The last months at Dora were a period of confusion. Everyone was fully aware—the prisoners as well as the SS and the German civilians in the tunnel—that the end was near. For this reason there was at once an easing and a tightening up. The prisoners waited impatiently to be liberated, but some of them—not without reason—wondered if they could hold on until then. And the last phase seemed threatening indeed for the “specialists” working on manufacturing secret weapons.
As time passed and deprivations intensified, winter 1944–45 was hard to endure. The number of sick in the Revier and Schonung was growing, and the arrival of the evacuation convoys from the camps in the east further worsened the situation. A new camp was built in the Boelcke Kaserne in Nordhausen, taking in those judged undesirable in Dora, and in Harzungen and the various Kommandos.
THE AUTONOMY OF THE DORA-MITTELBAU CAMP. In the autumn of 1944, Dora ceased being an outside camp dependent on Buchenwald to become an autonomous camp. More precisely, a decision dated September 30 transformed Arbeitslager Dora into Konzentrationslager Mittelbau. It went into effect on November 1, instead of October 1 as initially planned.
From that date on, the KZ Mittelbau was made up of three camps: Dora (same code name), Erich (code name for Ellrich) and Hans (code name for Harzungen). From the beginning the two outside Kommandos (Aussenkommando) of Rossla and Kleinbodungen were included and connected to Dora. Other decisions integrated into Mittelbau three Kommandos, those of Rottleberode, Klosterwerke (that is, Blankenburg), and Osterode-Harz as well as three Baubrigaden and three Eisenbahnbaubrigaden.
There was on this occasion a prisoner count of 25,944 for the main group and 5,931 for those integrated later. The 25,944 prisoners were divided up: 13,441 for Dora, 7,870 for Ellrich, 4,009 for Harzungen, 112 for Rossla, and 512 for Kleinbodungen. The 5,931 others were divided as follows: 819 for Rottleberode, 499 for Blankenburg, 286 for Osterode, and 2,863 for the Baubrigaden and 1,464 for the Eisenbahnbaubrigaden.
Knowledge of such structures and code names is indispensable for the interpretation of German documents from this period, but for the sake of standard usage the terms Ellrich and Harzungen instead of Erich and Hans will continue to be used. As for the vicissitudes in the joining up of various Baubrigaden and Eisenbahnbaubrigaden, only the hierarchy of the SS was really concerned. It is sufficient to know that the prisoners from Wieda, Ellrich-Theater, and the Kommandos of the Helmetalbahn work sites were dependent on Erich—to a certain point.
Normally, Mittelbau being set up as an autonomous camp would have meant a reregistering of all the prisoners thus transferred under a new series of numbers. This solution was dismissed and the prisoners maintained their numbers, which were all from Buchenwald. Only the newcomers from November 1944 on received six-digit numbers above 100,000. This was the case for the survivors of the evacuation convoys from the camps in the east. It must, however, be recalled that Butet at the Schreibstube had to undertake the typing up of some 32,000 new files for the Kartei, and that a new Häftlingskleidungskammer put together the Mittelbau prisoners’ personal “effects,” which were transferred from Buchenwald.
At the time the average prisoner himself knew nothing about this, even those who belonged to the Kommandos least exposed in the tunnel factory. Moreover, this had no direct consequences on their lot. The decision to make “Dora-Mittelbau” (according to the established wording) into an autonomous concentration camp served only to convey a powerful reality—that is, the concentration of the major underground secret weapons factory and the largest work-site complex of the Sonderstab Kammler, in the same geographical zone of the Mittelraum.
AN EVOLUTION OF A POLITICAL NATURE. However, such a change was in no way devoid of political significance, and the breakoff with Buchenwald may have revealed a certain evolution. It is undeniable that the internal functioning of that camp rested on a tacit agreement between the SS command and the “Red” prisoners—both Germans and those so defined—to the mutual advantage of the two parties. As will be seen later, the prisoners taking charge of the administration did raise some questions after the war. The fact remains nonetheless that the most fanatical of the SS did not view favorably such an important delegation of powers left to political opponents.
There was a “hard core” among the SS and, in chapter 12, Serge Miller’s account of the welcome for new arrivals at Ellrich by the camp commander on May 20, 1944, was cited. On another theme, the talk given by the Osterhagen commander on Christmas Day, 1944, is equally significant. Bonifas made the following summary: “You are our enemies, but we will force you to work with us to destroy your homelands, and to destroy even yourselves. We have only one leader, Adolf Hitler, who came providentially to save Europe.”1
On another level it was noticed during the last months—in Dora as well as in many other camps—a more and more obvious tendency of numerous SS to establish a real complicity with the German prisoners—and especially with the Greens, the common-law criminals—who were often themselves fiercely xenophobic. This was to be illustrated during the evacuations.
THE SECURITY ORGANS. From 1943 to 1945 the Mittelraum was closed off by a security network of great administrative complexity. But they were still the services dependent on Himmler via the SS, the SD, or the Gestapo. There existed, however, Abwehr agents for military security. The complexity of the system put into place corresponded to the multiplicity of security problems to be resolved.
One of these problems—a banal one—had to do with the existence of a large prisoner population spread out over several sites. These prisoners—whether political or criminal—had dossiers that went with them and were kept up to date by the camp’s Politische Abteilung. Moreover, the SS and the Gestapo inspected the internal workings of the camp to prevent the prisoners from organizing among themselves in any way that could become worrisome. Informers were one of the realities of concentration camp life, and their “accidental” elimination was sometimes a necessity for the “political” leaders in charge. On top of which, at Dora, prisoners who were working on the manufacture of secret weapons and could engage in sabotage were kept under strict surveillance. The SS commander of the camp was—as has been shown—on the board of directors of the Mittelwerk Company, where he was in charge of security.
But otherwise it was necessary to keep an eye on the German civilian workers employed at Mittelwerk, at Junkers, or in other neighboring factories as well as on sites dependent on the Sonderstab Kammler. In the factories and on the work sites—except at Mittelwerk—there was also a large number of foreign workers who were more or less “free.” And also prisoners of war. In fact, it was necessary to watch over the entire population, and the SS themselves. As shown above, they were not exempt either.
The security services were spread out between Ilfeld, Niedersachswerfen, and Nordhausen. It was noted in several previous chapters the wealth of codes used. The address of Sangerhausen was not totally fictive however, for it was the town where the central files of the prisoners kept by the Politische Abteilung and the camp post office—and censor’s office—could be found.
