The third day of the hearing, 14 March 1947
President: Please summon the witness Kościuszko.
The witness gave the following information about herself:
| Name and surname | Janina Kościuszko |
| Age | 48 |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Marital status | married |
| Occupation | doctor |
| Relationship to the parties | none |
| President: | What are the motions of the parties regarding how the witness should be heard? |
| Prosecutor Cyprian: | Without taking an oath. |
Attorney Umbreit: Without taking an oath.
President: The Tribunal has decided, with the consent of the parties, to hear the witness without oath. I caution the witness about the obligation to testify the truth and about the criminal liability for false testimony. May the witness recount in what circumstances she ended up in Auschwitz, and also present her experiences in the camp?
Witness: I was arrested in February 1942. I arrived at Auschwitz in February 1943. I will testify as a doctor because I would like to outline the hygienic conditions that prevailed in the camp.
President: Please tell the court everything that is known to the witness in this matter.
Witness: After arriving in Auschwitz, there was a colossal change in our hygienic conditions. We were first held there for 6 hours, and then transported to Birkenau, where we were immediately stripped and taken to the baths. All our belongings were taken from us, and we were all given prison clothes, lice-ridden, as I could tell right away. Although it was February, we were given light dresses and so-called jackets. At night, we were detained in a cold, unheated hall, and loads of women caught cold there.
Then we were herded off to the quarantine block, where we were to be detained so that we would not transfer any infectious diseases. Because the clothes we had received were teeming with nits and live lice, we – having come from perfect hygienic conditions – soon began to suffer typhus fever en masse. Over two months, almost all the women had typhus.
The quarantine block was arranged in a barrack without a proper floor, with so much mud that we had to scrape it up ourselves. We slept on bunks, 7–10 of us to each, so there was no way we could stretch our legs, and we slept all squeezed together. Often, a few more women would be added to a bunk at night. We were woken up at 4.00 a.m., in the dark, in an unlit block. We were not let out to the toilets at all, there were just some metal wheelbarrows standing in front of the block, inclined slightly, constantly full and over-spilling, and it all soaked into the ground where we walked. For this reason, in the space of seven days, typhoid began to rage.
There was no water. We did not wash ourselves once during the entire quarantine. Myself as a doctor, when I was called to the German doctor, I was allowed to wash my hands for this reason. Water was not given to drink, it was forbidden to drink water, we were given half a pint of herbs, so-called “melka,” for two people. The women went crazy from thirst, they were able to drink water from a ditch, just to drink, especially because the soup was seasoned with “Avo” powder. This was chestnut flour with some chemicals which had a nasty smell and caused colossal thirst and diarrhea. You cannot imagine worse filth.
Every day we got a quarter of bread, cut thin. The women who had not yet got used to camp life, starved, threw themselves at any remnants of others’ food and this again caused illness.
Washing – in February 1942, the well was not yet available; there was only one in the camp, so there was no washing of pots. Coffee was poured into a bowl that was dirtied with turnip remains. This caused serious illnesses.
I was appointed the block doctor. Some prisoners had swollen legs. I had not yet seen such swollen legs in my life; they were 40 centimeters [in circumference]. The women could not stand but, but they had to stand for roll-call, as we were told that this was the commandant’s order. The other prisoners had to hold them up under their arms, and these roll-calls could last 2 hours. When I said that it was inhumane, I was told: “You need to switch to a concentration camp mentality, if you want to survive the camp.” Whoever had a fever of 39 degrees could get to the hospital. The senior block prisoners who were supposed to bring in the sick were forbidden to take too many patients to the hospital – if there were too many, they would lose their all-in-all favorable position.
How did the hospital look like? In Birkenau, it was a wooden stable, with feeding troughs and rings for tying horses, without floors. During the rain there was mud up to your ankles. Three-story beds for three people stood there. During a severe outbreak of disease, four prisoners would lie on one bed. The blocks were unheated. The whole place was teeming with lice; prisoners who had no lice when they arrived were covered with them within fifteen minutes. There were no medicines. Our sick friends received one or two aspirins. There was one doctor per thousand patients. There was such a lack of water, that if some was brought in, 15 patients would be washed with one bowl. Naturally, the Germans took precedence. The German women from Ravensbrück – the first thousand – posed problems, for they had precedence over everyone else.
Initially, patients with typhus and pneumonia were not separated at all, with the result that a typhus patient lay next to someone suffering from pneumonia and [the latter] often caught typhus. Later it got better. There was some segregation.
