. |
| Evidence for the Prosecution |
| |
| Lieutenant-Colonel
Johnson |
| |
informed and
verily believe that Camp No. 2 had only been in existence for a few weeks.
5. The following is an account of the conditions I saw on entering
these two camps on 17th April, 1945. It is quite impossible to give any
adequate description on paper of the atrocious, horrible and utterly inhuman
condition of affairs. |
| |
| Camp No. 1. |
| The prisoners
were a dense mass of emaciated apathetic scarecrows huddled together in wooden
huts, and in many cases without beds or blankets, and in some cases, without
any clothing whatsoever. The females were in worse condition than the men and
their clothing generally, if they had any, only filthy rags. The dead lay all
over the camp and in piles outside the blocks of huts which housed the worst of
the sick and were miscalled hospitals. There were thousands of naked and
emaciated corpses in various stages of decomposition lying about this camp. As
far as can be ascertained there were some 13,000 dead lying around. Sanitation
was to all practical purposes non-existent. Pits, with, in only a few
instances, wooden perch rails, were available in totally inadequate numbers.
The inmates, from starvation, apathy and weakness, defaecated and urinated
where they sat or lay, even inside the living huts. Ablution arrangements were
completely inadequate. There was no running water or electricity. All water was
brought in by British water trucks. |
| |
| Camp No. 2. |
| Conditions in
this camp were improved in comparison with Camp No 1, but only in comparison.
The conditions were, compared with any ordinary decent mode of keeping
prisoners, vile and evil. The inmates were housed in buildings, 600 to a
building of 150 capacity. The inmates appeared better clad and generally less
emaciated than in Camp No. 1, but signs of starvation were everywhere. I did
not see any corpses lying in Camp No. 2. |
| |
| Diseases Prevalent.
. |
| |
Camp No. 1.
Typhus, tuberculosis and starvation disorders were rife.
Camp No. 2.
Enteric, tuberculosis, erysipelas. There was no typhus in this camp.
6.
The conditions at both camps, but more so at Camp No 1, were such that deaths
in very large numbers were bound to occur from |
| |
| Page 45 |
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