Until the autumn of 1944 the commander of Dora, SS-Sturmbannführer (major) Otto Förschner, formerly of Buchenwald and supported by SS-Oberführer (colonel) Pister, commander of Buchenwald, seemed to have the situation under control. But little by little—under unknown circumstances—SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) Helmut Bischoff came to exert greater and greater influence. He belonged to Kammler’s staff and was given the responsibility—at the end of 1943—of protecting the secret of the V2 program. His office was in Ilfeld in the Napola buildings, next to those of the Sonderausschuss A4. Since February 1944 all the services—SD, Gestapo, and so on—of the Mittelraum off-limits zone were under his control. It was he who was in charge of the various police and repression operations, which increased toward the end of 1944.
This was not an isolated phenomenon. More or less everywhere over the second half of 1944 the SS were preoccupied with the clandestine organizations that potentially existed in the camps. At Auschwitz, as has been shown, they transferred German, Polish, and French prisoners to various other camps. At Buchenwald the arrests of German communists followed a (clandestine) funeral service in honor of Thälmann.2 On September 11, twenty-seven prisoners from Sachsenhausen (twenty-four Germans and three French) were shot for communist activities.3
THE ARRESTS AT DORA-MITTELBAU. Directly in charge of surveillance at the Dora-Mittelbau camp was Kriminal-Assistent and SS-Oberscharführer (warrant officer) Sander, who belonged to the Niedersachswerfen SD. He dealt at the same time with the German Reds, Czechs, Poles, Russians, and French.
As previously mentioned, there was an overzealous auxiliary by the name of Maurice Naegelé: a French prisoner who had been an agent actively working for the Gestapo in France before he himself was deported for embezzlement and who wanted in a certain way to “redeem himself” by serving Sander. He was made tunnel Kapo in the V1 assembly section, where he earned the trust of Debeaumarché and Lauth through his knowledge of the Resistance movement in France. Michel described him as a “big, strong, good-looking kid.”
Lauth having been taken away after a sabotage, Naegelé denounced Debeaumarché as well as Col. Louis Gentil, another major Resistance fighter working on the V1s. They were all among the victims of a roundup that took place the night of November 3–4, 1944, under surprising conditions in more than one respect. The arrests were aimed at only certain Frenchmen in the Revier—Poupault, Boyer, Michel—and no others. There was some uncertainty as to the names, and Joseph Puppo (a communist railway worker from Miramas, according to Michel) was arrested—by accident—at the same time as his namesake Dr. Jacques Poupault, a surgeon from Dieppe.4 The information at Sander’s disposal was therefore uncertain.
What was certain, though, was that the rumors of “conspiracy” had reached him because he had two Czechs from the Revier, Cespiva and Halupka, arrested at the same time along with the Frenchman Alfred Birin and the Russian Nicolas Petrenko, both from the Arbeitsstatistik. In this matter we are inclined to incriminate a Frenchman who had recently become the head of Block 15, where everyone would meet up and express themselves, no doubt incautiously. His name was Grozdoff, at once White Russian and Alsatian and a polyglot. But, René Cogny—then block Schreiber—was not bothered.
From the detailed account of the events given by Jean Michel,5 following his personal experience and the information he got from Claude Lauth and Jacques Poupault, an approximate chronology can be drawn: The prisoners arrested in the roundup, which included Naegelé and Grozdoff, were taken to Niedersachswerfen to be interrogated. It was then that Naegelé revealed himself and began to beat the others to extort their confessions. Debeaumarché, Lauth, and Poupault were especially mistreated, as was Nicolas Petrenko. Grozdoff served as translator because other Russians were interrogated as well.
Some of the prisoners were then sent to the Dora bunker and others went to the Nordhausen prison not far from the Boelcke Kaserne—which will be discussed shortly. It was in fact an ordinary prison, with prisoners of both sexes, German and especially foreign, of all nationalities. It was in this prison that the French in particular would finally remain locked up until March or April 1945 in several collective cells. Several other names must be added to those already cited—names that Michel also quoted in his 1986 dedication: Gabriel Alliens, Jacques Bordier-Brunschwig, the cousins André and Pierre Caruana, Paul Chandon-Moët, and Roger Latry.
The interrogations went on in Niedersachswerfen until December for some of them—including Poupault—and then came to an end. From that moment on they all remained unsure, but very worried, about what fate had in store for them. Naegelé himself remained imprisoned, by himself, in the same prison. Sander seems to have considered him a very mediocre informer and no longer turned to him. As for Grozdoff, he came and went and kept up his role as translator because of the numerous arrests of Russians. At the same time, according to Michel’s account—he refers to him as “D”—Grozdoff claimed that he was plotting to save the French. But, as various testimonies show, the fate of the French was no different from that of the Czechs. Through Michel it is known that the Poles were also arrested, including someone called Hronstein from the Arbeitsstatistik, who for a time was his cellmate.
The story of the Russians was somewhat unusual. A mass arrest at the Dora camp took place in mid-December 1944. D gave the details to Michel: “All the Russians were assembled in the Dora roll-call area. Petrenko went through the rows designating the Soviets who were part of the camp organization. More than a hundred men were arrested. I served as translator. I was convinced that Nicolas had the poor buggers arrested—who, just because they had been deported weren’t necessarily members of the Bolshevik party. It was monstrous! But, Petrenko acted calmly. I’m sure he thought he was doing the right thing. He did his duty: the innocent sent to the gallows, the guilty saved; in this way, the latter could continue to sabotage. The Russian organization was safe. Petrenko would be hanged with the others, but he allowed the Soviets to continue the struggle. You had to see the faces on those unfortunate enough to be falsely accused! If they denied guilt and managed to convince the SS by giving out names of real resistance fighters, the latter would kill them in the Tunnel. If they went along with it and gave up, the noose awaited them.”6
Nothing can be confirmed nor, on the other hand, denied in D’s interpretation of events thus reported. But it is true that Petrenko pointed out a large number of his compatriots in the roll-call area, where other prisoners—not only Russians—were also lined up. The author has kept a precise and horrified memory of the scene.
Conversely, what happened to the camp leaders at the end of 1944—Reds, generally communist—remained unknown to almost all the other prisoners. The first to be arrested was Heinz Schneider, Kapo of the Révier, in the November 3–4 night roundup. The prisoners who made up the personnel were threatened, and Fritz Pröll, when he learned that he was next to be arrested, committed suicide on November 29, poisoning himself with cyanide.
In December it was Albert Kuntz who was led to the bunker. Tortured, he died the night of January 22–23, 1945. Krokowski believed he died from a heart attack. Others were arrested on various dates in December and January 1945. In particular this concerned the two practicing LÄ, Gamisch and Beham, and two former LÄ from the early days of Dora, Thomas and Sczymczak.