When it comes to pregnant women, in the first period they were sent straight to the gas chamber. Later they could give birth, but the child was immediately thrown into a bucket of water and drowned with its first breath, and then thrown into the crematorium straight away, because by then the crematorium was ready. When they were present, the Aufseherinnen [female overseers] killed these children themselves. Later it was different, the babies were allowed to live, and a children’s block was established, but the mortality rate was colossal, the children were dropping like flies. There was no way to control the mortality.
The selection on the block ran as follows. A doctor would come round accompanied by the so-called Oberärtzin [female senior physician] – a Slovak, and the camp authorities. All this happened during a two or three-hour roll-call. Not all of the weaker patients were examined by this doctor, but if they looked bad, or were emaciated, they went straight to the chimney. In this way, we lost half the block, the sick blocks were completely purged. Sick, often emaciated women, who could have been able to survive and get better, died.
I want to talk about one procedure that I witnessed as a doctor, I think I might have been the only one who saw it. This concerned collecting blood from women for military purposes, for the Germans. After roll-call, which lasted 2–3 hours, women were sent to the hospital, to block 10 in Birkenau; it was a German block. Only two nurses and one female doctor worked there – they were Polish. They waited 2–3 hours. An SS man from Rajsko would arrive, and the women would simply be taken to the toilet, laid on a table and have their blood collected into a sterilized glass vessel, 0.5 or 0.75 liters of blood. If 0.5 liters of blood could not be drawn, the SS man would start swearing that it was not worth the trouble. As a reward, as compensation, the female prisoners were given half a loaf of bread. This happened several times during my incarceration, eight times. These women contracted tuberculosis, severe anemia, and were very sick.
A question was raised here about what “organization” meant in the camp. I want to say that in the women’s camp there was no way that a woman could have got through the camp if she had not received packages or if she had not “organized” [stole] things somewhere. As proof, I will mention [one situation]: in July 1943, the German physician Dr. König set about studying the erythrocyte sedimentation rate – which was colossal in the camps – using the Biernacki method. The doctor ordered 10 women to be found who had spent a year in the camp and lived only on camp food. Can you imagine that no such women were found? The only ones who survived a year in the camp were those who had either learned to “organize” or had packages sent to them.
As for the hygiene conditions in the hospital itself, I will tell you one thing. At first there was no water, up to 15 women washed in one bowl of water, and when delousing took place, hundreds of women died because one hundred patients bathed in one bath. There was one German block leader who was proud of that fact that she had organized such a huge bathtub that she could have all the patients bathed at once. Water was poured into this tub and up to a hundred sick women bathed together. Later, the camp authorities ordered a washroom to be installed, where 40 women could wash at a time, and also one large toilet with eight lavatories. But these facilities only worked for three days, after which the water was turned off and the use of lavatories was forbidden or you would be punished with a beating. Only buckets were used, which the nurses had to take out. The orders came out from the authorities and were so strictly observed that when once one of the women, unable to carry the bucket – because it was a 50–60 meters walk to empty it – splashed some water, all the doctors, nurses and block leaders were punished.
I would also like to mention block 10 in Auschwitz, which was the experimental block. Experiments were carried out there with artificial fertilization, termination of pregnancy in the sixth month – I myself saw five- and six-month-old fetuses. They wanted to conduct experiments on how the body reacts to abortion during this period. In addition, women were sterilized by exposure to radiation and surgically.
President: Can you describe how sterilization took place?
Witness: This took place more or less according to medical rules, and when it comes to the X-rays, there were two apparatuses, Professor or Dr. Clauberg would come there, and operations were carried out there to sterilize women They would then try to impregnate them to see if they could still get pregnant.
President: How did the patients look after these procedures, did they not feel any side- effects in the future?
Witness: I do not know. I only know that some women died after surgery, and after the abortions too. I know this for sure. How many died, I cannot say. I do not know how many died after the X-rays.
President: Does the witness know something about these experiments?
Witness: I do not know these things in detail. Dr. Brewda worked there. Because I often went to the men’s camp, I know that there was always talk of these things.
President: How was the treatment in the hospital where the witness was a doctor? What type of sicknesses did the women there suffer from? How long could the sick stay there? What was the admission procedure? Were there any regulations that were followed?
