MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: During my stay this was the only case of its
kind within the Revier but the system was also applied at the
Jugendlager, so called because it was a former reform school for German
juvenile delinquents.
Towards the beginning of 1945 Dr. Winkelmann, no longer satisfied with
selections in the Revier, proceeded to make his selections in the
blocks. All the prisoners had to answer roll call in their bare feet and
expose their breasts and legs. All those who were sick, too old, too
thin, or whose legs were swollen with oedema, were set aside and then
sent to this Jugendlager, a quarter of an hour away from the camp at
Ravensbrück. I visited it at the liberation.
In the blocks an order had been circulated to the effect that the old
women and the patients who could no longer work should apply in writing
for admission to the Jugendlager, where they would be far better off,
where they would not have to work, and where there would be no roll
call. We learned about this later through some of the people who worked
at the Jugendlager—the chief of the camp was an Austrian woman, Betty
Wenz, whom I knew from Auschwitz—and from a few of the survivors, one
of whom is Irène Ottelard, a French woman living in Drancy, 17 Rue de la
Liberté, who was repatriated at the same time as myself and whom I had
nursed after the liberation. Through her we discovered the details about
the Jugendlager.
M. DUBOST: Can you tell us, Madame, if you can answer this question?
Were the SS doctors who made the selection acting on their own accord or
were they merely obeying orders?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: They were acting on orders received, since one
of them, Dr. Lukas, refused to participate in the selections and was
withdrawn from the camp, and Dr. Winkelmann was sent from Berlin to
replace him.