CAPPELEN: In Gross-Rosen, it is not possible for me to say here exactly;
but I know about 40 persons who had been there, and I also know about
ten who came back again. Well, Gross-Rosen was a bad camp. But nearly
the worst of it all was the evacuation of Gross-Rosen. I suppose it must
have been in the middle of February of that year. The Russians came
nearer and nearer to Breslau.
THE PRESIDENT: You mean 1945?
CAPPELEN: Yes, 1945 I mean. One day we were placed upon a so-called
“Appellplatz” (roll call ground). We were very feeble, all of us. We had
hard work, little food, and all sorts of ill-treatment. Well, we started
to walk in parties of about 2,000 to 3,000. In the party I was with, we
were about 2,500 to 2,800. We heard so and so many when they took up the
numbers.
Well, we started to walk, and we had SS guards on each side. They were
very nervous and almost like mad persons. Several were drunk. We
couldn’t walk fast enough, and they smashed in the heads of five who
could not keep up. They said in German, “That is what happens to those
who cannot walk.” The others would have been treated in the same way if
they had not been able to follow. We walked the best we could. We
attempted to help one another, but we were all too exhausted. After
walking for 6 to 8 hours we came to a station, a railway station. It was
very cold and we had only striped prison clothes on, and bad boots; but
we said, “Oh, we are glad that we have come to a railway station. It is
better to stand in a cow truck than to walk, in the middle of winter.”
It was very cold, 10 to 12 degrees below zero (centigrade). It was a
long train with open cars. In Norway we call them sand cars, and we were
kicked on to those cars, about 80 on each car. We had to sit together
and on this car we sat for about 5 days without food, cold, and without
water. When it was snowing we made like this [_indicating_] just to get
some water into the mouth and, after a long, long time—it seemed to me
years—we came to a place which I afterwards learned was Dora. That is
in the neighborhood of Buchenwald.
Well, we arrived there. They kicked us down from the cars, but many were
dead. The man who sat next to me was dead, but I had no right to get
away. I had to sit with a dead man for the last day. I didn’t see the
figures myself, naturally, but about one-third of us or half of us were
dead, getting stiff. And they told us that one-third—I heard the figure
afterwards in Dora—that the dead on our train numbered 1,447.
Well, from Dora I don’t remember so much, because I was more or less
dead. I have always been a man of good humor and high spirited, to help
myself first and my friends; but I had nearly given up.
I do not remember so much before, so I had a good chance, because
Bernadotte’s action came and we were rescued and brought to Neuengamme,
near Hamburg; and when we arrived, there were some of my old friends,
the student from Norway who had been deported to Germany, other
prisoners who came from Sachsenhausen and other camps, and the few,
comparatively few, Norwegian “NN” prisoners who were living, all in very
bad condition. Many of my friends are still in the hospital in Norway.
Some died after coming home.
That’s what happened to me and my comrades in the three and
three-quarter years I was in prison. I am fully aware that it is
impossible for me to give details more than I have done; but I have
taken, so to say, the parts of it which show, I hope, the way they
behaved against Norwegians, and in Norway, the German SS.