Witness: There was a period when only prisoners with a fever above 39 degrees were admitted to the hospital. At first, patients with so-called Durchfall were also treated – this was camp diarrhea, very severe, which often led to death if untreated. Because more sick people died of this disease than typhus, a special block was set up for it. But if we wanted to admit sick women to the block according to the regulations, there would have been a much higher mortality rate. Please note that towards the end of 1943 and in the beginning of 1944, when a grand epidemic prevailed, 240–250 patients died daily in the hospital blocks. At that time, the authorities slightly came to their senses that something bad was happening, because over half of the women who were in the block died within eight weeks.
President: Does this mean that there was no possibility of treatment?
Witness: The authorities did not give any possibility, and if there was any, it was only thanks to so-called “organization.” To the extent that the doctor who was in the infirmary and who had the authority to decide whether to admit a patient or not would measure the sick woman’s temperature, say she had a 39 degree fever and declare that she had to be admitted. But these doctors had a German assistant, so many a doctor’s career ended with expulsion from the infirmary. Next came the period of retaining the sick. There was a terrible struggle to keep the sick in the hospital until recovery, but this was severely punished, to the extent that every doctor risked being put in the bunker. Because the Germans demanded that patients be released as soon as their temperature dropped. Sometimes the sick would stagger on their feet after typhus, so they either died at the block or went back to hospital.
President: So, was getting to the hospital dependent on the help of prisoner doctors as well as help from the prisoners?
Witness: That’s right. At the time when arrests were taking place constantly, the number of Polish doctors in the camp increased, as did the level of health in the hospital, but it only really rose thanks to their efforts and “organization.” Medicine was not given, so much so that when we collected some drugs which some men had procured from somewhere, one day all the doctors and nurses were rounded up, taken out of the camp, and then locked in another block, where we remained for three hours. When we were released and returned to our block, it turned out that during this time they had ransacked our things, beds, straw mattresses and pulled out all the medicines and announced that if they found any medicine for the sick ever again, then we, the doctors, would go to the bunker.
President: I wanted to ask how the German doctors behaved, but in light of what the witness has testified this question appears irrelevant, since there were no drugs.
Witness: The German doctors did not actually treat anyone, they only played an administrative role and checked that we did not keep the patients hospitalized too long. Despite this, we managed to keep the sick in the hospital as long as possible, but when they came, they simply threw them out. If the doctor failed to report twice a week how many sick people she had, and also how many she had released, the German doctor would come to the hospital himself and throw out the most seriously ill without thinking twice about it.
I remember, there was a prewar Polish Socialist Party MP, Zofia Prauss, a 68-year-old woman, whom he threw out. But she had gone where she was supposed to have been bathed, and was brought in on a stretcher, so seriously was she ill. He would throw out the most heavily ill – the only thing that mattered to him was a high temperature.
President: Were there selections among the sick in the witness’ ward?
Witness: There were not really any selections in my ward, but I experienced some at the wards of other blocks. It looked like this. A strengste Blocksperre [strict block lockdown] would be ordered, during which it was forbidden to leave the block. The nurses were rushed off to one block and helped with the selection. The camp authorities, Aufseherin [female overseer] and SS men with revolvers arrived and they drove out the sick from their beds with sticks. Once, a sick woman happened to be lying so flat on the top bed that initially they could not find her, but they finally tracked her down with dogs and threw her out. Another hid herself under a straw mattress, but they found her too. If a block had been designated for emptying, emptied it would be – of everyone.
President: Does the witness know about the selections of Muselmänner [Muslims]?
Witness: I have described such a selection just now. Each would be carried out superficially, for the Germans were not interested in determining whether you were healthy or sick, and based their assessment on people’s appearance, nothing else. There were, for example, cases where sick people who absolutely should have lived and could have been cured went to their deaths, whereas a sick woman who had a brain tumor and had lost her sight completely, who had convulsions several times a day, but externally presented herself well, could be passed by four times during four selections by the authorities and doctors and not designated for gassing, even though her condition was hopeless. The selections were superficial, and not based on any medical data.
President: How did the doctors decide – on the basis of appearance alone? How are we to understand this?
Witness: There were various periods of selection. There was a kind of selection when the women returned from the Aussenarbeit [outdoor work] and came to the gate, with the camp authorities and commandant standing there, with Mandl – the commandant of the women’s camp (she was Höss’ subordinate, but ran the women’s camp) – and all of them stood there, and the women were told to run a dozen or so meters. They were tired after the whole day, they had clogs or even slippers on their feet, so this slowed them down and those that could not move quickly were earmarked for the gas chamber.
President: Was this a test of stamina?
