Evening star., 1945-05-06

i - ~ 5 B glgl
DACHAU ATROCITIES BAREI
German atrocities view the bt
forces at the Dachau prison c;
ture." He had seen some men beaten
for infringement of prison rules but,
he said, some clergymen were forced
to be guinea pigs for experiments
such as incubation with malaria.
Some Is of 40 died, he said, and the
others remained victims of inter-
mittent malaria
Immersed in Water.
! Another experiment was designed
| to measure the effect of diet on
ability to withstand immersion in
cold water, to discover effective
safeguards for pilots shot down in
the Channel. Clergymen were I'M
mersed for long periods in water,
cooled to Channel and North Sea
temperature. and the effects of
their immersion studied There were
also experimental inoculations for
the treatment of ulcers resulting
from malnutrition.
| Father van Orstel worked each
day on labor gang, rising to answer
roll call at am, he said, and re-
turning to the barracks about 7.
We asked him how he stood it. He
said his faith enabled him to stand
it and he always tried to keep cheer
full. He appeared to be in good
I i,, I,tc
camp.
/ Every man we talked with was
asked about torture. We heard
many stories from them. but beyond
witnesses to such things as beating
found no direct verifcation of other
tales of sadism.
A Polish eX-Army officer, DR.. Juz
F,arnik Alsis of Katswice, Poland,
gave the best answer, 1 thought, to
these questions.
Tortured Every Day.
ut is very difficult to talk about
what you mean by torture" he
said, for it seems to me We were
tortured every day. 1t was torture
to get up in the bitter cold morning
at 4 o'clock and stand out of doors
for hours waiting for the guards to
check up if anybody was missing.
The whole camp was kept standing
in rain, snow or cold sometimes all
! day long. 1t was torture not to
have enough to eat. 1t was torture
to live as we had to live"
He had never been beaten OF
kicked. he said -,. /
Maj. Rene j. Buirand, United
States Army, Cicero, Ill, was cap
tured behind the enemy lines" in
France, not in uniform. and sent
to the camp eight months ago. A
British officer who declined to give
his name apparently was there
under the same circumstances. Mai
Buirand would not discuss the
details of his capture. He was
not considered prisoner. of war and
indicated that his sentence to the
camp instead of to death was some
thing of miracle. He said he
had seen men beaten with tendon
whips, rifle butts and jabbed with
bayonetS.
Turn on Dogs.
He did not see, but said he knew,
that prison dogs were turned on
prisoners to amuse the SIS who
would tell the prisoner that if he ran
he would be freed. Then the dogs
were set on them. The block lead
ers, he said, were selected from the
prisoners on the basis of their bru-
tality. Some, he said, were killed
by the prisoners after the camps
liberation. He said he saw the leader
of block q beat prisoner to death
and the SIS promoted him for his
action. He said that breakfast in
the camp consisted of half a pint
of synthetic coffee at noon. There
was a bread ration of about a
quarter of loaf with an occasional
piece of sausage or margarine and
sometimes some jam on Sunday, and
about a quart of very thin cabbage
or carrot soup. For the evening
meal there was more of the soup.
Active workers were given more
bread, he said. Maj Buirand said
he lost so pounds in the camp.
He said there was a prostitution
house maintained for workers and
that the women were brought from
the women's camp some distance
away where some 500 women were
interned under the pretense that
they could earn their freedom but
they never did, he said, and were
eventually disposed of in the gas
chambers.
Few Jews in Camp.
There were virtually no Jews
in the camp, Maj. Buirands said, it
being his belief that most of them
had been exterminated. According
to what Col. Hathaway has been
able to learn about the Dachau
camp-the official records have
been removed by the Germans-itl
was established about 1888 solely
for determination and later on po-
litical prisoners were sent there.
Mental cases throughout Germany
were rounded up periodically and
brought here, and nobody ever knew
/ what became of them. We saw the
original gas chambers, four large
cells INTO which victims apparently
were crowded and put to death. Later
on this method was improved by
construction OF a large chamber
with jet in the ceiling, similar to
shower-bath sprinklers. The pris-
oners undressed in a room, where
man sat, with flowers on his desk,
who gave them soap and a towel
Herded into the shower room, the
gas was turned on while the oper-
ator watched its effect through a
telescope peephole. The inciner-
ators adjoined.
DR.. Hathaway paid high COM
pliment to the staff of doctors, all
prisoners, who ran the prison hos
pital. Without adequate supplies,
he said, they have maintained their
own morale together with high pro-
fessional standard. They have kept