HERDED IN GAS CHAMBER

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVIII, Issue 23315, 26 September 1945, Page 5

HERDED IN GAS CHAMBER

Jewesses At Belsen Dramatic Evidence By Telegrapn —N.Z Press Assn.—Copvriun (7.30 p.m.) LONDON, Sept. 24. A Polish woman witness, Zofia Litwinska, broke down at the trial of the guards of the Belsen concentration carop to-day alter she had dramatically pointed out Hoessler, one of the accused, as the organiser of the mass murders in the gas chambers of Auschwitz Camp. Shouting, “That is the murderer responsible for the deaths of so many,” she burst into tears and was led sobbing from the Court. Hoessler lowered his bullet head to avoid her accusing eyes. When Litwinska resumed her evidence, she said she was arrested in May. 1940, because she was a Jewess. Her husband, a non-Jew and a Polish Army officer, was also arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where he died.

She described how on Christmas Eve, 1941. all Jewesses in the camp were lined up and a selection made of victims for the gas chamber. This parade was taken by Hoessler and two SS doctors. She was among' those chosen to be gassed. She was a hospital patient at the time with a broken leg. All hospital patients who could not leave their beds for the parade were automatically chosen for extermination. On Christmas Day, the victims, naked and packed like cattle in trucks, were driven to the gas chamber. There the trucks emptied their human cargo bv tipping up as if they were carrying coal. The victims were led to a room which looked like a showerbath. “I was terrified. There were cries and tears and people shouted and hit one another. Suddenly yellow fumes nnnrad j n through a small window. I started coughing and choking. Mv name was called and I raised my arm be-aus» I could not speak. Then someone pulled me from the chamber. I don't know who.” Witness said Hoessler took her to the hospital, where she was told she was taken out of the gas chamber because her husband was a Polish officer. Further dramatic identifications electrified the Court as Litwinska described her transfer to Belsen. Use and Forster remained tight-lipped and defiant as witness told how Forster beat to death a girl, aged 17. who stole one potato.

Witness traversed floodlit rows of prisoners, identifying 13 others, including Kramer. Irma Grese, Weingartner and Ehlert.