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| Evidence for the Prosecution |
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| Brigadier Glyn Hughes
(cont.) |
41,000, made
up of 28,185 women and roughly 12,000 men. There were three compounds for men,
one small and one very large compound for women, and there were five
cookhouses.
What water supply was there — The huts had had water
laid on but it was not functioning, and in addition there were large concrete
ponds in the camp near the cookhouses.
Was there an administrative
block? — Yes, the Kommandant’s office, huts for the guards, a small
ablution hut, a larger disinfestation building of stone, and very near to the
prison area a hut with barred windows.
Was there any crematorium?
— Yes, at the very end of the prison area was a small crematorium.
Would you describe in your own words the general state of the camp?
— The conditions in the camp were really indescribable; no description nor
photograph could really bring home the horrors that were there outside the
huts, and the frightful scenes inside were much worse. There were various sizes
of piles of corpses lying all over the camp, some outside the wire and some in
between the huts. The compounds themselves had bodies lying about in them. The
gutters were full and within the huts there were uncountable numbers of bodies,
some even in the same bunks as the living. Near the crematorium were signs of
filled-in mass graves, and outside to the left of the bottom compound was an
open pit half-full of corpses. It had just been begun to be filled. Some of the
huts had bunks but not many, and they were filled absolutely to overflowing
with prisoners in every state of emaciation and disease. There was not room for
them to lie down at full length in each hut. In the most crowded there were
anything from 600 to 1000 people in accommodation which should only have taken
100.
Would you describe the scene inside one of these huts when you
went into it? — There were no bunks in a hut in the women’s compound
which was containing the typhus patients. They were lying on the floor and were
so weak they could hardly move. There was practically no bedding. In some cases
there was a thin mattress, but some had none. Some had blankets and some had
none. Some had no clothing at all and just draped themselves in blankets, and
some had German hospital type of clothing. That was the general picture..
What was the state of sanitation? — There was none. The conditions
were indescribable because most of the internees were suffering from some form
of gastro-enteritis and they were too weak to leave the hut. The lavatories in
the huts had long been out of use. In the women’s compound there was a
deep trench with a pole over it but no screening or form of privacy at all.
Those who were strong enough could get into the compound: others performed
their natural actions from where they were. The compounds were absolutely one
mass of human excreta. |
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