment but their own.

"We have endeavoured to write with restraint and objectivity and avoid obtruding our personal reactions or emotional comments. We could conclude, however, by stating that it is our considered unanimous opinion, on the evidence available to us, that a policy of steady starvation and inhuman brutality was carried out at Buchenwald for a long period and that such camps as this mark the lowest point of degrar: -tion to which humanity has yet descended. The memory of what we saw and heard in Buchenwald will haunt us ineffaceably for many years."

The report of the delegation which visited the camp •at General Eisenhower's invitation, is issued as a White Paper. Describing the layout of the camp, the' report gives one significant detail. Over the main gate is an inscription, "Recht oder unrecht — Mein Faterland" ["My country—right or wrong."] "The size of the camp is indicated by the fact that its maximum capacity is said to have been 120,000," continues the report. "The number in the camp on April 1 was 80,813. A few days before the arrival of the American forces on April 11, the Germans removed a large number of the prisoners, variously estimated at from 18,000' to 20,000. Some of those they wished to remove because they knew too much. "It is impossible to form an accurate estimate of the percentages of the various nationalities still remaining in the camp. We met many Jews, non-Jewish Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, French, Belgians, Russians and others."

Over 50,000 Deaths "A detailed report by representatives of the Aliti-Fascist Committee stated that to April 1 the total of those who died or were killed at Buchenwald or immediately' on removal from there to subsidiary "extermination- camps" was 51,572, including at least 17,000 since January. The camp has now been thrown open and a certain number of the inmates must have left independently. "The inmates were in three main categories:—Firstly, political internees and Jews from Germany; secondly, as the Third Reich expanded, political internees and Jews from Austria, Czechoslovakia and other occupied countries, and, thirdly, from 1940 onwards men and youths imported for forced labour from various occupied countries.

"There were few Britons at any time. One estimate was a few dozen, almost all of them civilians. We obtained a document signed by Squadron-Leader F. Yeo-Thomas, Captain Harry Poole and Lieutenant Hessel, of France, to the War Ministry testifying .that they were saved from execution by amazingly clever planning under perilous circumstances by Heinz Baumeister, of Dortmund, and Dr. Eugen Kogon, of Vienna, who are still inmates of the camp." Terrible Sights The report goes on to describe the terrible sights the members of the delegation saw, although, as they point out, cleaning of the camp had gone on busily for more than a week before the visit. "Our immediate and continuing impression," they say, "was of intense general squalor. The odour of dissolution and disease still pervaded the entire place, One of the first of a number of huts we entered was one of the best. It was divided into small rooms with cement floors, and windows. Four of these rooms had been used, the American authorities informed us, as a brothel, to which higher grade prisoners (those employed on various supervisory jobs with extra rations and other privileges) were allowed to resort for twenty minutes at a time. "When the Americans arrived 15 women were found. They were transferred to the care of the burgomaster of Weimar. This hut was one of those now being used as transit hospitals for some of the worst cases of malnutrition. Many were unable to speak. They lay in a semi-coma or following us with their eyes. Others, spoke freely, displaying sores, severe scars, and bruises, which could have been caused by kicks or blows. They lay on the floor and under quilts. All were extremely emaciated. Death Rate Reduced "The American authorities told us that since their arrival the daily death rate had been reduced from about 100 to 35 on the day before our visit. The usual clothing was a ragged shirt, a vest or a cotton jacket, beneath which protruded thighs no thicker than normal wrists. One half naked skeleton, tottering painfully along the passage as though on stilts, drew himself up when he saw our party, smiled and saluted. "The medical members of our delegation expressed the opinion that a percentage of them could not be expected to survive, even with the treatment they were now receiving, and that the larger percentage, though they might survive, would probably suffer sickness and disablement for the rest of their lives.

"The ordinary huts we saw were lined on each side with four tiers of wooden shelves supported and divided by upright struts. In each small open cubicle thus formed fiye or six men had to sleep. Even in their wasted condition there was room for them to lie only in one position—on the side. For bedclothes they had such rags as they could -ollect. The huts were still verminous. There had been similar overcrowding in block 61, which had been used as a rough hospital, chiefly for those suffering from tuberculosis ->ud. dysentery. This, hut was about 80 feet long and 24 wide. It is estimated that its normal sick population varied from 1300 to 1700.

"We were told there were some 800 children in the camp. One 14-year-old boy said he saw his 18-year-old brother shot dead and his parents taken away, he believed for cr&mation. He never saw them again," the report continues. The report said it would be impossible to praise too highly the selfless exertion of the evacuation hospital unit. The delegation saw blood transfusion in progress and learned that glucose injections were being given and carefully chosen diets were being supplied to prisoners incapable of digesting normal food.