Evening star., 1945-04-29

death would be brought into this
room and given a hypodermic in
lection which killed them immedi-
ately. Their bodies would then be
thrown into small, walled court
yard and at night the corpses would
be taken to the crematorium. He
said he worked on a detail which
carried away the bodies. He said
that while most of the prisoners
thus disposed of would have died
within "a or 48 hours anyway, oc-
casionally there was a healthy one
The American doctor told me that
one of the prisoner doctors said
German camp physicians used the
prisoners for their experiments. at
one time inoculating 100 of them
with typhus fever, of whom 81 died
The blood from the three survivors
was used to prepare an antityphus
serum. The American doctor be-
lieved the story. An official report
confirms the statement, adding that
prisoners regularly were used as
guinea pigs for all sorts of expert
ments and few survived.
Corpses Stacked in Courtyard.
In the courtyard of the crema-
torium, where next we went. there
was stack of Is or 20 corpses. /
was told that when the Americans
reached the camp there were 300
piled there I never learned whether
the bodies we saw were merely set
aside for exhibition or whether they
were the days accumulation. The
emaciated bodies of the dead and
their staring eyes were not greatly
different from the living patients
We had seen in the hospital few
minutes before.
The crematorium, capacity 400
bodies per l0-hour day, was spot
lessly clean, evidently the pride of
| its supervisors. The furnace doors
were ajar, and inside were the un-
consumed portions of recent dead
skulls, bones and fragments of flesh.
There were two batteries of three
incinerators each capacity ID bodies
each 20 minutes). On the wall
hung sign, tastefully lettered in
gold on vanished wood. 1t read
Let not worms eat my body. Let
| it be consumed by pure flame. I
love always warmth and light.
Therefore burn. but do not bury
me-" A pretty sentiment.
Gestapo Execution Chamber.
Downstairs was what was said to
be the Gestapo execution chamber.
Victims were said to have been tied,
hand and foot, and thrown down a
13-foot chute to the concrete floor
Of this chamber, picked up, and
hanged by the neck to iron hooks
in the wall, their feet barely above
the floor. There were As hooks. A
wooden mallet, like large potato
masher, was exhibited AS the in
strument with which the victims
were knocked on the head to COM
plete the hanging 1t was pretty
well worn down. An efficient elec-
trio elevator capacity 18 bodies
carried the bodies from this cham
Der to the crematorium above. It
was said that the execution cham
ber was used only by the Gestapo
and even the IS men were not per-
mitted to enter 1t. 1t was also said,
by Otto Fener, a Hamburg Jew, who
had been in the camp some six
years, that two Canadian flyers
were executed there on September
"a. 1874 He also said that IS men
themselves were occasionally killed
there.
An official report says q days
quota for the incinerators was 300
l40 who died in the hospital or bar
racks and so or 80 who were stran-
| gled.
From this chamber we returned
to the SIS barracks, where some Of
the 1000 boys under IA years old
who were in the camp when the
Americans arrived have been taken
in the past few days for treatment
and care.
Orphan Of Atrocities.
The doctors say they are gaining
each day, but are still pale and thin.
Some were III, lying on hunks cover
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