SURVIVOR OF AUSCHWITZ

Southland Times, Issue 25796, 6 October 1945, Page 6

SURVIVOR OF AUSCHWITZ

Czech Doctor’s Experiences

ROLE OF “HANGMAN’S ASSISTANT”

(P.A.) AUCKLAND, October 5. A witness of mass killings and countless unprintable atrocities, the most memorable of which were cold-blooded surgical experiments on young men and women, in two of the most notorious concentration camps in Germany, Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Dr Karel Sperber, arrived at Auckland as ship’s doctor on the Denbighshire. A 35-year-old Czech, he was a prisoner of the Germans for over four years until he escaped from Buchenwald last April. During his captivity he was chief medical officer of a satellite camp near Auschwitz, and through his own grim experiences he was able to furnish the War Office in England with 1(50 names of war criminals, both men and women, whom he claimed came under the category of mass murderers. When interviewed, Dr Sperber spoke freely, but with deep bitterness, of his life under the Nazis. He said that he would tell something of what he had seen, in the hope that people would not forget too soon. He pulled up the sleeve of his coat and said: “Look at that mark of the beast—the Nazi tattoo that made me a number, like a million more—--82512. I was lucky. It needed a strong constitution, energy, strong will and luck to come out of those places.” CAPTURED BY RAIDER Dr Sperber escaped from Czechoslovakia at the beginning of the war and joined the Merchant Navy as a doctor. He was captured aboard the Blue Funnel Line ship Automedon by the German raider Atlantis, near Penang, in November 1940. He was taken to a German prison camp for Royal Navy and Merchant Navy men, where he met several New Zealanders. When the Germans found he was a Czech, they took Dr Sperber out of the camp, accused him of treason, and threw him into the Austchwitz concentration camp. Conditions were bad enough before, but they were mild compared with Auschwitz. Buchenwald did not compare with the horror of the upper Silesian camp. He said that for some time he was made to carry corpses from the hospital beds, occupied often by four or more dying prisoners, to the crematorium or to haul the victims from the mass shooting areas. “For 26 months at Auschwitz I saw hundreds of thousands of innocent victims. mostly Jews, done to death by cyanide, hanging, shooting and the knife,” he said. ‘‘Five crematoria, with a capacity of 20,000 human beings every 24 hours, never ceased their work I was literally a hangman’s assistant. I saw dead bodies piled 14 feet high. Every nationality was done to death, and every type of execution was used. It is almost unbelievable, but of 4,000,000 prisoners in that hell hole only 12,000 escaped.” GRIM EXPERIMENTS Dr Sperber’s bronzed face hardened as he began to tell of ghastly experiments, most of which could not be published, which were carried out on young men and women prisoners. , “One day in April, 1943,” he said, ‘Dr I Lolling, the Medical Officer in charge of all the concentration camps, arrived and said that he was going to establish a physiological and pathological station at the camp. We were told that four famous universities, Hiedelberg, Munich, Berlin and Koenigsberg, would participate in large-scale sacrifice work. Later, nurses and doctors arrived, Professor Clauberg being among them. By skilled operation he used to implant cancer cells and tissues into young women prisoners. He would wait for some weeks, and then remove the organ on which the work was performed. After the inmates of the experimental station served their purpose, they were blessed with the mercy of quick death in the cyanide chamber. “Nazi doctors specialized in many experiments, and some 800 young women and about 150 young men were -’ictims of their inhumanity.” Dr Sperber stated that there were about six doctors on the normal staff at Auschwitz, but they did nothing for the sufferers from typhus, dysentery and other complaints that were rife in the area. They merely walked through the hospital, selecting those who were not worth feeding and were to go to the gas chambers. From June 1943, until he was moved to Buchenwald in January of this year, Dr Sperber was made Chief Medical Officer at the satellite camp formed near Auschwitz. There was another doctor with him, and with next to no medical and surgical facilities, they were expected to care for about 160,000 prisoners from Auschwitz who had been sent to work at an aircraft fac- I tory. He said that they were able to help them, but malnutrition, typhus ] and dysentery took their toll, and the j death roll was about four a day. ESCAPE PLANNED After he was sent to Bucherlwald, the Allied front came nearer, and he decided to escape. He made his way out of prison and tramped through the forests for three days until he met the 89th American Division on April 17. He was later flown back to England. The doctor said that he had given 160 names of mass murderers to Ihe War Office, and had told them in detail what they had done, and how many people they had murdered. Women members of the SS were included. Armed with pistols, dogs and whips, they were sometimes more brutal than the men. He had been invited to go to Germany to give evidence at the trials of war criminals, but had had an opportunity of joining a ship, so he left. He is now anxious to settle down and continue his medical work and studies.