MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: In Paris. She was called “little Marie” and she
was the only one, the sole survivor of a family of nine. Her mother and
her seven brothers and sisters had been gassed on arrival. When I met
her she was employed to undress the babies before they were taken into
the gas chamber. Once the people were undressed they took them into a
room which was somewhat like a shower room, and gas capsules were thrown
through an opening in the ceiling. An SS man would watch the effect
produced through a porthole. At the end of 5 or 7 minutes, when the gas
had completed its work, he gave the signal to open the doors; and men
with gas masks—they too were internees—went into the room and removed
the corpses. They told us that the internees must have suffered before
dying, because they were closely clinging to one another and it was very
difficult to separate them.
After that a special squad would come to pull out gold teeth and
dentures; and again, when the bodies had been reduced to ashes, they
would sift them in an attempt to recover the gold.
At Auschwitz there were eight crematories but, as from 1944, these
proved insufficient. The SS had large pits dug by the internees, where
they put branches, sprinkled with gasoline, which they set on fire. Then
they threw the corpses into the pits. From our block we could see after
about three-quarters of an hour or an hour after the arrival of a
convoy, large flames coming from the crematory, and the sky was lighted
up by the burning pits.
One night we were awakened by terrifying cries. And we discovered, on
the following day, from the men working in the Sonderkommando—the “Gas
Kommando”—that on the preceding day, the gas supply having run out,
they had thrown the children into the furnaces alive.
M. DUBOST: Can you tell us about the selections that were made at the
beginning of winter?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Every year, towards the end of the autumn, they
proceeded to make selections on a large scale in the Revier. The system
appeared to work as follows—I say this because I noticed the fact for
myself during the time I spent in Auschwitz. Others, who had stayed
there even longer than I, had observed the same phenomenon.
In the spring, all through Europe, they rounded up men and women whom
they sent to Auschwitz. They kept only those who were strong enough to
work all through the summer. During that period naturally some died
every day; but the strongest, those who had succeeded in holding out for
6 months, were so exhausted that they too had to go to the Revier. It
was then in autumn that the large scale selections were made, so as not
to feed too many useless mouths during the winter. All the women who
were too thin were sent to the gas chamber, as well as those who had
long, drawn-out illnesses; but the Jewesses were gassed for practically
no reason at all. For instance, they gassed everybody in the “scabies
block,” whereas everybody knows that with a little care, scabies can be
cured in 3 days. I remember the typhus convalescent block from which 450
out of 500 patients were sent to the gas chamber.
During Christmas 1944—no, 1943, Christmas 1943—when we were in
quarantine, we saw, since we lived opposite Block 25, women brought to
Block 25 stripped naked. Uncovered trucks were then driven up and on
them the naked women were piled, as many as the trucks could hold. Each
time a truck started, the infamous Hessler—he was one of the criminals
condemned to death at the Lüneburg trials—ran after the truck and with
his bludgeon repeatedly struck the naked women going to their death.
They knew they were going to the gas chamber and tried to escape. They
were massacred. They attempted to jump from the truck and we, from our
own block, watched the trucks pass by and heard the grievous wailing of
all those women who knew they were going to be gassed. Many of them
could very well have lived on, since they were suffering only from
scabies and were, perhaps, a little too undernourished.
M. DUBOST: You told us, Madame, a little while ago, that the deportees,
from the moment they stepped off the train and without even being
counted, were sent to the gas chamber. What happened to their clothing
and their luggage?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: The non-Jews had to carry their own luggage and
were billeted in separate blocks, but when the Jews arrived they had to
leave all their belongings on the platform. They were stripped before
entering the gas chamber and all their clothes, as well as all their
belongings, were taken over to large barracks and there sorted out by a
Kommando named “Canada.” Then everything was shipped to Germany:
jewelry, fur coats, _et cetera_.
Since the Jewesses were sent to Auschwitz with their entire families and
since they had been told that this was a sort of ghetto and were advised
to bring all their goods and chattels along, they consequently brought
considerable riches with them. As for the Jewesses from Salonika, I
remember that on their arrival they were given picture postcards,
bearing the post office address of “Waldsee,” a place which did not
exist; and a printed text to be sent to their families, stating, “We are
doing very well here; we have work and we are well treated. We await
your arrival.” I myself saw the cards in question; and the
Schreiberinnen, that is, the secretaries of the block, were instructed
to distribute them among the internees in order to post them to their
families. I know that whole families arrived as a result of these
postcards.
I myself know that the following affair occurred in Greece. I do not
know whether it happened in any other country, but in any case it did
occur in Greece (as well as in Czechoslovakia) that whole families went
to the recruiting office at Salonika in order to rejoin their families.
I remember one professor of literature from Salonika, who, to his
horror, saw his own father arrive.