"Vittnesmål" om "utrotningsläger och gaskammare"

"---[Tyskarna] want to see fear and horror take control of the whole being. Perversely, this is why they torture the corpses (…) driving themselves to fury, to ecstasy, to actual foaming at the mouth. Only when they throw the dead body into the fire and see it jump, sizzle, and twist in the flames do they succumb to fits of mad joy. Then the German burst into wild laughter, gives a salvo of shots into the air, jumps on his motorcycle and rides madly to one of the other camps where new amusement awaits him.---"

Neither the French nor the Russians made adequate enquiries into the manner in which the exterminatory policy had been managed, and showed little understanding of the subject. Although the French produced Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier as a witness to testify about conditions at Auschwitz, they chose to make no mention of the Parisian transit camp of Drancy. Almost completely absent from the French and Russian evidence for the prosecution was any mention of Jews. This was no accident. In presenting their case, the Russians omitted to mention that the victims of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Chelmno were primarily Jewish. A single witness was introduced by the Soviets to provide evidence about Auschwitz, Seweryna Szmaglewska. She was not Jewish. There was an underlying flaw in the presentation of evidence before the IMT, in that the victims were not given the stage. As a consequence, few non-German and no Jewish names, faces, or stories entered public consciousness.
http://www.deathcamps.org/reinhard/historic.html

Detta visar inte minst på hur lågprioriterat judarnas öde var för ryssarna (och fransmännen).

"---s. v:

Up to January 18, 1945, a total of about five million people were burned in the crematories of Oswiecim and Birkenau. Of this number more than three million were Jews, poisoned by gas or the victims of epidemics. (...) These figures are only approximate. They were given out at the time of the liquidation of the camp by the people working in the Political Department of Oswiecim.


s. viii:

I will give only the data of what I observed or what I myself endured directly. The events described by me took place in Birkenau (Oswiecim II). To avoid any misunderstanding, I wish to state that I do not intend in any way to exaggerate the importance of the facts or to change them for propaganda's sake. Some things need no exaggeration. All that I write here I am prepared to testify before any tribunal.


s. 29:

And over all of this (...) fire from the chimneys of the crematories bursts out in sheeves of scarlet flame and endures. a wavering mass in the darkness, an eternal light fed with human bodies.


s. 165:

Into the bowls, thrust forward from all sides by dirty hands, flows a pint of nettle soup. The taste is exquisite after long months of feeding exclusively on undercooked turnips.


s. 277:

In the barracks and among the barracks, under the sky and above the earth, in the moveable air, heavy and motionless as a solid body it [the smoke] fills the mouth, the throat, the lungs, it soaks into the clothes, it penetrates the food. From the two nearest crematories, two pillars crawl out in dark billows, hitting straight into the sky and then falling down in spirals.
Sometimes in the dark the lava bursts into active flames, the fire belches powerfully from the throat of the chimney, tearing through the blackness to the deep blue sky and disappearing after a while. Sometimes - especially in the evenings - the crematories vomit flames for long hours, often until morning.


s. 286:

Because great economies are being made in the use of gas, small children are being burned alive. Therefore, they are at once separated from their elders and led inside [the crematoriums] separately.


s. 303

They [the Germans of the SS] want to see fear and horror take control of the whole being. Perversely, this is why they torture the corpses, why they torment the dead bodies of women, driving themselves to fury, to ecstacy, to actual foaming at the mouth. Only when they throw the dead body into the fire and see it jump, sizzle, and twist in the flames do they succumb to fits of mad joy. Then the German bursts into wild laughter, gives a salvo of shots into the air, jumps on his motorcycle and rides madly to one of the other camps where new amusement awaits him.---"