ROSER: At the end of 1942 I was taken to Germany, and I, together with a
French doctor, had the opportunity of meeting the chauffeur of the
German physician who was head of the infirmary where I was at that time.
This soldier, whose name I have forgotten, said to me as follows:
“In Poland, in a town the name of which I have forgotten, a
sergeant from our regiment went with a Jewess. A few hours later
he was found dead. Then”—said the German soldier—“my battalion
was called out. Half of it cordoned off the ghetto, and the
other half, two companies, to one of which I belonged, forced
its way into the houses and threw out of the windows, pell-mell,
the furniture and the inhabitants.”—The German soldier finished
his story by saying—“Poor fellow! It was terrible,
horrible!”—We asked him then—“How could you do such a
thing?”—He gave us the fatalistic reply—“Orders are orders.”
This is the example which I previously mentioned.
M. DUBOST: If I remember rightly, when speaking of Rawa-Ruska you
started describing the treatment of Russian prisoners who were in this
camp before you.
ROSER: Yes. That is correct. The first French batch, which arrived in
Rawa-Ruska the 14th or 15th of April 1942, followed a group of 400
Russian prisoners of war, who were the survivors of a detachment of
6,000 men decimated by typhus. The few medicines found by the French
doctors upon arrival at Rawa-Ruska came from the infirmary of the
Russian prisoners. There were a few aspirin tablets and other drugs;
absolutely nothing against typhus. The camp had not been disinfected
after the sick Russians had left.
I cannot speak here of these wretched Russian survivors of Rawa-Ruska,
without asking the Tribunal for permission to describe the terrible
picture we all—I mean all the French prisoners who were in the stalags
of Germany in the autumn or winter of 1941—saw when the first batches
of Russian prisoners arrived. It was on a Sunday afternoon that I
watched this spectacle, which was like a nightmare. The Russians arrived
in rows, five by five, holding each other by the arms, as none of them
could walk by themselves—“walking skeletons” was really the only
fitting expression. Since then we have seen photographs of those camps
of deportation and death. Our unfortunate Russian comrades had been in
that condition since 1941. The color of their faces was not even yellow,
it was green. Almost all squinted, as they had not strength enough to
focus their sight. They fell by rows, five men at a time. The Germans
rushed on them and beat them with rifle butts and whips. As it was
Sunday afternoon the prisoners were at liberty, inside the camp, of
course. Seeing that, all the French started shouting and the Germans
made us return to the barracks. Typhus spread immediately in the Russian
camp, where, out of the 10,000 who had arrived in November, only 2,500
survived by the beginning of February.
These figures are accurate. I have them from two sources. First, from a
semi-official source, which was the kitchen of the camp. In front of the
kitchen a big chart was posted where the Germans recorded the
ridiculously small rations and the number of men in the camp. This
number decreased daily by 80 to 100, in the Russian camp. On the other
hand, French comrades employed in the camp’s reception office, called
“Aufnahme,” also knew the figures, and from them I got the figure of
2,500 survivors in February. Later, particularly at Rawa-Ruska, I had
the opportunity of seeing French prisoners from all parts of Germany.
All those who were in stalags, that is, in the central camps, at the
time mentioned, saw the same thing. Many of the Russian prisoners were
thrown in a common grave, even before they were dead. The dead and the
dying were piled up between the barracks and thrown into carts. The
first few days we could see the corpses in the carts, but as the German
camp commandant did not like to see French soldiers salute their fallen
Russian comrades, he had them covered with canvas after that.