 |
A. I stayed only briefly in Berlin, because the Institute was damaged
by bombs, and my place of work was no longer in existence.
Q. Where
were you transferred then?
A. To the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS
in Auschwitz.
Q. Did you know, Mr. Witness, that that Hygiene Institute
was situated in the concentration camp of Auschwitz?
A. I did not know
until I arrived there.
Q. What was your first impression of Auschwitz
when you arrived?
A. I had already heard about extermination camps, and
particularly extermination camps for Jews, through reports over the Swiss radio
that I listened to regularly in the preceding years, but since I considered
this news to be propaganda, I did not believe it at the time, because the facts
that were being described seemed too terribly outrageous to me. When I arrived
in Auschwitz, and had to convince myself personally that these reports were not
exaggerated, I was very much shaken emotionally.
Q. To what activities
were you assigned in Auschwitz?
A. In 1943, in the spring, the Hygiene
Institute had been founded in Auschwitz in order to control the very severely
spreading epidemics among the inmates in Auschwitz and to see to it that these
epidemics did not spread to the civilian population in the industrial area of
Upper Silesia. Typhus and typhoid were concerned mainly.
Q. How did the
Hygiene Institute work as far as personnel was concerned? A. The work proper,
the bacteriological work in particular, was conducted exclusively by inmates,
by specialists and authorities from all over Europe.
Q. Can you give me
a few names?
A. Professor Tomaschek of the University of Bruenn [Brno];
Professor Jakubski from the University of Poznan; Professor Mansfeld, from the
University of Budapest; Professors Klein and Coblenz, from Strasbourg;
Professor Levine of the Pasteur Institute, Paris; Dr. Pollak, a noted internist
of Prague. The entire detail consisted of 100 to 120 inmates, more than one
half of whom were highly qualified experts.
Q. What competence or
jurisdiction did you have within the concentration camp itself?
A.
Essentially I had to supervise this detail of inmates, and within the
concentration camp I had to advise the camp physician or the physician of the
garrison on the control of diseases.
Q. Mr. Witness, in that position
that you held, did you have a chance to gain an insight into the entire
concentration camp of Auschwitz?
A. Yes. |
314 |
. 