There is no way of knowing if there was a link between these arrests and those of the French, Czech, Polish, and Soviet prisoners. It may have been a purely repressive operation of a political nature carried out by a fraction of the SS deliberately hostile to the Reds and to the authority they were allowed in the camp’s internal administration.
THE EARLY DAYS OF THE BOELCKE KASERNE. At the end of 1944 a certain number of Kommandos from the Dora camp were assigned by the SS to various companies in the town of Nordhausen. At the same time a large Kommando was put together at Dora, Kommando 32 (see chapter 10), which was sent daily to work in Niedersachswerfen in the underground digging sites of the Sonderstab Kammler. It was then decided to use the vacant premises in Nordhausen, in the Boelcke Kaserne, to build a camp annex and house everyone.
This all seems to have begun on January 2, 1945. As Pierre Maho—a member of Kommando 32—noted in a passage from his memoirs dated January 4: “Yesterday, disinfected, re-clothed in stripes, 1,800 of us were assembled at the roll-call area in Dora, and led to Nordhausen, five or six miles away. We entered a vast courtyard framed by elegant buildings to be used as offices and barracks. Each one was surrounded by lawn and clumps of greenery. Passing those buildings by, we were led into an empty garage on top of which there was, on each side, a central corridor with something like dormitories. That was where we were penned in the day of our arrival.”7
The description of the area given here is a compilation of testimonies from Jean-Pierre Couture,8 Léon-E. Halkin,9 and Clément-Robert Nicola,10 who arrived there in March and who will be mentioned later. The complex was in the south part of Nordhausen, not far from the Zorge, on the right bank. The train station was not far to the southwest. The countryside in the east could be reached quickly.
It was a disused tank barracks. The buildings surrounding the courtyard had served as lodgings for the noncommissioned officers and administration. They seemed to be occupied by foreign civilian workers. Between these and the Zorge, what was transformed into a concentration camp—with walls and watchtowers—were two enormous concrete garages with large metal doors opening southward. Traces of their normal functions were still visible: a grease pit with writing on the walls such as: “Don’t leave your motor running” or “Use caution when backing up!” Halkin added: “I have never forgotten the words of Frederick II that easily covered the ten square meters: ‘It matters little that I die, if at least I did my duty.’ Nice motto which applied to us as well as to the tank drivers on the eastern front.” The garages were divided into blocks. Above these blocks, between a concrete vault and a flimsy roof, beds were also set up—particularly for the Revier.
Life in Nordhausen was more or less tolerable for those working in companies in the city, like the Schmidt und Kranz tractor factory, mentioned above. But it quickly became difficult—as at Ellrich and for the same reasons—for the members of Kommando 32. Thus, as Maho stated on January 15 concerning the Schonung: “The sick temporarily unable to work were stripped of their shoes and clothes. They had to spend the day in shirtsleeves and underwear in that cold and damp building, and attend to internal chores that were allotted to them in spite of their swollen legs or their arms in slings.”11
On January 30, Maho himself fell seriously ill and was admitted to the Revier. “I had a serious case of water on the knee, the thigh completely covered in bruises, the ankle hard and swollen. It was definitely an abscess forming. There was talk of sending me to Dora to the surgery ward for an operation. That would have been unexpected good fortune to escape Kommando 32 in such a way. In any case, the infirmary there was practically nonexistent, the medicine cabinets empty. No wounds could be dressed, there was only toilet paper for bandages which tore off every six inches.
“The filth was indescribable, we were jammed onto vile bunks with three levels, which being overburdened, collapsed and were patched up with loud hammering—preventing any rest. Dysentery and its pitiful consequences abounded, the latrines were of course outside the room, and there was a line to get in—during which time the inevitable accidents occurred which soiled the floor and the blankets and rendered the atmosphere abominable.
“Last night I was given a place on the bottom bunk of the beds. I slipped in between two emaciated Hungarian Jews, then the alarm sounded and everything was turned off. One or two hours later, I felt that my bedfellow on the right—against whom I had pressed for warmth—was freezing cold. I pulled the blanket off him; he didn’t move, he was dead. I turned to the other side where, in the half-light, I saw his stare fixed on me. I motioned for him to push over a bit; he didn’t budge, he too was dead. [. . .] I spent the night between them and I was gripped by fever—impossible for me to move or get out of my spot. It was only in the early morning that I pointed out their deaths; in fact, I managed to hide the death of the one on my right until after the bread was distributed, and I took half his ration.”12
On January 31, he was taken in a truck heading for Dora. “The inside of the truck was loaded with crates of cadavers heading for the crematorium.”
THE CONDITIONS OF THE “TRANSPORT.” The account given by Jules Hofstein on this subject is the last in the collection entitled Témoignages strasbourgeois. He tells of the transport from Gleiwitz to Dora of evacuated prisoners from Auschwitz and its Kommandos between January 20 and February 2: “Around midnight we were rounded up and packed into iron railway cars meant for transporting coal, open to the wind. We started off toward morning. [. . .]
“In the course of the journey—which lasted thirteen days—on only one occasion did we receive a half loaf of bread with a bit of rancid butter. If it hadn’t been for the snow, we all would have died of thirst. All day long, we ate all the snow we were able to gather. The nights were horrible. In these jam-packed cars, there wasn’t enough room for everyone to lie down or even to squat. Fights broke out all the time. The weaker were beaten to death or strangled by the stronger. In the mornings, it wasn’t unusual to have between ten and twenty corpses, either victims of the fights brought on by sudden madness, or dead of the cold, hunger or despair. From time to time, a volley of machine gun fire rang out. The SS fired at those who tried to escape by jumping over the sides. At the next stop, the corpses were removed from the railway cars they were in. We thought that we’d therefore have more space, but that was without reckoning with the Machiavellism of our guards. They would simply empty an entire car, where they would stack the dead bodies, putting those still alive in the cars on a pro-rata basis of places available. On one occasion, they left an empty car at a station. Seen from this angle, evacuation was a form of extermination. [. . .]
