DUPONT: Not on the initiative of anyone in the camp. These elements had
nothing to do with the camp administration or the guards. I must make it
clear that those whom I saw belonged to the Wehrmacht, whereas we were
guarded by SS, all of them from the Totenkopf Division. Towards the end,
a special use was made of them.
In the early months of 1945, members of the Gestapo came to Buchenwald
and took away all the papers of those who had died, in order to
re-establish their identity and to make out forged papers. One Jew was
specially employed to touch up photographs and to adapt the papers which
had belonged to the dead for the use of persons whom, of course, we did
not know. The Jew disappeared, and I do not know what became of him. We
never saw him again.
But this utilization of identification papers was not confined to the
dead. Several hundred French internees were summoned to the
“Fliegerverwaltung” and there subjected to a very precise interrogation
on their person, their connections, their convictions, and their
background. They were then told that they would on no account be allowed
to receive any correspondence, or even parcels—those of them who ever
received any. From an administrative point of view all traces of them
were effaced and contact with the outside world was rendered even more
impossible for them than it had been under ordinary circumstances. We
were deeply concerned about the fate of these comrades. We were
liberated very soon after that, and I can only say that prisoners were
used in this way, that their identification papers were used for
manufacturing forged documents.