Witness: Yes, but they did not know this. There were also tests during which they had to jump over a ditch or show their hands, and those whose hands were injured or neglected were taken to the chimney. A particular issue was scabies. Because the women were not bathed and could not change their underwear, scabies spread. Scratching brought on purulent infections and scabs, and if a woman was covered with scabs, this was a reason for selection. Another reason for being selected was emaciation. The women looked like skeletal drawings, where the knees seemed thick in relation to the thighs and shins. 20-year-old girls looked like 70-year old women. They were called Muselmänner and were chosen during selection.
President: How can the witness explain this emaciation, since the witness herself spoke about the possibility of “organization,” about the delivery of packages?
Witness: Polish women usually received packages because it was possible to deliver them, although some of them did not have families or their whole family was in the camp. The French received very little, the Dutch too, the Slovaks – I was in the Slovak kommando and I do not know if [even] 1% got any packages. So not all of the camp got them. If a girl was smart and brave, she sometimes worked in a kommando where she could “organize” something to eat, so that was alright, but if she was only given camp food, she would not be able to make it.
In any case, if what was delivered had been given in the right form, it would have been much easier to survive. We never got any food in the camp that might contain some vitamins. The soups were inedible because of the taste, smell and method of preparation. For example, I had a convalescent who was recovering from a serious illness. Suddenly, her legs began to swell all the way up to her waist. I tried to find out what was doing this to her, so I asked her about this and that. It turned out that she was so hungry after the illness that she ate the soups of other friends who were not able to eat, three bowls, and this is what caused her so much harm. I explained this and asked her not to eat it. She said that she would die of starvation because she did not know how to cope. It was only when I convinced her that she had to limit the quantity of soup she ate then her health improved.
Once, in a gardening kommando, of which I think Dr. Caesar, an agronomist, was in charge, the women asked him if they could get the same soup, but without the powder it was seasoned with. He agreed, and then the soups improved enormously, they were much better, but the camp authorities forbade it and said that the soup must be with the powder. Our girls in the kitchen were able to pour some of the “Avo” into the canal. When the commandant of the camp – I no longer know which one – came round to the men’s kitchen, cigarettes were given to those prisoners whose soup was the thickest. I was in camps where there was great hunger and it was hard, but “Avo” powder was not used and it was possible to survive.
President: Did it have any chemical properties?
Witness: I do not know, but in any case it caused raging thirst and water retention in the body, and those who ate the soup suffered from swelling and diarrhea.
President: Did the witness catch the name of the powder (...)?
Witness: I do not know, I saw the label “Avo”, but maybe it was just another factory.
President: The witness mentioned that you could get medicines from the men’s camp. How did that happen, where did the men get them from?
Witness: There were pharmacies in the camps too. Officially we would receive a negligible amount of medicines, and then in all the large transports that came in, every prisoner brought medicines with him. There were many affluent people and each of them had some medicine in his suitcase.
There was a large operation that involved sorting and selecting medicines that would leave the camp [in train wagons] and head to Germany. Never in my life have I seen, for example, as much insulin and vitamin products as in Auschwitz, because people brought them with them. When the Dutch transports came in, [the camp] received a lot of glandular medicines; the Hungarian transports brought vitamin products. Some prisoners were involved in the unloading and they stole, so to speak, these items and supplied us. Thanks to this, it was possible to organize the treatment of patients. When, for example, a medicine transport arrived and the car went, we added two or three suitcases with medicines that then reached the camp. There were very dedicated pharmacists who could share this out between us. In 1943–1944, when [it was] very, very bad in the camp, the boys did it in this way...
President: ...what boys?
Witness: I mean men, we called them “boys.” They came with crates or with acetylene bottles or something similar that was empty inside and where they could hide the medicinal products. They also came as glaziers and brought medicines in boxes. They were severely punished for this and ended up in the bunkers, but they supplied us with a lot of medicines, and we could carry out treatment. [Because] for example, there was no question about getting any heart medicine in the camp.
President: The witness mentioned that many children died. Does the witness know any details? How could any children have survived this camp? Was there no difficulty in this respect?
Witness: Until 1942–1943, absolutely all the children went from the camp to the chimney. Once I saw how the arrival looked when there was a railway track that passed near our block. The train stopped, everyone got off and was given a cursory sorting. Some to one side, others to the other. Mothers with children were grouped with those who went straight to the chimney. When this happened, say, at noon, by 2.00 p.m. there was already smoke from the crematorium.