“The cold, hunger and thirst made us lose all notion of time. And like that, we crossed Bohemia, Austria, Bavaria, to get to the Harz Mountains. Along the way we saw many cities that had been given a working over by the bombings, like the inner suburbs of Vienna, Linz, Plauen, and many others. Everywhere, passersby and passengers watched indifferently as we rolled by. The arrival at the Dora camp—after a long stop at the Nordhausen station—was almost greeted with relief. We mustered up the last bit of strength we had to walk the mile and a half in to the camp. Oh, how many weren’t able to cover this distance! I don’t know what happened to them, or rather I know only too well.”13
Léon-E. Halkin provided similar information on the trip from Gross Rosen to Dora: “We got into open-topped, metal railway cars in densely-packed groups of one hundred men. We had no coats, no sweaters, no canvas covers, no blankets. It was cold, the wind blew over the low barriers. [. . .] No one could guess where we were going. I had the impression that not even the guards themselves knew. [. . .] The train made frequent and lengthy stops to let troop and ammunition convoys go by. [. . .] As the speed of the train increased, so did the cold. We rubbed our backs together, but tiredness replaced the cold, then the cold came back and tiredness remained. [. . .]
“It was getting dark, and the trip showed no sign of coming to an end. To render escapes more difficult, the SS made us sit down, crushing us up against each other. There wasn’t enough space to lie down; in any case, squeezed together we were less cold. Sleeping was difficult; the train went faster at night; the wind bit into our faces; we dozed. The monotonous noise of the train was punctuated by gunfire from time to time as the SS shot at fellow-prisoners who—already practically unconscious—defied the ban on standing up in the railway car before daybreak.”
There were those who died in the cars from sheer exhaustion. “Hunger gradually put us into a state of stupor. Some went mad. The others were amazed to still be alive. Sensations became less and less sharp. It seemed that we were engulfed in a sinister haze. My memories of that period are blurred, fleeting and incomplete. [. . .] Nightmares and memories are inextricably mixed together. [. . .]
“The final morning, Sunday 11 February, the SS once again ordered the corpses to be thrown on the tracks, no doubt to prevent us from devouring that fetid flesh. We hardly noticed the thinning out of our numbers. Total prostration took over our exhausted bodies, our beaten down spirits. The rain froze us to the bone. Each of us calculated the chance he had left, the number of hours he could hope to stay alive. The train lumbered through the countryside—unhurried.”
When they arrived at Dora, Halkin—hanging on to two friends—dragged himself toward the camp roll-call area, where he met up with the other survivors. “My railway car started out with ninety men; when we got there, only sixty-two were left.” He was led to a Schonung block.14 Not all the convoys coming from Gross Rosen went to Dora. Rogerie’s convoy stopped at the Nordhausen train station and the survivors reached Boelcke Kaserne on foot—an episode that will be dealt with later.
There are several testimonies of prisoners who were at Dora when the convoys arrived from Auschwitz and Gross Rosen. They generally made no distinction between them. No commentary is necessary to accompany these texts.
CHARLES SADRON. “One night, coming back up from the factory into a snowstorm, we made out on the roll-call grounds, a black, immobile mass in the semi-darkness. It looked like men. At the Block, we were told it was forbidden to go out. What was going on? We were soon informed by fellow prisoners who were above ground during the day, and who were returning worn out and somber. The Germans had evacuated the camp at Auschwitz, and thousands of prisoners had arrived. These poor souls had spent two weeks on a train, in open-topped railway cars, and they had arrived in a pathetic state. Our fellow prisoners had seen their columns emerge onto the roll-call grounds—clusters of dying men collapsing in the snow. They had been rounded up by the Lagerschutz to get rid of the corpses which followed behind in the trucks. They carted them off, nauseated, for hours. Many of the corpses had been shot in the head.”15
RENÉ CHAPUY. “During the final months, I was recruited into a ‘cleaning’ Kommando of the Revier, and was very often obliged to transport the survivors and the dead. [. . .] I will always carry that living image within me of the convoy arriving at dusk. Open railway cars loaded with tangled bodies heaped one on top of the other with a terrible stench of death. Almost all of these poor souls were incapable of moving, their extremities being frozen and gangrenous. We carried and dragged all those showing some signs of life, to the Revier barracks. A vision out of Dante—indescribable because unbelievable.
“I needed all of my eighteen years and experience of the Tunnel to bear that night. Walking corpses transporting the living dead. The rest of the convoy was taken charge of by the Totenträger Kommando. Just a few days later, those who were able to find shelter and some medical care and perhaps nourish a fleeting hope, had to be transported by us once again to the mound of corpses waiting in front of the crematorium door.”16
MICHEL THOMAS. “Sometime in January or the beginning of February 1945, we were called upon to unload the corpses from the railway cars of a convoy coming from the eastern camps. Most were tattooed. The hundreds of skeletons, we stacked to the side, alongside the crematorium (the side facing the camp), and in many piles. The crematorium—even operating day and night—wasn’t able to keep up, so a pit was dug out behind it. Next, the prisoners of another Kommando, made up of many Russians, stacked wood and corpses; once everything was set well ablaze, the prisoners continued to throw on the bodies—for an entire day.”17
STÉPHANE HESSEL. “There are intense periods, atrocious ones; unforgettable ones. The breaking through of the Red Army forced the Germans to repatriate the prisoners from the eastern camps. Those from Gross Rosen had been evacuated to Dora in February. The living as well as the dead. Our crematorium was saturated, so pyres had to be built on which to stack the corpses. But, they had to be undressed first. A Kapo promised two slices of sausage to those who volunteered for this duty, without telling what it was. Two slices couldn’t be refused. I accepted with another young guy. We spent the day yanking off clothes covered in blood and excrement, feeling flesh gone cold. Pure and absolute horror.”18
PIERRE GABRION. “With another young Frenchman my age—the poor guy never recovered from it, he died in Nordhausen—we were picked out to work on the infamous pyres, as the crematorium could no longer keep up with the excessive supply of dead. We were therefore employed to stoke the fire—if I may say—with the bodies.
“The job was horrible. We were almost always obliged to drag the dead by the feet, through the snow, or the mud. The second day, I managed to get out of being put back on the job.”19
ROBERT ROULARD. “I was hospitalized in the Revier at Dora, in the tuberculosis Block, for the first half of February. This was the Block closest to the building with the crematorium oven. In this way, I saw the crematorium oven in action as well as the pyre that had been set up just beside it, a layer of wood logs, a layer of corpses. At night, the pyre under our windows lit up the room of our barracks. We were sometimes present for the turning over of the corpses with the help of long forks—which at night was Dantesque—probably done to stoke the combustion of the corpses. Personally, I think that the decision to set up the pyres was taken because of the Gross Rosen camp evacuation transport arriving at Dora. The crematorium could not alone suffice before such an influx of corpses.” Henri Barbier’s20 account confirms that of Robert Roulard.21
A DEATH COUNT MADE IMPOSSIBLE. Given the conditions of the transport and the arrival, it is impossible to know the number of deaths that resulted from the evacuations of Auschwitz and Gross Rosen and that ended up at Dora itself or at other points in the Mittelbau complex. The fact that a convoy turned up there rather than at Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, or at another camp was in no way premeditated, and convoy trajectories were not taken into account, contrary to the steadfast tradition of the concentration camp universe.
