©2001 THE MAZAL LIBRARY
	LEST WE FORGET
	The next French witness, Jacques Furmanski of Paris, an agricultural engineer, in his deposition inculpates the accused Aumeier and Plagge. Furmanski arrived in Auschwitz with a transport of 1,000 men whose average age was 27 years. Three weeks later only 300 of them were still alive. After liberation only 10 returned home. That particular transport of prisoners was received in Auschwitz by the accused Aumeier who told them then and there: "You are in Auschwitz, in a death camp; no one will leave this place, not even a dog." After that introduction thugs threw themselves on the newcomers, ill-treated and tormented them to initiate them into camp life. Describing selections of transports arriving from France and carried out by Aumeier, the witness says that from some transports only one person would be left alive in the camp, the rest were sent to the gas chambers. The witness recalls the execution by shooting of six of his fellow prisoners whose only crime was that while they slept their feet were outside the bunks. Furmanski himself slept with his knees drawn up and that saved him. At one moment, the witness turns to the accused in the dock and calls out: "I wonder if Grabner recognizes me? It is not his fault that I am alive and here before the Tribunal." In September 1942, during an inspection of the camp, the witness did not take off his cap quickly enough when he saw Grabner. Grabner then asked if Furmanski knew what awaited him for that and advised the witness to throw himself on the electrified wire fence. Grabner also ordered the camp senior to make a note of Furmanski's number so that the witness would be killed on the following day, and the witness owes his life to some strange coincidence. Furmanski goes on to tell the Tribunal of his service in a punitive detachment and points to the accused Bogusch as the one who was the motive force behind the ill-treatment meted out to the prisoners serving in that detachment. "It was an extermination detachment," says witness Furmanski. In January 1944, 1,200 Poles were brought from Zamosc and placed in the punitive detachment — for the crime of being Poles. The next witness is Berthe Falk, a citizen of France. Pointing to the accused Aumeier — she accuses him of deciding by one movement of his hand whether a prisoner was to live or die. Berthe Falk recognizes the accused woman Mandel as the one who jointly with Aumeier carried out selections and cruelly ill-treated the women prisoners.
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