The seventh day of the hearing, 18 March 1947
The witness gave the following information about herself:
| Name and surname | Natalia Vogel |
| Age | 28 |
| Marital status | unmarried |
| Occupation | clerk |
| Religious affiliation | Lutheran |
| Relationship to the parties | none |
| President: | What are the motions of the parties regarding how the witness should be heard? |
| Prosecutor Cyprian: | We motion to relieve the witness of the obligation to take an oath. |
| Defense Attorney Umbreit: | We second this motion. |
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.
In what circumstances did the witness find herself in the camp and what can she say, especially about the defendant?
Witness: I was sent to the camp in 1943. I was arrested along with my entire family in the spring, incarcerated in Pawiak [prison], and deported to Auschwitz on 17 July. I have never met the defendant.
President: For what reason was the witness placed in the camp?
Witness: We were detained in Pawiak prison. In the morning, we were moved to Szucha Avenue, where we were ordered to sign the Volksliste. We refused and were sent back to Pawiak. Later on, they took father several more times, but he did not agree to sign it. In consequence, we were sent to the camp.
President: How did your admission to the camp proceed?
Witness: Our transport numbered more than 60 women. It included both women and men. We were separated at the train station. The men were driven towards Auschwitz, while we remained in the so-called Birkenau. The transport was pretty macabre, they started beating and kicking us as soon as we left the wagon – there was a company of perhaps 15–20 regular SS men standing by, and they proceeded to hurry us along momentarily. There were many older people who could not walk quickly. Soon, the beating and pushing began. We dragged ourselves to Birkenau, this was at night, and in the morning a doctor and some camp officials arrived. We were stripped naked, shaved and tattooed, being beaten all the while. We then went to the bathhouse, and they switched on the hot water, but very briefly, so no-one had a chance to wash, and in fact we had nothing to wash ourselves with, as everything had been taken away from us. Then they gave us some dirty, louse-infested striped uniforms; everything was dirty and bloodied, teeming with nits and lice. We were registered in the office and had our numbers tattooed, and then we were sent to the quarantine block. The quarantine consisted in prisoners remaining in that block for some time, without being sent to work. But we were immediately forced to perform very arduous labor, carrying sand, logs and wood from one place to another. The older ladies from our transport became exhausted particularly quickly; they did not survive until next spring. Very few from this transport survived.
President: Why?
Witness: Because it was unbearable. We were allowed to write home for the first time after three months.
President: What kind of work did you perform?
Witness: The work was hard, no food, very little sleep.
President: What did the work consist in?
Witness: First of all, we got up at 3.30 a.m., when it was still dark, and we stood at roll-call for at least three hours, until it became light. If there was fog, we stood as long as it took for the fog to clear. We were then chased out into the fields to work, quite far away. Once there, we were issued coffee and…
President: Why did you stand longer if there was fog?
Witness: Because visibility would be bad, and if someone had wanted to escape, they would have succeeded.
We went to work without food. We worked in the fields, in part doing farm work – harvesting, digging, manuring, and we also we took part in haying. It was hard, because we were constantly hurried along, hungry, the heat was terrible, we had to work in the sun, our friends would faint constantly. I am very healthy, and yet one day I too fainted several times. Sometimes, we would not see water for a couple of days, it was very difficult to come by out in the fields. We simply had no access to water.
President: How was it with food?
Witness: In general, every kommando working in the fields received food at the work site, carted or brought to them on foot. There was a cart that distributed the food cauldrons. I remember that on several occasions during the time when I worked there with the other girls we did not receive any food at all – neither in the field nor after returning to the block in the evening.
President: So the rule was that the food was to be distributed in the fields, but this was not always done?
Witness: No, not always.
President: In what condition would the food arrive?
| Witness: | In any case it was hot, but there was very little of it and it was vile. In the period |
| when I | was there, they would bring us some kind of soup with sticks, sand, spoiled rutabaga. |
| We | ate it, because we were terribly, insanely hungry, but normally no one would have touched |
it. When we returned to camp, we would get dinner, that quarter loaf of bread. A few times a week they added a slice of sausage, a piece of margarine, sometimes marmalade.
President: And that was all the food you had?
Witness: Those who were smarter, who had contacts, would get some rutabaga or something else for themselves.
President: Were there breaks during work?
Witness: There was the so-called dinner break, but this really tired us out, as we were not allowed to sit in the shade, but only in the scorching sun.
President: Was the break long?
Witness: One hour.
President: And you worked until what time, more or less?
Witness: It was the summer season, we would work until 7.00 p.m., then we went back to camp for roll-call.
President: Was the road back long?
Witness: It was quite long, at least 5 kilometers.
President: How long did you walk for?
Witness: About an hour.
President: Did you carry loads?
Witness: Sometimes pickaxes and shovels, sometimes loads. These were small crates, wooden, with four carrying bars, and we carried them two persons each. We used them to shift sand or clay, however only when we were working nearby; we would go much further with the shovels and pickaxes.
President: What age were the women in the group, and were any exceptions made for the elderly as regards loads and so forth?
Witness: Exceptions should have been made in principle, but in practice they were ignored. Some very old women would go with us.
President: What age, more or less, was the oldest woman in the group that the witness was in?
Witness: The oldest one in the column was Mrs. Wacławek, who was at least 60 years old. She was not given any privileges, and neither were any of the older woman; quite the opposite in fact.
