20 Nov. 45
round-up of the Jewish population of the 11th Arrondissement in
August 1941, round-up in July 1942); at Clermont-Ferrand (round-up of
professors and students of the University of Strasbourg, which had
been evacuated to Clermont-Ferrand, on 25 November 1943); at Lyons;
at Marseilles (round-up of 40,000 persons in January 1943); at
Grenoble (round-up of 24 December 1943); at Cluny (round-up on 24
December 1943); at Figeac (round-up in May 1944); at Saint Pol de
Léon (round-up in July 1944); at Locminé (round-up on 3
July 1944); at Eysieux (round-up in May 1944); and at MeauxMoussey
(round-up in September 1944). These arrests were followed by brutal
treatment and tortures carried out by the most diverse methods, such
as immersion in icy water, asphyxiation, torture of the limbs, and
the use of instruments of torture, such as the iron helmet and
electric current, and practiced in all the prisons of France, notably
in Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Rennes, Metz, ClermontFerrand, Toulouse,
Nice, Grenoble, Annecy, Arras, Béthune, Lille, Loos,
Valenciennes, Nancy, Troyes, and Caen, and in the torture chambers
fitted up at the Gestapo centers.
In the concentration camps, the health regime and the labor
regime were such that the rate of mortality (alleged to be from
natural causes) attained enormous proportions, for instance:
1. Out of a convoy of 250 French women deported from
Compiègne to Auschwitz in January 1943, 180 had died of
exhaustion at the end of 4 months.
2. 143 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 23 March and 6 May
1943 in Block 8 at Dachau. 3. 1,797 Frenchmen died of exhaustion
between 21 November 1943 and 15 March 1945 in the block at Dora.
4. 465 Frenchmen died of general debility in
November 1944 at Dora.
5. 22,761 deportees died of exhaustion at Buchenwald between 1
January 1943 and 15 April 1945.
6. 11,560 detainees died of exhaustion at Dachau Camp (most of
them in Block 30 reserved for the sick and the infirm) between 1
January and 15 April 1945.
7. 780 priests died of exhaustion at Mauthanaen.
8. Out of 2,200 Frenchmen registered at Floasenburg Camp, 1,600
died from supposedly natural causes.
Methods used for the work of extermination in concentration camps
were:
Bad treatment, pseudo-scientific experiments (sterilization of
women at Auschwitz and at Ravensbrück, study of the evolution of
cancer of the womb at Auschwitz, of typhus at Buchenwald, anatomical
research at Natzweiler, heart injections at Buchenwald,
47