P IIId No 633: Escape arranged by a Germanofficer

Report

The following declarations were made by a Jewish refugee who had recently arrived in Switzerland.

The refugee was arrested in the streets of Brussels during a round-up of Jews and was interned in the camp at Malines,1Note 1: Mechelenwhere he was kept for three days with thousands of Jewish men, women and children. Some of them had received an order to report to the camp, equipped with belongings and enough rations for two weeks. The others had been arrested like him in the street, with no advance warning.

At the camp the children under fourteen were separated from the adults, the men over sixty were sent home. He does not know what happened to the women and children.

After three days at the camp he was designated for deportation with many of the men, most of them young. All they had with them was taken away. Those who had received official summonses and consequently had luggage with them had to leave it behind. They were only allowed to keep the food. Those who had been arrested in the street and had nothing with them were given a loaf of bread. At the station, before they boarded the train, there was a second inspection. Each person had to put into a basket any valuables he had on him: rings, watches, etc. From some of them the German inspectors took clothes they took a liking to, handing over in exchange second-hand shoes or clothes.

After this last inspection they were herded into a dozen cattle wagons. Our refugee was shoved into a wagon with seventy other men. They were squeezed in like sardines in a tin. Impossible to sit or to move; they had to stay this way for two and a half days. No chance of answering calls of nature. After two and a half days the train stopped at Königshütte in Upper Silesia and the train was cleared. Several of the weaker deportees had lost consciousness and our informer saw seven of these carried off.

At the station they were given hot soup from large tureens marked with red crosses. It was probably a distribution organised by the German Red Cross. Then the

fourteen- to twenty-year-olds, who made up about half the convoy, were taken away. It seems they were to work in heavy industry and in the mines of Königshütte and its surrounding area.

Other deportees got back into the wagons where this time there was a bit more space and the train set off towards the east. Our refugee recognised Lvov (Lemberg), then Rava-Russka and a region of the Ukraine. He was too exhausted to notice how long the journey lasted. The train stopped in Russia. The deportees were gathered together at the station. Each one was asked if he was fit to work. Half of them, about 150 men mostly aged between twenty and thirty-five, said they were. The others said they were not and were taken away, whilst the first group got back on the train and continued the journey for half a day more. Our refugee does not know exactly in which region they arrived. It was in a distant region, deep inside Russia – he noticed a signpost indicating Stalingrad 50 km, and whilst he was in this region he heard the noise of bombing and gunfire two or three times, suggesting they were close to the battle field.

As soon as they arrived the men were taken in groups to huts and were given work clothes. These were khaki uniforms as worn by the Todt teams, 2Note 2: Translator’s note: Organisation Todt (OT) was a Third Reich civil and military engineering group named after its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi. It was notorious for using forced labour. (Source: Wikipedia)but without the armbands with the swastika. Our informer was put into a group of sixty men. Other teams worked in the same area as his, and he noticed nearby a group of French prisoners, as he realised when he heard them speaking their language. A German officer confirmed to him later that this observation was correct.

The huts reserved for the deportees were the same as the German army uses for its men. There were bunk beds, in threes.

The work was very hard. They were probably constructing fortifications for the eastern front. The men had to carry over a long distance heavy sacks of cement weighing more than fifty kilos. There were also large iron grids from which they made sort of anti-tank barriers. They were forced to work for ten hours each day and since they had to walk for an hour to and from the huts to the work site, the working day was in reality twelve hours, from six in the morning to six at night. After a few days some of the men were completely exhausted. Supervisors constantly harried the men, as a certain number of square metres had to be completed daily. Talking was not allowed during working hours. They worked on Sundays the same as on weekdays, apparently not being allowed to rest until the fifth Sunday.

As for food, the men received a 900-gram loaf of bread, that is 225 grams per man, each day. At midday and in the evening, hot soup. In the morning, a blackish liquid called coffee, with a little saccharine. In the evenings they all fell asleep, exhausted. All conversation was forbidden. Writing was not possible.

For a week our informer worked very hard like all the others. Then, as one of the German drivers had disappeared, one of the supervising officers asked if anyone knew how to drive. As he had worked in the Ford factories in Brussels our refugee was chosen and from then on drove this officer’s car, accompanying him on all his tours of duty. They came to like each other and the officer was quite open with him. He was a young German officer of about twenty-five. He was originally from Bavaria, and had already earned three stars; he had lost two brothers in the war and had left behind a young wife and small child. He said he was totally disgusted by the war and everything to do with it. It was his opinion that the war was already lost, and he hated the thought of what had been done, and was still being done, to the Jews.

The information that follows came to our refugee from this officer. Having asked what had happened to the group of Jews who had arrived with his group and who had been found incapable of working, he was told by the officer that they all been executed; the officer added that this was the fate of all those who, through exhaustion, could no longer work. The officer was unhappy with this state of affairs, but could do nothing to prevent it. Our refugee begged him not to keep harassing the Jews at work, but the officer explained that he had to do it, because he was obliged ensure that a certain quantity of work was completed each day.

The means of exterminating the Jews who were incapable of work, said the officer, was to line them up against a wall and shoot them, or if this was not possible, by poisoning their food.

Our man spent two weeks with this officer, who behaved like a gentleman. At the end of this time, the officer told him that a very rare chance of escape was available to him. Every two or three months a train left for the west and the following day was the very day of its departure. The officer insisted he should seize this chance, which would not recur. He himself hid him in a goods wagon full of parcels and sacks, he gave him plenty of provisions (bread, conserves etc) for the journey and two Reichsmarks (the currency of the occupation). He told him not to worry about his uniform, that these uniforms were worn in all the occupied territories. After checking that the wagon was properly sealed the officer notified one of the train employees of our traveller’s presence and it was thus

that he made for the west, hidden beneath a pile of sacks.

Being in the dark he could not distinguish night from day, he could just see a little light through the gaps in the wagon, so he had no idea of how long the journey took. Amongst the sacks in the wagon he noticed some that contained black [probably SS] uniforms. He stayed like this until the train stopped. When the man who had been informed of his presence opened the wagon he saw that he was in the goods yard of the Gare de l’Est in Paris. He was shown the way out of the station and he went straight to the home of one of his brothers-in-law who lived in Paris. Having got some money and changed his clothes, he left the city that evening and went to the free [unoccupied] zone, from where he left for Switzerland, along with some other refugees. His adventure had lasted six weeks.

I was able to see this man in a Swiss hospital. He was thirty-three years old, of robust appearance, the type who works with machines, of nondescript appearance and average intelligence. He scarcely realises his extraordinary luck. He made a good impression on me, recounting quite simply the things he had seen, adding nothing that he had not seen personally. He often replied to my questions with I don’t know. His accounts of the treatment of Jews in Belgium also accord with those of others who have arrived here. We should note, too, that he made no mention of his extraordinary odyssey to the Swiss authorities when they questioned him. He made no attempt whatsoever to make himself interesting to the Swiss authorities in the hope that he might perhaps obtain some special treatment. Besides all they asked was where he came from. He answered from Lyon. No other question having been asked, he kept his story to himself.

Geneva, 10 October 1942

3 Note 3: Translated for the Wiener Library by Sue Boswell