Where did the children in Auschwitz come from? Some of them were born in the camp, some came from the Zamość region, when a whole village was deported, besides there was a Russian transport with children who were allowed into the camp, and finally there were so-called Zwillinge, i.e. twins. This was the period when anyone who testified that he was one of a pair of twins could be saved. He did not go to the chimney, even if he was 70 years old. At that time, Dr. Mengele founded an anthropological institute in Auschwitz and studied twins in particular. I have the impression that he was concerned about whether it is possible to cause a bigeminal pregnancy. At the time there were twin children in the block.
President: Were there a lot of these twin children?
Witness: A couple of hundred.
President: Were they really twins?
Witness: Apparently some of them were pretending, but some really were twins. I even had some triplets in my care.
President: And if a woman was pregnant and gave birth?
Witness: At first, if she was pregnant, she went to the chimney.
President: If the pregnancy was visible?
Witness: Yes. Later they were allowed to give birth, but the child was killed. Then in 1944, women were allowed to have children and even a block was set up for mothers with children. They even got food that was slightly better. I visited this block. The conditions were terrible. It was half a block, dark and gloomy, with small windows at the top. Every woman with a child got a bed, but it was a floor higher, so if she wanted to leave to wash something for the child, she had to tie the child in such a way that it hung tied with tape passing through the boards of the upper bed. If the child crawled out, it would hang in the air. It was not possible to give laundry for washing. You could not give laundry to be washed at the hospital, either – only the nurses washed it. The children lived in terrible conditions. When an influenza epidemic or something like that broke out, I was called in because I am a specialist in children’s illnesses, so I know that the mortality rate was colossal. The block for contagious diseases looked like this: on the bunks lay patients suffering from typhoid fever, paratyphoid, measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, etc. So that if a child started out with scarlet fever, it went through all the other diseases in sequence. All the children I saw in Auschwitz had tuberculosis. Some died, others are still alive.
President: At first, the children were killed?
Witness: At first, yes, absolutely.
President: What year was that?
Witness: At the end of 1940, they stopped killing them, so in 1944 there were children several months old playing in their mothers’ arms.
President: And how was it with feeding? What were the possibilities, did the mothers have enough food or could milk be obtained?
Witness: The mothers received extracted milk. I must point out that this only happened in 1944.
President: Was this through “organization”?
Witness: No, milk could not be smuggled.
President: One more question. Were there any selections for the brothel that the Germans set up?
Witness: Yes, but as far as I am aware, no one was forced into the brothel. German women were happy to go there off their own bat. They regarded the brothel as the peak of happiness. They had much better nutrition there, almost like the SS women, and they spoke highly of their stay there. I saw some of them – they were typical prostitutes. I had one patient who came to the camp and said she wanted to return to her profession. She dreamed of getting well and going there. For this element, it was totally suitable. I do not know of any cases of Polish women being forced into the brothel, I saw only German women, who viewed it as liberation. The camp commandant supplied them with lipstick, and they made themselves up awfully. They had a hateful attitude towards Polish women, they never referred to them in any way other than “ diePolacken.”
President: Do any of the prosecutors have any questions?
Prosecutor Siewierski: Yes. Doctor, you talked about children being killed immediately after birth. Did these births take place in the hospital or just at the block?
Witness: In the hospital, only in terrible conditions. What I am talking about relates to 1943. There was one block that was heated with a stove. There was a bench 40 by 60 [centimeters] on which the births took place – in front of everyone and in the presence of 16-17-year-old girls. A delivered child was thrown into a bucket and drowned. The deliveries were performed by German midwives. Klara Schwester was there. There were a remarkable number of German midwives, who were doing time for having performed abortions. The children were killed on the orders of the authorities, it was forbidden to give birth to live children. In 1944, there was a Polish midwife and doctor, and these children lived.
Public Prosecutor Siewierski: Höss was not there at that time?
Witness: He was not. It was better then. But in 1943, in my block there was a Bauleitung [construction management] clerk who suspected beforehand and knew that the child she would give birth to would not be kept alive. However, they were left alone and were taken care of. This was the first child to be saved and to survive. She was very protective of the child. After five months, an order came from the camp authorities, from the command, that she had to give up the child. If she had had to do so an hour after giving birth, I suppose she would have given it up. But after 5 months, after all the tribulations of trying to keep the child alive, she did not want to. She said she would go with the child. They were taken away and she was gassed along with her child. I tried to get some information from the political department, because I had acquaintances there; [in the documents] it was written that she and the child had died of pneumonia.
