DEATH AGONIES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21933, 30 January 1946, Page 5

DEATH AGONIES

CAMPS WOMAN’S GRIM STORY HORRORS OF AUSCHWITZ NUREMBERG, Jan. 28. How the French atomic scientist, Jacques Salomon, was finally put to death at Auschwitz concentration camp by the Germans after his arms had been horribly broken and crushed by torture, was related at the war crimes trial to-day by Madame Courturier. a Communist deputy in the French Assembly. . Mme. Courturier, the first woman witness to give evidence before the tribunal, said; .“On the day that M. Salomon was murdered, he was brought out to say good-bye to his wife- It was a piteous sight for the scientist’s arms were so pulped that he was unable to embrace his wife in a final farewell.”

Firmly and dispassionately, Mme. Courturier told the court of the agony of death she witnessed during her three years’ imprisonment in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Ravensbruk. All the Nazis in the dock, including Streicner, who had recovered from his heart attack, kept their eyes glued on .the witness. Goering looked pale and downcast.

Arrested by Marshal Petain’s French police, and handed over to the Germans for refusing to sign a'declaration, Mme. Courturier was sent to Auschwitz with 230 other women prisoners, mostly the •wives of intellectuals. Only- 47 survived. When the women were arrested at Auschwitz, they sang the Marseillaise to bolster their courdge. Shaved and Tattooed

“Our heads were shaved and our arms tattooed and, in the presence of S.S. men and women guards we were forced to strip, take a shower and don tattered clothing.’ said the witness. “Women members of the S.S., with sticks broke the skull of one of my fellow prisoners before my eyes. Others had their legs torn to shreds by dogs which were urged on by S.S. guards.

“The roll call was a nightmare. When it was completed bodies were scattered around like a battlefield, with rats gnawing the dead and semi-dead. The loss of one’s shoes meant the gas chamber.”

She said the principal cause of death by disease was lack of hygiene. There was only one lavatory for 11,000 internees. The women S.S. guards were just as savage as the men. They severely reprimanded Polish women who had just given birth to children because they made too much noise and forced them to stand naked in a courtyard all day with the babies in their arms.

Music for Death Victims

Young girls, wearing bright dresses, played light tunes like the Merry Widow Waltz to allay the fears of prisoners who were being marched to .the gas chamber. As Mme. Couturier unfolded her horrifying story, von Papen hid his face in his hands. The witness related how Jews, marked for extermination, arrived at the Auschwitz railway station in such numbers that the 'guards did not trouble to count them and marched them direct to the gas chambers. Pregnant Jewish women were despatched to the gas chamber after their babies were born. ‘One night we were awakened by horrible cries,” said the witness. "Next morning we learned from a man working in the gas chamber that there had not beta enough gas to kill the babies who. w.ere. hurled into a furnace alive.” *

Saved by BB.C. Broadcast

Following a 8.8. C. broadcast in July, 1943, describing the terrible conditions under which the French were living in Auschwitz, Berlin ordered that they should receive better treatment and the conditions improved. The French survivors owed their lives to the broadcast.

The witness said the Germans sent women aged 20 to 30 to experimental blocks where Nazi doctors toyed with operations, ray projectors and innoculations intended to produce sterilisation by which it was hoped to eradicate millions of people in the conquered areas.

Cross-examining Mme. Couturier, Streicher’s counsel suggested that her figure regarding the number of Jews killed at Auschwitz differed from the official Gestapo figures. Laughter greeted Mme. Couturier's reply in which she gave her opinion of the Gestapo’s veracity. Lord Justice Lawrence sternly rebuked the court.

Mme. Couturier walked slowly from the witness-box glaring hatred at the accused Nazi leaders as she passed the dock,