On 12 September 1945 at 9.00 a.m. I heard:
Jean Joseph Lambert Janssens, divorced from Marceline Bodson, Belgian national, no occupation, born in Ougrée, residing at rue des Trixhes 156 in Ougrée.
Mrs. Blumenfeld has told me about him in the abovementioned interview reports, and he has testified as follows in French – a language chosen by himself.
The Germans arrested me on 1 July 1941 because I had fought against Franco in Spain during the civil war. After three months of imprisonment in Huy I was transported to a concentration camp at Neuengamme in Germany, close to Hamburg. There, I was assigned to earthworks, like most of my fellow inmates.
We were abused by German SS men, who were wonderfully helped in this by Polish prisoners.
In this camp I knew René Delbrouck, a socialist, who died as a result of blows he had received, Henri Strée (rue des Trixhes, Ougrée), Joseph Claes, Jack Devillers (both from Ougrée), Théo Massin, Théo Delcommune, Henri Houlmont (rue Ferdinand Nicolay), Léon Jordaens, Thomas Mairy (these last ones from Seraing). The Red Cross has filed an official notice concerning all of these individuals.
Bob Claessens, lawyer, member of the communist party, living in Antwerp, could provide you with information regarding the identity of the SS men and the heads of the camp because he was employed at the camp office during his stay in Neuengamme.
I remained at Neuengamme for around two months, at which point I was transferred to Dachau, where I stayed for about four and half months. When being transported to this camp, we were all sick. I have to tell you of a very sorry incident that took place at this time. The SS men made one of our comrades, Renery from Angleur, who had phlegmon in his head, lie down on his back in the train car we were riding in, and – threatening all the prisoners with guns – they made them jump on his chest and stomach until he died. When I was visiting the Renerys I withheld the details – as you well understand – of their son’s horrible death. During this transport, made up of 550 prisoners, 280 died as a result of being beaten. The lawyer Claessens whom I mentioned will be able to provide a considerable amount of detail concerning the camp at Dachau.
I was subsequently transferred to Auschwitz, [where I remained] until mid-January 1945. In this last camp I was employed as a pharmacist.
At Auschwitz, I knew Klein, a German doctor aged around 60, who is responsible for the death of many prisoners. Sometimes this doctor would tell me: "It’s a misfortune, all these dead, but what can you do," and on many occasions he would show me written orders that had come from Berlin, demanding the elimination (killing) of a certain number of prisoners.
The most murderous of all the doctors I knew at Auschwitz was the one who was there before Klein. I know nothing about him, and he is guilty of heinous crimes. A certain David Kac, a prisoner doctor from Auschwitz, will certainly be able to provide quite a few details.
During the last three months of my imprisonment [at Auschwitz] the SS men gassed around 600,000 political prisoners and Hungarian Jews. One could estimate that around 700 prisoners perished at Auschwitz daily. This lager surpasses all the other camps I have encountered in terms of the torture and the number of dead.
The operations that the German doctors performed on prisoners included the following: operating the reproductive organs (men and women); forced sexual intercourse between male and female prisoners (the women who became pregnant were operated after three, four, five or six months of pregnancy); creating abscesses with injections and then testing an ointment (usually the member in question putrefied and an amputation was performed, resulting in death). I won’t present the long list of experiments that these criminals performed on the prisoners – it would be too horrible an ordeal for me. Let me only say that all of these truly demonic operations were forms of torture, one more refined than another.
From Auschwitz we were sent to Mauthausen. After a journey of some 80 km on foot in the snow, we were loaded onto open train cars in freezing cold temperatures. Many of my fellow inmates died during this transport.
In all of the concentration camps, particularly in Mauthausen, the German criminals sentenced for ordinary crimes were the same as the SS men in how they treated political prisoners.
Of those who could provide more information about these places of torture, let me mention: B. Maysel (rue Belliard 88, Brussels) [and] Taillard [?], (chaussée d’Alsemberg 365, Forest, Brussels).
The report was read out and signed.