But the bureaucratic tradition reasserted itself for the survivors, who were duly registered with a new series of identity numbers for the Dora-Mittelbau camp. Halkin recalled as well going into the Revier: “It wasn’t men that were treated there, but identity numbers. [. . .] Brought naked into a room, they were heaved up naked onto a bunk they couldn’t choose. [. . .] They were nothing but a pretext for statistics; their medical files were more real than they themselves! That file was the reason for being at the Revier, the basis of its organization. [. . .] It would be all that was left of them in the camp, after their death.”22
Along with not knowing the number of prisoners in the eastern camps who died before they could be registered at Dora, it is also not known to which group they mainly belonged. Everything points to the Jews from Auschwitz as being essentially the ones whose bodies were burned on the pyres. Overall they were in a state to put up the least resistance, except for those coming from less trying Kommandos—like Jules Hofstein, the doctor from Bismarckshütte. The Jewish women had only a stopover at Dora before leaving again for Bergen-Belsen. Simone Weil was one of them.23
In the evacuation the Belgians suffered major losses. As NN, the majority of them had already had to endure the severe prison of Gross Strehlitz since May 10, 1944, and then the Gross Rosen camp from October 31. The French NN like Ernest Gaillard and Charles Vedel had a long stay in Neuengamme (from August 31, 1943, for Vedel) before arriving in Gross Rosen on January 5, 1945. Their time spent in the latter camp was thus shorter.
Certain old concentration camp prisoners handled the shock more easily. Such was the case of André Rogerie, or the surviving hostages of convoy “45,000” from Auschwitz. Was there, for certain individuals, a sort of adaptation to the vicissitudes of concentration camp life? It is a question that can be posed, though it remains ultimately unanswerable.
But others didn’t get through so well. On the occasion of the recent death of a very elderly lady, it was recalled that her son, Count Hubert de Bazelaire de Lesseux, died “in the Gleiwitz-Dora transport, on 28 January 1945.” His father, Florent, died just afterward in Mauthausen, on February 5.24
JEAN-RENÉ DURAND AND THE “PATHOLOGY” OF DORA. On February 1, 1945, a prisoner came to Dora as a “pathologist.” It was a German-speaking French doctor, Jean-René Durand, who came from Mauthausen. His story is interesting on several accounts.25 “On 13 January, a French or Italian doctor was required to carry out pathology work. I applied and was accepted. That was how I left Mauthausen for Dora on 29 January. I left around three in the afternoon—alone with an SS, on foot in the melting snow, carrying a box of clothes—for the Mauthausen train station. Around five o’clock, we boarded a train packed with civilians who were surprised at my presence and at the revolver in the right hand of the SS aimed at me, ready to shoot. In the tunnels, he put the mouth of the revolver to my stomach. After a few hours, there was a stop in a bombed-out train station which I couldn’t identify. I ate the meager cold meal that had been given to me. I spent the night in a cubbyhole of the train station, where I dried out my clothes, which were wet from the rain.
“We got back to the train the next day, arriving at night in another train station, also demolished by a bomb and which I could not identify either. We went out into the city to a sort of hostel for soldiers where the SS man ate; around midnight, he brought me some soup. We returned to a cubbyhole at the train station where I spent the night.
“In the morning, I left with an SS man who was more polite, who conversed with the German passengers, and who was taken aside by two soldiers of the Wehrmacht and one from the Luftwaffe. They led him into the corridor, giving me three cigarettes so I wouldn’t understand the heated discussion taking place on my account. The night of the 31st, we arrived at the Nordhausen train station. The SS entrusted me to some military men, who were waiting in a room reserved for them, and went off to eat.
“When he came back around midnight, he spoke to me of his family and assured me that, thanks to my good behavior, he was going to enjoy an eight-day leave which would be authenticated by the signature of the SS man who was going to come and get me. I responded to him by speaking of my own family, which I hoped to see again. Out came the sentence which ended everything: ‘Nur durch Kamin,’ ‘Only through the chimney’ (of the crematorium). Around five in the morning, he put me under the watch of military men no doubt waiting for a train, and went to clean himself up—taking his time. The SS men of the Dora camp arrived at that moment, around seven o’clock, and moving towards me called out: ‘Du bist schon weggelaufen’ (“You’re already on your way’). I acted like I hadn’t understood, knowing that all attempts at escape were punished with death. The first SS man came back: exchange of papers, signatures, then depart on foot for the Dora camp. After some hundred yards, seeing I was exhausted, he gave me his bike to carry my box of clothes on. After two and a half miles on foot, we arrived at the camp.
“Stopped at the Schreibstube, questioning-interrogation, then on to Block 13. I met the first Häftlingsarzt, a Dutch doctor who seemed very nice. I was introduced to the Standortsarzt, who ordered me: ‘autopsy tomorrow at nine o’clock.’ The next day, I performed my first ‘Sektion’ (dissection), after having taken a thrashing from a German green Kapo who had carried out autopsies before me and had the autopsy instrument case under his guard. The camp commander and the Standortarzt watched me at work and after an hour, seemed satisfied. One said ‘Stimmt’ and they disappeared. I never saw them again at the crematorium.
“I continued to perform a daily autopsy, but the most difficult thing was filling out the final report. The first five ended with ‘Todesursache: allgemeine Körperschwäche’ (cause of death: generalized physiological exhaustion), which was the truth. I was called before the Standortarzt after the fifth autopsy. He said to me: ‘Todesursache, das geht nicht mehr. Nächste mal, sofort’ (that cause of death won’t do anymore. The next time, right away) [. . .] gesturing being hanged, all the while looking me straight in the eye. I understood immediately, and afterwards I generally mentioned other causes of death. The advantage of my position as ‘Patholog’ was no one ever hit me again.”
The arrival of Durand as pathologist at Dora was totally unimportant, as he well knew. His account is only interesting for the aspects it revealed of how the concentration camp system functioned. First, it had to do with the great number of small “transports” from one camp to the other. Researchers seeking to learn more about the destiny of the members of a convoy recognize that they will inevitably come across convoys without understanding why they took place. The example of Durand shows that this absence of necessity was not unusual. Evacuated from Struthof to Allach and Dachau, then transferred to Mauthausen, he ended up at Dora without actually being needed—and without this transfer having anything to do with his arrest.