President: How were you forced to work?
Witness: Whoever worked poorly got hit in the head, got beaten.
President: With what?
Witness: If the SS man was in a good mood, then with a hand, if not, then with a baton. They always carried batons.
President: Were there female overseers around?
Witness: SS female overseers did not go to the fields, while the German female prisoners who acted as overseers usually shirked work. Only the SS men went with us, and they were in command of the female German kapos and Aufseherinnen [female overseers]. You had to work regardless of whether you were healthy or sick.
President: Does the witness know of anyone being killed during work?
Witness: No such thing occurred in my group, but it would often happen that when we were coming back from the fields, other work columns would be marching down the same road in front of us and behind us, and a number of times I myself saw the last five or ten of a given column carrying their colleagues, while blood in the road was a constant sight, daily.
President: So women carried women. How did they cope?
Witness: They had to. Logs were heavier to carry.
President: Was there a roll-call when you returned to camp?
Witness: We generally came back after roll-call, we were excused from taking part. We were the so-called kommandiert [officially delegated to work]. We were just counted, we lined up in front of the block, and then we received dinner and had to wash quickly and go to bed.
There was no water in our block – water was available in only two blocks and it was very difficult to get there, only someone strong enough to push through the others could get to the water taps.
President: Was there a fixed time to go to get that water?
Witness: Yes. For example, you were not allowed to go there at night. We wanted to go to get water then, but the supply would be cut off for the night.
President: Were there any hours when you were allowed to move around freely?
Witness: Yes. From the end of evening roll-call and until the camp curfew (Lagerruhe).
| President: | At what time was that, more or less? |
| Witness: | Right at dusk, at 8.00 or perhaps 8.30 p.m. When the whistle was blown, we all had |
| to be in | the block, you were no longer allowed to move around the camp, everyone had to |
be lying down or sleeping in their bunks. Actually, you were not allowed to move around the block either.
President: Does the witness know of any selections being performed in the blocks?
Witness: Indeed I do, but not in my block. One such selection was carried out for all the Jewish blocks, but not hospital blocks – just the regular blocks.
President: How did this proceed?
Witness: I worked in the registration office at the time and our room was in the “sauna” building, which housed a huge bathhouse. That is where the selections took place. It was October, it was very cold and raining. The women from the Jewish blocks were forced to go to that bathhouse. There, they had to strip naked and, while Doctor Mengele, accompanied by SS men (SS women were sometimes present, too), waited in the room where clothes were usually handed out. The women had to pass in front of them one after another, in single file. The doctor stood there and just motioned with his hand to show who had to move to which side. You did not have to be ill, it was just enough for a woman to be very thin, bitten by lice, suffering from scabies – as scabies leaves marks; sometimes if [one] was too fat, they would say: “It’s a swelling,” and they would all be sent to the gas chamber. A great many were selected that day, around a thousand.
President: Were they selected without regard for nationality or race?
Witness: Only Jewesses were selected then.
President: Does the witness know anything about the medical procedures conducted at the women’s camp? About the experiments and medical research?
Witness: I did not encounter any of this personally, as I arrived in the camp in 1943, while the experiments had been carried out earlier. But in one of my blocks I met three young Slovak Jewesses; two of them were sisters, and the third was not a relation. They told me – but I do not remember when exactly this took place, I think not in 1943 – that they had been called in in a group of about 40 girls, young, 16–20 years old, to the Revier – to the hospital. At the very last moment, the final girl in the group declared herself to be younger than she actually was, saying she was 14, and she was rejected. The others went to the hospital and – as the three Jewesses told me – they were touched with some plates or they stood between plates and felt considerable heat.
President: Meaning that X-ray machine was used?
Witness: I think so. But they did not say that. Most of those girls later died. None of them have survived. One of those I knew spoke in a bass voice and had a moustache.
President: Were they subjected to any medical procedures? Or did they only talk about the plates? Did they say they felt pain?
Witness: No, they only felt heat.
President: Did they fail to name the procedures to which they had been subjected because they did not know?
Witness: At first, they did not know. They found out only later, when they all became very weak. They were healthy girls, but afterwards they became very susceptible to all sorts of diseases, and all of them died quickly.
President: What about the one who informed the witness of this?
Witness: She had also been subjected to the same procedure. I even remember her last name.
President: The witness was there until the end, and was employed there?
Witness: Yes.
President: And the witness was there until the end of the evacuation?
Witness: Yes, I was.
President: Has the witness ever encountered that man Kuske?
Witness: Yes, I have. He was the head of our office. In actual fact, the political department only existed in the central Auschwitz camp. Our women’s camp in Birkenau had the so-called Politische Auflage, the records and registration office. That means that when transports came in, we registered the arrivals, wrote down their personal details, and also divided the groups of people [between various camp sectors] – Kuske was our superior.
| President: | How did he treat you? |
| Witness: | Not too well, but he did not beat us. I saw, however, what he did to the others |
| when a | transport arrived for gassing, when he had to lead them straight to the crematorium. |
He would always be the first to scoot off from the camp for that job. I also remember a transport arrive from Germany; it was mixed, with Aryans and women from mixed marriages, and Jewesses who did not present themselves as Jewesses. […]
[the rest of the testimony missing]