THE HORROR CAMP

Evening Star, Issue 25470, 28 April 1945, Page 8

THE HORROR CAMP

White Paper Tells Black Crime

Organised Extermination

70,000 Wretched Victims (British Official Wireless.) .(Bee; noon.) ' * RUGBY, April 27. Ten members of the British Parliament, nine men and one woman, to-day. issued a report on the Buchenwald concentration camp, which requires no comment but their own: " We have endeavoured to write with restraint and objectivity and avoid obtruding'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 arid ..inhuman brutality was carried out at Buchenwald for- a long period, and that such camps as this mark the lowest point of degradation to which humanity has yet descended. The memory, pj what we saw, and heard at Buchenwald will haunt us hieffaceably 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 ca top the report gives one significant detail:." Over "the main gate is the inscription-' Reclit oder unrecht —niein faterland/ (toy' country right or wrong). ; The report continues: "The size of thecamp is indicated by the fact that its,, maximum capacity is said to have been 120.000 The number in camp on April 1 wau 80,813 A few days before the jarrival of the American forces on April 11 the Germans removed a large number, of prisoners variously estimated 'at 18,000 to 22.000. Some of those'they wished to remove because they'knew-too much were able to hut» from them, ft is impossible to form an'accurateestimate 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." •- - '' A?detailed report by representatives of the ■antirFascist committee stated:that to April 1 the total of those who .had died or were killed at <Buchenwald or immediately on removal: therefrom to subsidiary ',',extermination.camps" was 51,572,.including at least 17,000 since January Jl.: .:". The', ca'mp • has now been thrown open" iincl a' certain number of inmates must hatye left independently'. The inmates wore of three maiu categories—-firsi,-political'internees and Jews from Ger'niany f secondly,-as the Third Heich expaiided; political internees aim oews fronV 'Austria, Czeeho-Slovakia, etc.; thirdly,/from ' 1940 onwards men and youths fmported for forced labour from various occupied countries. "There were, few Britons at any timk':! Orie'estimate was a few dozen, almost 'all of ,therh 'civilians. .' v-J' sle obtained a document iigned;.by Squadron-leader F. YeoThdmas,. Captain Harry Poole, and Lieutenant Stephane Hessel of the F v rahce .War Ministry, testifying that;,they were saved from execution, by amazingly clever planning under perilous circumstances by Heirtzy the baumeister of Dort-mund-.and Dr. Eugen Kogon, of Vienna,...who are still inmates of the. camp." *■";, /TERRIBLE SIGHTS.

ing collected and taken in carts to

the crematorium; or, if required as specimens, to the pathological laboratory of the German doctors. DRY BREAD—WATERY SOUP.

" One 14-year-old boy said, hesaw, his 18-year-old brother shot, dead and his parents taken away— > he believed. for cremation. He never saw them again." FOR EXECUTION.

The* repprt 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 their visit. "Our immediate and continuing-; impression," they say, " was of'',intense, general squalor. An odour of dissolution and disease still pervaded the. entire place. One of the first of the. number ;,bf ; huts we entered was one.of the' best. It was divided into small . rodm.s with cement floors and windows; Four of these rooms had been,used,' the American authorities informed tis, as 1 a brothel to .which prisoners (those employed in. various supervisory jobs with extra 'rations-and' other privileges) were allowed' to resort for 20 minutes at a tide". When the Americans arrived 15 wom'eh were found. ■ They were trans-ferred-to the care of the burgomaster of .Weimar. This hut was one of those now* used as a transit hospital for some

of. the worst cases of malnutrition. Many.-were unable to speak. They lav m 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.; The American 1 authorities told!us that since their arrival the dailyideath rate had been reduced from about 100 to 35 on the day before our- visit., The usual clothing was a ragged shirt, vest, or cotton jacket, beneath which protruded thighs no thicker than normal wrists. "SKELETON SALUTES.

•* Ohe halfrnaked skeleton, tottering pr.infully along the passage as though-on-stilts, drew himself uf) 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 a larger percentage,' though they might survive, woukf probably suffer sickness and disablement for the rest of their lives. Tbe ; ordinary huts we saw were lined nn each side with four tiers of wooden

shelves, siippbrteu and divided by upright struts.; In each small, open cubicle tints .formed five to six men had .to sleep. Even in their wasted condition there was room for them to lie only in one position—on their side. For bed clothes they had such rags as they could collect The huts were still verminous-..' There had been similar i overcrowding in block 61, which had been used as a rough hospital, chiefly those suffering from tuberculosis and dysentery. FRJGHTFUL FILTH. ,''This but was about 80ft long and 24ft wide. Estimates of its normal mck population varied from 1.300 to 1,70 Q. J • 1; ".

