Concentration camp inmates

All I m saying is that we can use a simpler method of proof from now on, one that would reflect back on the proof that s already in. It s hard to take the rearmament up the line. It s not so hard with some of the things that happened at Auschwitz. For example, Farben built its buna-rubber plant near Auschwitz and put the engineer Duerrfeld in charge. And then we show that Duerrfeld s boss, Ambros, knew that concentration-camp inmates were being used at the plant, and he reported this to Ter Meer and the other members of the technical committee. But these technical-committee members were also members of the board. In this way we can show not only what kind of men these defendants are, but also begin to show responsibility all the way up to the top."... 

One of the Farben drugs, Methylene Blue, had been developed in the hope of curing people who had typhus. Dr. Mertens department at Leverkusen had sent several hundred doses of this unproved drug to faraway Auschwitz. There the shipment was received by a young doctor named Vetter who had lately worked for Mertens. Vetter had chosen healthy concentration camp inmates and injected the typhus disease, which struck the veins like a bolt of fire. When the disease had reached its delirious stage, he had injected the drug. Vetter had sent a full report to Dr. Mertens. 

Q. Was it not at some conference between Dr. Mertens and yourself that it was reported to you that Vetter was a camp doctor at Auschwitz and was trying out B-1034 (Methylene Blue) on concentration-camp inmates ... 

As he described it, Farben had nothing to do with the place. Several outside construction firms were building roads, laying tracks for a railroad connection, digging foundations for new houses. People who worked in columns unloaded gravel for the track he saw only that they worked slowly and their heads were shaved. They were concentration-camp inmates. 

Q. Mr. Ambros, if you knew, for instance, that on the Auschwitz cpnstruction site, say 5000 concentration-camp inmates were working, did you have any information whether the same person went on working from 1941 to 1944 ... 

Q. Dr. Ambros, I show you NI 14309. I ask you whether this memorandum, dated May 1943, refreshes your recollection as to whether the construction management of I.G. Farben exercised full control over the use of concentration-camp inmates it assigned to the sub-construction Arms. 

Q. Now let s talk about the Farben construction management. Dr. Ambros, the prosecution offers NI 14291. I show you this exhibit and I ask you whether it refreshes your recollection that you contacted Pohl to procure concentration-camp inmates. .. for the building of your Seework poison-gas plant also at Auschwitzl. It s the very first sentence, Dr. Ambros, the very first sentence. 

Everyone to whom I spoke gave the same story — the people in the city, the SS men, the concentration-camp inmates, foreign workers. All the camp knew it. All the civilian population knew it they complained about the stench of the burning bodies. Even among the Farben employees to whom I spoke, a lot of them would admit it. It would be utterly impossible not to know. 

The Allied terror bombings destroyed the German infrastructure, with the result that concentration camp inmates could no longer be supplied during the closing phase of the war. The main reason for the mass deaths in 1945, however, was not starvation, but epidemics, caused by the evacuation of the eastern camps, which in turn spread epidemic diseases to the overcrowded western concentration camps and could not be brought under control as a result of wartime conditions. 

In addition to eyewitness reports by former concentration camp inmates, numerous perpetrator confessions are also quoted. All these confessions were given under duress and are not worth the paper they are printed on. That members of the SS imprisoned in the western camps could be compelled to make any kind of confession one wanted, is proven quite obviously by the deathbed confession of Mauthausen commandant Franz Ziereis, who - dying from three bullet wounds in the stomach - stated the following on the gas chamber at Hartheim castle near Linz 100... 

There is, therefore, no doubt that many former concentration camp inmates believed in the reality of the homicidal gassings in good faith. Let us quote B. Kautsky, who states the following in regards to the gas chambers of Auschwitz 122... 

Exterminationist a person convinced of the theory of the extermination of concentration camp inmates... 

The German biological warfare programme was literally years behind that of the Allies. Work centred on the Military Medical Academy at Posen, under the supervision of a Professor Blome. Experiments were carried out on concentration camp inmates at Natzweiler, Dachau and at Buchenwald, where prisoners were deliberately covered with typhus-infected lice. 

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