At the time children were allowed to live, when an Aryan child – in the parlance of the camp – was born, a number was tattooed on the buttock and thigh and the number of prisoners increased. Boys were given a number for men, and the girls’ received one for women. If a Jewish child was born, no number or food was allocated, and a blind eye was turned if the child managed to live.
There were cases when a child lived for a week, even up to eight weeks, and was suddenly taken together with the mother – to the chimney.
Prosecutor Siewierski: Doctor, do you know the details of experiments concerning artificial insemination?
Witness: I do not. Dr. Alina Brewda was there, she could describe it better than me.
Prosecutor Siewierski: How would you explain the authorities’ order concerning the astonishing frugality as regards the use of water?
Witness: That wasn’t frugality – that was sloppiness and negligence which should be unacceptable to a civilized nation. When the camp in Auschwitz, Birkenau, was established, there was no well. There were no water pipes. Then they made one well, which was often out of order. At the time when I arrived there, the well wasn’t working. Only after the camp was established did they think of making a well. Women were not executed by shooting in the women’s camp. I know of only a couple of such cases. There was no need for it. The mortality rate was naturally very high. The authorities were the only ones to blame. Some improvements were made later, in 1944.
Prosecutor Siewierski: This negligence was evident from the fact that there were no wells?
Witness: There were essentially no wells – just one for 15,000 women. Water was very bad. Water pipes were in such a state that they carried brown water. When heated, this water left thick residue at the bottom of a watering-can. It was undrinkable.
Prosecutor Cyprian: I want to ask the witness if the medical experiments carried out on the women had, according to the witness, any scientific value?
Witness: I do not think so. They only served as an attempt to increase fertility in Germany – that is why all those tests were carried out. In Birkenau, it was all about establishing the laws of heredity. For example, some Hungarian transports arrived and among them was a family of monstrous dwarfs. Dr. Mengele became interested in them. And while he sent even healthy people to the chimney, he held back this family of 17 people, gave them even better camp conditions, better maintenance, and so they survived. 17 people survived because of the interest in them. They were dwarfs of a special type; they had a normal head, then followed the torso of a three-year-old child with the limbs of a one-year-old child. A monstrous type. The interest in them was understandable. Nieces, aunts, the entire family were detained.
Prosecutor Cyprian: According to the witness, these were not methodical scientific experiments, just ones carried out according to the whims of some doctor?
Witness: Absolutely yes. Twins would be born and experiments would be conducted on them.
Prosecutor Cyprian: What happened to these guinea pigs if they survived?
Witness: They were so exhausted that they went to barrack 10 and to the chimney. If they were stronger and healthier, they found some place to work. They would fight to get some work so that they could keep themselves going.
Attorney Ostaszewski: You mentioned that there were instances when Dr. Mengele and Dr. Clauberg gave orders to select dwarves. This would mean that Dr. Mengele had some privileges in terms of determining people’s fate. I would like to establish whether these men had any mandates or just Höss’ permission?
Witness: They were totally dependent on the camp commandant. Every time we asked them for something, they replied that they had been given orders and that they had to obey them.
Attorney Ostaszewski: Did they come with such orders from Berlin, from Himmler?
Witness: No, they did not answer to Himmler, but to the camp commandant.
Attorney Ostaszewski: To Höss?
Witness: To Höss – when he was the commandant. Höss was the master of life and death in the camp.
Attorney Ostaszewski: The defendant claims that some people – Clauberg, for instance – were sent there with special mandates granted by Himmler.
Witness: Clauberg’s case was different, because there was a barrack set up for the purposes of experiments, while Mengele was a camp physician who conducted secondary research on twins and dwarves.
Attorney Ostaszewski: So people like Mengele answered to Höss, and people like Clauberg – those pseudo-scientists who would come to the camp – had special mandates?
Witness: This is correct.
Attorney Ostaszewski: You said that the conditions improved considerably in 1944, after Höss’ departure?
Witness: In 1944 the conditions were much better.
Attorney Ostaszewski: Do you know the reasons behind this improvement? Was it just because the commandant was replaced or did any new instructions arrive?
Witness: I have no way of knowing that.
Attorney Umbreit: Does the witness know that Höss took up the post of commandant again for several months in 1944? Did the condition in the camp decline because of that?
Witness: On the whole, the conditions in 1944 were better.
Attorney Umbreit: Did the witness ever see defendant Höss in the women’s section of the camp or during an inspection? How did he behave?
Witness: No, I did not see him.
President: I call for a recess until 4.00 p.m.