"Four; five, or six men, including those who had undergone- operations (performed without anaesthetics by prisoner doctors on a crude operating table af one hut in full view of tli'o other patients) had regularly to lie jn each of the small shelf cubicles. Herb, too* there were no mattresses. " Excreta of dysentery patients dropped from tier to tier. If the; living were strong enough they; pushed the dead , out into the gangway. Each night the dead were thrown into a small annexe at one end of the hut, and each morn-

•"Many ordinary prisoners worked i" a large munitions factory near the camp, or in quarries. These were abb l to obtain more than the basic ration of a bowl of watery soup and.a chnnik of dry bread each day. " Children, like adults, were made tf> work eight or more hours on seven day** of the week. , We were told there;were some 800 children in. the camp. ;

The report continues: "The mortuary block consisted of, a ground floor and a basement. Access to the basement was by a steep stone staircase or by a vertical chute below a trap door. Down either of there, we were told, refractory or useless prisoners would be precipitated for execution. Hanging appears to have been the regular method of killing. In the yard near a pile of white ashes there was a gibbet. .-''.',. THE TORTURE WEAPONS. "In the basement we saw strong hooks, some eight feet from the floor, and another gibbet. We were informed that there had been more than 40 hooks, most of which the Germans removed hurriedly before leaving. "We were shown a heavy club about two feet long, said to have, been used for knocking out any who died slowly. It was stained with blood. .

"The bodies were transported from the basement to the ground floor crematorium in a large electric lift. To the yard outside 'the"crematorium came carls packed closely with ordinary corpses from the dysentery and other huts. These were mostly stripped even of the meagre blue and white suits which were the normal camp clothing. ON EISENHOWER'S ORDER. " We-examined the last of these cartloads which remained awaiting reverent individual burial, which, on General • Eisenhower's personal order, the America!! authorities have obliged the inhabitants of the neighbourhood to provide with their own hands. The bodies were beginning to decompose, but none we could sec bore marks of violent death All appeared, from their state of extreme emaciation, to have died from, hunger or disease. BODIES SHOVELLED INTO OVENS. " In the crematorium was a row of capacious arched ovens, each still containing calcined ribs, skulls, and spinal columns. The prisoner in charge of putting the bodies into the ovens had one of the privileged jobs, since it carried the advantage of a private room with furniture and lace curtains, adjoining the crematorium. He told us he was a Communist from Berlin, aged 30. He had been in the camp for 10 years, but obtained this job only last January. He . stated that two other German prisoners had been mainly engaged in hanging the condemned. They had been taken awav by the Germans when they left. No Jews, wo were told, would ever have been allotted these special tasks. INFECTED WITH TYPHUS. " We were told of scientific experiments such as infecting prisoners with typhus in order to obtain serum from thorn by camp doctors, but obtained no direct unchallengeable evidence of this. We saw a laboratory with" a large number oif glass jars containing preserved- specimens of human organs. The walls of the laboratory and other medical rooms were decorated with ihdeath masks of ' more interesting pv soners.' manv with features remar' able for nobility and refinement. "It was alleged that various expsriments in sterilisation had been practised on Jews. Two of our numb°r were taken to the bed of a Polish Jew, aged 29, who had been operated on in this way. " Other subjects of the operation were said to have died, and we were assured that a policy of exterminating Jews had long superseded that ntf castrating them. FRAU KOCH'S HOBBY. " We were told that Fran Koch, wife of the,German commandant. collected articles made of human skin. We obtained pieces of hide which have since been identified by Sir 3ernard Spilsbury as bcinn human skin. One of these pieces clearlv formed part of a lampshade."

The report states that despite the '.esperate physical condition of many srisoners and the long years of incarceratinn, there were signs of mental as well as physical recovery, vivid slogans of greetings io the liberating ariniefi being painted outside huts New notice hoards bore news sheets and well-designed instructional and democratic propaganda messages, mostly in German. EFFIGY OF HITLER PENDANT.

Near the entrance to the camp was a life-size effigy eJf Hitler hanging from a gibbet, with the superscription in German: "Hitler must die that Germany mav live."

The report said it would be impossible to praise too highlv the selfless exertion in the evacuation hospital. One unit of the delegation saw blood transfusion in process, and learned that glucose iniections were Ivin;' given and carefullv-chccn diets being supplied to prisoners incapable of digesting norma] food.