NAZI MURDER CAMPS

Evening Star, Issue 25770, 17 April 1946, Page 7

NAZI MURDER CAMPS

OVER FOUR MILLION LIQUIDATED GAS CHAMBER HORRORS DESCRIBED AT NUREMBERG NUREMBERG, April 15. A man who, in a statement to the British authorities, admitted having given orders for killing 2,500,000 people gave evidence on behalf of Kurt Kaltenbrunner. He is Rudolph Hoess, Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1940 to 1943. He said he had not kept notes of the numbers done to death because that was forbidden, but it was true that Eichmann, who had charge of the collecting of men, women and children for extermination, had told him that the sum total was more than 4,000,000. Himmler, in explaining to witness the methods to be pursued for the " solution " of the Jewish problem, had said it was to be kept secret. He must not speak to anyone regarding it. Himmler told him , the Fuhrer had finally decided on extermination of the Jews and Auschwitz was selected as a concentration camp because oi'_ its good railway communications and its isolation. Two or three_ trains arrived every day, each bryjging 2,000 people for detention. Hoess described in a toneless voice how the unsuspecting victims for the gas chamber were told they were going to the shower baths. Everything was taken from the victims on arrival, after which they went to their deaths immediately. Himmler visited the camp in 1942, but Kaltenbrunner never ousited it. HIMMLER WATCHES. Hoess said Himmler watched one process of killings from the beginning to the end. Hoess hung his head when the American prosecutor, Colonel Amen, read his confession that 2,500,000 had been exterminated at Auschwitz and 500,000 had died from hunger. " Yes, it is all true," he said, and added that it took from three to 15 minutes to kill people in the gas chambers. "We knew when they were dead because the screaming stopped," he added. Hoess said that, riots occasionally occurred, when women hid children under their clothes, " but we always found them," he stated. The babies were exterminated because they could not work. A special staff removed the rings from the fingers of the dead and also took the gold fillings from their teeth. ROSENBERG IN DOCK. After Kaltenbrunner's case had been concluded, Alfred Rosenberg, who has been described as the high priest of the Nazi philosophy, began his evidence. Rosenberg said: " During the past three months I have heard in this court of many dreadful things which happened in- Germany, of horrible crimes, but I have not heard a word said against the actual principle of national socialism." He continued to expound his theories until Lord Justice Lawrence interrupted and said he must confine himself to the charges. Rosenberg then asserted that the theory of the master race was not Ins own invention. He quoted from British, American, and French 'writings of the past few hundred years

to prove that the same term was used at different times. The race theory was also not a Nazi invention. It was a biological fact proved 400 yeors ago. Lord Justice Lawrence again interrupted and said the tribunal was not interested in the historical aspects of his theories, only their application. Rosenberg said that soon after the war of 1914-18 he thought the Jewish problem could be solved if all the Jews left Europe. Their traditions did not fit into Europe. He favoured the return of the Jews to Southern Asia. Rosenberg admitted that 12,000 Jews had died for Germany in the war of 1914-18, but complained that the Jews favoured deportation of Germans to Africa, Argentina, and China in order to alleviate unemployment in Germany. Rosenberg claimed that he was not guilty of religious persecution. He denied be was involved in early confiscation of church properties; on the contrary, his objection to the Gestapo's confiscation of monasteries for research purposes brought him into conflict with Himmler. He admitted" he was perhaps a little bit too severe against religious traditions, but his books expressed only his personal views and were not* intended as statements of the official Nazi policy. , • Rosenberg denied that he used police to suppress religions opponents. Concerning the looting of art treasures, he saui they' were taken to Germany for safe keeping.