MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: For roll call we were lined up in rows of five;
and we waited until daybreak, until the Aufseherinnen, the German women
guards in uniform, came to count us. They had cudgels and they beat us
more or less at random.
We had a comrade, Germaine Renaud, a school teacher from Azay-le-Rideau
in France, who had her skull broken before my eyes from a blow with a
cudgel during the roll call.
The work at Auschwitz consisted of clearing demolished houses, road
building, and especially the draining of marsh land. This was by far the
hardest work, for all day long we had our feet in the water and there
was the danger of being sucked down. It frequently happened that we had
to pull out a comrade who had sunk in up to the waist.
During the work the SS men and women who stood guard over us would beat
us with cudgels and set their dogs on us. Many of our friends had their
legs torn by the dogs. I even saw a woman torn to pieces and die under
my very eyes when Tauber, a member of the SS, encouraged his dog to
attack her and grinned at the sight.
The causes of death were extremely numerous. First of all, there was the
complete lack of washing facilities. When we arrived at Auschwitz, for
12,000 internees there was only one tap of water, unfit for drinking,
and it was not always flowing. As this tap was in the German wash house
we could reach it only by passing through the guards, who were German
common-law women prisoners, and they beat us horribly as we went by. It
was therefore almost impossible to wash ourselves or our clothes. For
more than 3 months we remained without changing our clothes. When there
was snow, we melted some to wash in. Later, in the spring, when we went
to work we would drink from a puddle by the road-side and then wash our
underclothes in it. We took turns washing our hands in this dirty water.
Our companions were dying of thirst, because we got only half a cup of
some herbal tea twice a day.
M. DUBOST: Please describe in detail one of the roll calls at the
beginning of February.
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: On 5 February there was what is called a
general roll call.