Someone decided at the beginning of January that from then on a real pathologist would be required to do autopsies at Dora, and an administrative process of finding one was then set into motion, stretching from Durand to Mauthausen. It therefore got under way on the 29th. The fact that in the meantime the evacuation of the eastern camps had begun—which would emphasize the laughable nature of the autopsy rite—didn’t cause anyone concern. Three SS were successively put in charge of carrying it out, and one even received leave for doing so. Germany was invaded from all sides, soldiers were lacking, and the SS went on with its petty routines as if nothing was happening.
Many years previously—when Eicke was there—it was decided that deaths in the camp would be followed by autopsies, and that death notices would be sent to the families indicating the cause of death. It was necessary then to continue the autopsies, even if the notices were no longer sent. And a pathologist was put in charge of the ritual to lend it more credibility. But of course he was not to take himself to be credible. It was up to him to see to it that he respected a certain “plausibility” in his findings. All of this was in no way rational; but the world of the SS was not rational and made no particular pretense of being so.
All during the transfer, each SS man behaved properly with the prisoner under his guard. The second SS man even spoke to him of his own family but considered it obvious that Durand was destined—sooner or later—to go up in chimney smoke. It was a simple fact. This conviction of an average SS member aids in understanding what was to happen in the following weeks, at the time of the evacuations.
THE LAST MONTHS OF THE REVIER AND THE SCHONUNG. The functioning of the Dora Revier—described previously in chapter 15—remained the same, as for structure, right to the end. But various events affected the personnel. First was the intervention of the Gestapo. As noted earlier, the arrests the Gestapo carried out during the night of November 3–4, 1944, were aimed particularly at two surgeons, the Frenchman Poupault and the Czech Cespiva. Other members of the Revier personnel were taken away as well, including the German Kapo Schneider, the Frenchmen Boyer and Michel, and the Czech Halupka. The threat bearing on Fritz Pröll—the uncontested leader of the Revier—was so great that he poisoned himself on November 29. After some time had elapsed, the Schreiber Ackermann—a very much admired Red—accepted the job of interim Kapo. The Revier then became removed from the political vicissitudes of the camp, as pointed out in the memoirs of Marcel Petit.26
At the beginning of December a new SS doctor arrived, Dr. Kurzke, an Oberjunker, exceptionally humane according to all accounts. He had a positive effect right to the end. New arrivals bolstered the staff.27 A medical team with three doctors and ten nurses arrived in Dachau on January 21. The archaeologist Jean Lassus was one of the nurses, and Boris Pahor—a Slovenian from Trieste—was assigned to the Harzungen Revier.28 Among those evacuated from Auschwitz via Gross Rosen was André Chabaud, an important scientist from the Pasteur Institute who joined Ebel and Petit in the laboratory.
The number of sick rose at the end of 1944. They came from the Dora camp, but also—as has been shown—from Ellrich, Harzungen, from Blankenburg or from Wieda, at least for a certain period. Next to the prisoners working in harsh Kommandos, the Ko Scherer inspectors arrived, like René Bordet,29 who suffered from the aftereffects of the first months in the tunnel. Tuberculosis, in particular, spread in a frightening manner. Those who had been infected crowded into Block 39 A, recalled by André Lobstein in Témoignages strasbourgeois.30 Bordet met up with his friend Henri Dondon, who died at the end of March.
Among the sick, two Belgian brothers, Count Guillaume de Liedekerke and Count Baudouin de Liedekerke, made a lasting impression. At first, as prisoners at Blankenburg, they were especially mistreated by the Kapos and the SS. Becoming sick, they were sent to the Dora Revier where Mialet,31 just passing through, remembers having met them. But René Morel is above all the person behind keeping their memory alive, dedicating his book, Perliris, to them when it was published in Oyonnax in 1993.32 He never forgot their dignity and kindness. They died in April 1945.
AFTER THE ARRIVAL OF THE CONVOYS. The arrival of the convoys from Auschwitz and Gross Rosen modified the facts of the problem, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The weakest newcomers, like Halkin and Bleton, after a period in the Schonung, were admitted into the Revier as dysenteric or tubercular. The blocks of the Revier became more and more overcrowded. The most courageous newcomers, after a few days of being crammed into the Kino, were divided between the blocks and the Kommandos. Hofstein was sent as a doctor to Osterode.33 Chabaud went to the Revier laboratory. Vedel was assigned to the tunnel as a metalworker on the V2 tanks,34 and Gabriel Ramet (coming from Monowitz) as a metal turner. Climaud and Poiteau also worked in the tunnel until the evacuation.
But a great number never recovered from the transport and withered away little by little. Sadron spoke in this regard of a “general roll call”: “Lined up on my right were the prisoners that had been isolated in the barracks where a cinema was proposed to be set up. They were the poor souls evacuated from Auschwitz or the eastern camps and who, exhausted by dysentery, were no longer able to work. As there was no gas chamber at Dora and the transports to the Bergen-Belsen death camp could no longer be provided following the bombings, they were just left to die in the immense barracks where they were jammed in together, without medical care, in abominable filth.
“They arrived at the central area, at the same time we did, in a staggering procession. Clinging on to each other in clusters, the dying moved forward in fits and starts. Sometimes they stumbled and collapsed, many of them never to rise again. The most solid transported the dead, in fours, one at each leg, one at each arm. The body was thus dragged along like a sack, the head tipped, lolling back. The corpses were placed in the central area, nicely arranged, as if they were hunters’ tally. The survivors tried to keep themselves standing up. But, after two hours, almost half were on the ground.”35
As in the early period at Dora and Ellrich, a prison population that couldn’t be redeemed came into being, one that the camp authorities wished to get rid of while waiting for a transport to be organized to a Bergen-Belsen-style “rest camp.” So it was decided to round them up at the Boelcke Kaserne in Nordhausen.
The sick that turned up at the Dora Revier in mid-March 1945 had three different fates. The first ones were transferred in the second half of the month to the Boelcke Kaserne. Among those who remained at the Revier, a large number were integrated into the last evacuation convoy of April 5. The others were left where they were. Each of the groups suffered great losses under various circumstances that will be described later. The survivors of the first and third group were liberated at Dora or Nordhausen. Those of the second group were liberated at Münchehof.
