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barracks at the time when I arrived there in March 1943. As I found
later, they were all quite full. Hardly any inmate had a bed of his own. The
total of inmates at that time was about 3,000 prisoners. We went to work for
the first time in the IG plant already the day after we arrived, having all
been registered and tatooed. My own prison number is 107,984.
The
plant, at that time, was still in the stage of construction. There were
scarcely any streets. The building, except for those in which the directors and
senior foremen worked, were mostly unfinished. As initiation, as was the
general rule, we were given only the hardest and most strenuous work, such as
transportation and excavating work. I came to the dreaded "murder detail 4,"
whose task it was to unload cement bags or constructional steel. We had to
unload the cement from the arriving freight cars all day long at a running
pace. Prisoners who broke down were beaten by the German IG foremen as well as
by the kapos until they either resumed their work or were left there dead. I
saw such cases myself. I also remember seeing a Dutch prisoner commit suicide
by throwing himself in front of a moving train before the eyes of the German IG
foremen during the first day there.
I also noticed repeatedly,
particularly during the time when the SS accompanied our labor unit themselves,
that the German IG foremen tried to surpass the SS in brutalities. It also
happened that German IG foremen incited the kapos to take the good shoes from
the new arrivals and keep them for themselves. It was also a rule that the
inmates had no working safeguards, for example iron had to be moved without the
proper leather for the purpose, bricks had to be loaded without any suitable
protection for the hands, et cetera.
I also remember well that German
IG foremen, even on days when it froze, made the kapos order the prisoners to
take off their coats (if they had any) in order to speed up the work.
I
myself was sent to a skilled labor unit as a welder in the summer, 1943. It was
a common practice to give the prisoners the dirtiest and most dangerous tasks,
although all the time we worked there we had hardly any protective equipment.
Examples: As welder I had to work for months without any welding
goggles, until I finally managed to “organize” a pair for myself. The
prisoners who were E-welders did not get any milk while the German E-welders
were given milk. The German IG foremen who were the immediate supervisors knew
perfectly well about all these things The IG inspectors, who made regular
inspections of the entire site of the I. G. Farben, knew these things. We were
particularly afraid of these inspectors because we knew them to be fanatical
Nazis who used every occasion of unsatisfactory work to make a report to the
office of the SS command post (SS Scharfuehrer [Staff Sergeant] Rackers).
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