HORROR CAMPS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 1 September 1945, Page 7

HORROR CAMPS

N.Z. LEGATION’S REPORT 25,000 EXECUTED IN ONE DAY HUMAN REMAINS USED AS FERTILISER Wellington August The horrors of tlie extermination camps conducted by the Germans at Maidanek and Oswiecim are discussed in a coolly factual manner in a report from the New Zealand Legation at Moscow, published hv Ihe Department of Internal Affairs. The report has been compiled by the Second Secretary of the Legation. Mr. I). P. Costello, who visited Maidanck and received information from a French officer who had been imprisoned at Oswiecim. The name of the French officer is given in Mr. Costello’s rejxirt. but has been withheld from the official publication.

Discussing Maidanek, which lias been declared si national museum, lie says: “The shower room contains 72 shower heads, spaced very close together. At the fur end of the room is « short passage lending to the gas chamber. This is a small room, about

25ft. b,v 25ft.. with thick concrete walls and an iron door. In the middle of the low ceiling is a hole through which the arsenic poison, zykloti, was emptied from cylinders. . . . Reside the door is a window through which the German guards could watch tlie operation of the gas. . . . "Near the shower room are sheds containing the personal effects of those who were murdered. In one there are piles of clothes. . . . Rut more impressive than shoes in the next hut. Here there are two parallel heaps of footwear, separated h.v an avenue down the middle; each pile is approximately 120l't. long, 12ft. broad and 7ft. high. The sight is overwhelming. and I .saw no reason to doubt the word of the guide that there were X 20.000 pairs of footwear there. All the shoes were worn out, and I was told that the shoes which had been in good repair had been dispatched to Germany, only the rubbish being left. “About 1000 yards away is the furnace wher? the bodies were burnt. A high brick chimney communicates h.v an underground passage with the six ovens. There is an elaborate system of ventilation for the underground fires which healed the ovens; in the ovens there are still ashes and fragments of bone. Alongside is an autopsy table on which, according to the guide, the stomachs of those who v\ re suspected of swallowing valuables a? the last moment were opened and examined. Beyond the furnace area are acres of market garden which were fertilized with the ashes from the ovens. The area was covered with cabbage stumps, and ou the ground between them I picked up several small fragments of hone. . . . “The circumstance which seemed most strongly to have impressed itself on the memory of the people of Lublin was the presence during two years of a cloud of heavy smoke from Maidanek. which hung low over the town with a smell of burning flesh.’’ .“Oswiecim.” states the French officer. “was a much bigger camp than Maidanek, and far more people were murdered and burnt there. Instead of one furnace there were five, with five chimneys, as well ns two ditches each 120 ft. long. 25ft. wide and 12ft. deep, in which the bodies were burnt. There were always four furnaces working (the fifth being in reserve for boom periods) and the ditches, too. were used continuously except for the two or three occasions each month when the ashes were emptied. . . . "The Germans introduced some refinements into their treatment of the prisoners. The inmates of any particular shed in which a ’selection’ was to be heid for that clay's burning were always mid some hours ahead, in order that they could thins about what was coming to them. The 'selection* was completely arbitrary, the inmates of tlie shed parading past a seated German who jerked his thumb left or right to indicate whether the individual was to he burnt that day or not. Children who were ’selected’ were always sent to take farewell of their parents.

naked when they set out for the gas chamber. Captain saw one parade of 2000 women, stark naked, marching ’to flic; gas’ with the German baud ut their head playing tangos and foxtrots. . . . The people were packed so tight in the gas chamber that Captain believes 75 per cent, of them died of simple asphyxiation; the rest were finished off, as at Maidanek, with zyklon. They were so tightly jammed together that to pull the bodies out when the door was opened large iron hooks were used.

“At Oswiecim the gas chamber was not, as at Maidanek, at some distance from the ovens. It was underground, and lifts carried the bodies up to the ground level in the furnace area. There the gold teeth of the dead were broken out of their mouths by a special team, autopsies were performed on a few, and they went into the fire. It took 20 minutes to burn the bodies, and Captain said that the lifts with the next intake of corpses could be beard rising a minute or two before each lot of bodies had been consumed. “All those engaged iji handling the dead were persons who were themselves condemned to be burnt. The prisoners' doctors likewise were appointed for periods of three months, at the end of which they passed to the gas chamber themselves. Captain . who worked around the camp as a mechanic, made the acquaintance of a Dr. Pascli, who was burnt at the end of July last year, and from whom he got the figures of the previous three months’ burnings. These were: Mav. 360.000; June. 512.0(H); July 1-26, 442,000.

“On the day when they established their record of 25,(MX) executed ill one day the Gernians were issued with an extra ration of schnapps, and celebrated the occasion by a carousal. . . . “It was the German practice always to gas the prisoners before they burned them. Exceptions were made in favour of persons seriously ill and of new-born babies; these were thrown alive into the ovens. The babies were thrown into boxes as they were born; after a few days when the boxes were full (those in the bottom layers being presumably already dead), they were burnt without any formalities. Whenever contagious disease broke out in a shed all the inmates were gassed and burnt. Among other pastimes of the Germans were vivisection and some gruesome kinds of plastic surgery. The women were sterilized by a peculiarly rigorous course of treatment.

“After the publication by the Russians of the facts about Maidanek camp the Germans set about removing the and toward the end of November and beginning of December, 1044. 'the Oswiecim ovens were dismantled ami destroyed. The surviving prisoners were shot, apart from a minority who lived to be liberated by the Russians on January 16. Captain puts the number of those murdered in Oswiecim at 6,000, 000.”