THE UNFIT AT THE BOELCKE KASERNE. When Rogerie arrived at Nordhausen from Gross Rosen in February 1945 the Boelcke Kaserne camp still housed two prison populations: the “factory workers” who had a banal fate, and those of Kommando 32, which Maho had just escaped by going to the Dora Revier. Rogerie in the following weeks saw the situation worsen: “Every day, the newly evacuated arrived. The camp doubled, tripled, then quadrupled its number. Food was insufficient and, what was more, it was said that the bread factory had been bombed. And indeed, by the third day, we weren’t given any more bread. During the following twelve days, we received no more than a half liter of soup, then bread only twice, and again a bit of soup for another ten days. During all the month of February, we managed to survive on a total of four pounds of bread. We were extremely weak and the outdoor roll calls were exhausting. Never had I imagined until then just how essential bread was to our lives.”36
At the beginning of March, Rogerie was transferred to Dora. It seems this was at the same period the factory workers abandoned Nordhausen for Dora or Harzungen. Kommando 32 ceased to exist. At the Boelcke Kaserne there remained those unable to work who came from either Kommando 32, the evacuation convoys, or the Dora and Harzungen camps.
Meanwhile, on March 3, a convoy arrived there with 1,602 prisoners of all different nationalities, which had left from the Ellrich camp as was pointed out in chapter 12. Pierre Auchabie was part of it and has shed some light on the circumstances: “We were meticulously searched; and after having exchanged our perfectly good clothes for old unusable rags, inscribed our identity numbers on our chests with an aniline pencil, we were crammed together in a railway car heading to an unknown destination.
“After having rolled along a few miles, the train stopped, the door opened, and on the order to get out I jumped onto the ballast. I then saw the ultimate in horror: rail cars already opened, full of corpses and the dying that the SS pushed out of the rail car with their feet. Others jumped out, but having no more strength to get to their feet, were shot by the SS.” From the train to the camp the route was strewn with the dead and the dying that fellow prisoners no longer had the strength to support and who collapsed into the snow forever. The column, quite reduced, finally arrived at the building. “I was assigned Block 6, and we received neither food nor drink that day. We slept sardine-like, on the cement with a bit of straw—quickly reduced to dust.”37
On March 6 a convoy left again from Nordhausen with 1,184 of the 1,602 prisoners that had arrived on March 3. Another 342 had arrived already dead or died thereafter. Therefore 76 prisoners remained at Nordhausen, including Auchabie, as well as Henri Maubert, whose account, reiterated by Michel, confirms that of Auchabie.38 Besides the 1,184 prisoners who came from Ellrich, the convoy that left from Nordhausen on March 6 was made up of 1,068 prisoners who were already there. This convoy finally reached Bergen-Belsen—under the worst conditions. Traces of almost all the prisoners concerned have in any case been lost.
Having rid Ellrich and Nordhausen of a large portion of those unable to work, it seems that the SS wished to repeat the operation with those from the Dora camp thanks to their transit through the Boelcke Kaserne. It was—at a one-year interval—to renew the purges made by the two “transports” to Maïdanek and the transport to Bergen-Belsen between January and March 1944.
FROM DORA TO NORDHAUSEN IN MARCH 1945. In March 1945 there had been several transfers from Dora to Nordhausen. Those known are: March 1 with François Alcaras and Michel Thomas, March 10 with Jean-Pierre Couture coming from Ellrich, March 15 with Clément-Robert Nicola coming from Harzungen (like Xavier Delogne), March 18 with Pierre Bleton coming from Gross Rosen, March 22 with Pierre Maho coming from Nordhausen and who went back, March 26 with Roger Agnès coming from Ellrich, March 29 with Léon-E. Halkin, and March 30 with Ernest Gaillard—both evacuated from Gross Rosen in the same railway car.39 Given such a high death rate, a sort of shuttle service was established between Dora and Nordhausen. Dora supplied the sick and recovered the corpses for incineration.
Maho’s account is detailed and confirms Auchabie’s earlier statements about the arrival: the identity number was put on the chest and left arm in aniline pencil, followed by an indefinite wait without food. Maho added: “It seems we are going to be sent off to a rest camp to recuperate a bit.” On March 24 he said: “Yesterday morning was the disinfecting.” Dr. Jacques Normand, who arrived with the convoy from Gross Rosen, was more specific on the subject: “The disinfecting machine was brought into a garage and, one after the other, the sick received a freezing cold shower mixed with oil.”40
Maho41 continued: “We remained standing and naked in those unheated halls from five in the morning until six at night—an hour it was decided we could have our old rags back. We had spent the day squeezed one against the other. And, of course, since the paper bandages had melted away, the worst possible contact between the healthy and the sick had occurred. At bedtime, fifteen centimeters of wood fiber had been spread out evenly on the ground, and it was on top of this that we slept without blankets. To keep warm, we slept in groups of six to eight, stuck one against the other on the same side, fit together like spoons in a silverware case, collecting our jackets over us with the sleeves knotted together. But, the ground was damp, and many already had pleurisy. Three times per night, we changed sides on command!
“In a corner of the hall, a tiny room for the seriously ill was fitted out behind the wire fencing. They had the right to a blanket, and fifteen or so died the first night—about as many as in the morning. The convoy will be smaller to go ‘to rest.’ [. . .] This morning the roll call had been disproportionately long. It was to discover the identity of a dead man whose number had been erased. That was why six hundred sick men remained standing for four hours.” On March 27 and then on March 30 he added: “Last night, we took the corpse of a Pole who had just died to sleep on, to isolate the thorax from the ground. A bit repugnant at first, but necessity won out over scruples.
“The cubicles reserved for the sick are horrible in their filth and stink. We call them the ‘death box.’ The only way out is to be dragged by the feet, and in the morning the corpses are lined up in disturbing numbers. At least twenty fellow prisoners die each day, and it’s a miracle if we escape the epidemics. For seven days we haven’t been able to wash for lack of water; no bandaging is done; sickness and blood poisoning have a field day on our debilitated bodies.” Maho was admitted into the infirmary and more or less acted as nurse to Dr. Normand.
Around March 15, Dr. Jules Hofstein came from Osterode with the prisoners from there. He pointed out: “The death rate became such that it was necessary to set up a special Kommando responsible solely for transporting and piling up the dead in a tiny room termed the morgue. The men of this Leichenträger Kommando received a part of the dead man’s ration.”42
During all this period, the testimonies give little information regarding the supervision of the camp. A Belgian Schreiber and a French member of the Arbeitsstatistik, Yves Pétré, tried hard to limit the damage. There was also a Polish Schreiber, Wincenty Hein, the future special adviser for the American authorities. Dr. Normand had to put up with the Kapo of the Revier, Otto Skodas, a Viennese police commissioner imprisoned for homosexuality.
The worst was in the blocks.43 Maho pointed out: “We were ‘supervised.’ A Gypsy head of the Block, three Polish Stubendienst, a German tailor, a Czech barber, two Polish male nurses; except for the nurses, they were all ‘Greens,’ who had already been demoted several times, and had every intention of being overzealous in order to keep their jobs. The cudgel never left their hands, and they really took advantage of their right to be cruel.”44
THE LAST MONTHS IN THE TUNNEL. Right up until the last day the factory functioned and produced V2s and V1s. It occurred more and more frequently that the assembly line stopped because it lacked a part—deliveries being irregular because of bombed-out communication lines. The SS still made their rounds and the problem—for the prisoners as well as for the German civilians—was often to give a semblance of working by taking apart something to put it back together or uselessly sorting the spare parts.
The war became more and more present. Loudspeakers broadcast Luftlagemeldungen in the factory, announcing the position of enemy bombers. Sadron added: “We were continuously flown over top of by waves of high-altitude bombers which got no rise from either artillery or fighter planes. Once in a while, fighting occurred above the clouds and two or three Messerschmitts could be seen taking a dive, in a hurry to land on Nordhausen territory. When the sky was clear, up high it was always possible to see the white slipstream left by a plane, droning unseen far above.
“The siren sounded all day long; rather by accident, it seemed. An alarm signal indicating a faraway or impending alert was no longer easy to distinguish. Added to that was the immediate-danger signal which was made—like our morning wake-up call in the past—by banging an iron bar against suspended scrap iron.”45 Off and on a plane would dive-bomb a locomotive in the distance. In the factory, “We barely had any light. We spent our time chatting under our breath. That half-light made an impression on us. It was through this we sensed Germany had been beaten.”
Sadron continued: “However, in our dismal workshop, laughter and singing broke out and resonated all day long. The women were beside themselves. They sang at the top of their lungs and their laughter mixed with the jokes of the foremen and engineers who spent their time flirting with them. Wellner himself abandoned his work and got involved in the hullabaloo. Krüger was in great form and gesticulated as the loudspeaker made a racket. It was really festive!
“We were disgusted. We couldn’t figure how these people could welcome, in our presence, the downfall of their own country. We had more esteem for the little guy Wells who watched our boisterous corner in a rage, taking us as witnesses to the scandal. As for Jansch—who had only just got back—he was shattered. The Volkssturm exercises infuriated him, and his wife and daughter, who had been evacuated too close to Breslau, were in the hands of the Russians [. . .].
“During this time, the wife of the Kommando’s head engineer sang—in front of our friends in the offices—American songs and was learning to type in English. We were stupefied. [. . .] It was true that we couldn’t yet understand.”46 Indeed, these people were totally disoriented. The author recalls a conversation where they speculated on the good or ill fortune of becoming respectively Russian, English, or American. Even as he continued to wear the Nazi insignia, another considered himself once again to be purely Austrian—and expected because of this some indulgence.47
THE LAST MONTHS AT THE DORA CAMP. The evacuation of the eastern camps in January–February 1945 not only brought new prisoners to Dora-Mittelbau. It freed the SS officials for new duties. This was the case for Richard Baer and Eduard Wirths. The SS-Sturmbannführer (major) Richard Baer had been the Auschwitz camp commander since June 1944, when he was in charge of the evacuation. In February 1945 he replaced, as commander of Dora-Mittelbau, Förschner, who was made commander of the Kaufering camp—dependent on Dachau. The SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) Eduard Wirths was the chief doctor (Lagerarzt) at Auschwitz—where he arrived in September 1942. He was also appointed to Dora, where he was Kurzke’s superior.
It was pointed out in chapter 12 that the new commander of the Woffleben camp, Kleemann, also came from Auschwitz. More precisely, he was the commander of the camp annex Bismarckshütte, where Hofstein was doctor. The prisoners were not aware of the changes that had occurred in the command of Dora. It was for them of no consequence. Henceforth the dreaded character was Sander—from the Gestapo. Nor were the prisoners aware of the name Roman Drung, the new LÄ, a Green.
During the entire month of March 1945 one of the major preoccupations of the SS was to rid the Dora camp of everyone they considered useless, newcomers from the eastern camps, or the sick of any origin—and to send them to Nordhausen. This policy came up against the passive resistance of the Revier doctors as well as the Schreiber of numerous blocks, who had allowed those fellow prisoners they wanted to save to benefit from the Schonung. This was the case of Charles Spitz in Block 130, and for some young “51,000”s from the Jura. Sander decided to crush this resistance, and as pointed out earlier the arrival of several of the witnesses of this period at the Boelcke Kaserne was registered in late March. As already noted, on April 1, seven hundred prisoners arrived at Woffleben in a very bad state and meant to work in B 12.
Sander’s spite manifested itself on March 29 when he decided to bring together the Schreiber of all the blocks. Extracts from Spitz’s account set the scene: “Sander arrived, surrounded by a group of SS. He began to bawl us out as only those wearing German uniforms know how and are able to. Among other reproaches, we were accused of having bribed the Schonung-Kontrolle who was then in the Bunker, in order to shield our dirty friends from work. Sabotage! The word cropped up at the end of each litany of alleged misdeeds. You’re all going to pay and die like dogs.
“Assembled five by five, step in time, march. And we had to sing! Fortunately, there were the Germans and Poles who knew love songs. [. . .] That lasted a good hour. All of a sudden, change of course, direction Krematorium. [. . .] We continued toward Block 116 behind which stretched a steep hill. [. . .] Sander said we were going to have a race and that the last ten would be executed. [. . .] After an hour, he made the ‘old ones’ come up from the ranks.
“As each group got to the top, the winner had the right to withdraw from the competition. [. . .] This infernal race lasted until midday. By hobbling along, Barbaud and I had no trouble coming last in front of Sander who held his weapon aimed at us. When he saw our triangles and noticed we were French, he shook with a booming laugh. An avalanche of inanities punctuated with slaps followed and, in conclusion, [. . .] he put his weapon back and declared that two heaps of filth like us were not worth the tenth of the price of a German bullet.”48 It was in this manner that Sander filled up the morning of March 29, 1945. Earlier in the month he had engaged in far more criminal activities.
THE HANGING OF THE SOVIETS. As noted, the Gestapo had in November 1944 proceeded to arrest certain French, Czech, Russian, and Polish prisoners. Then, in December in the roll-call area, a very large number of Russians were apprehended. Finally, at different dates, the same fate befell several German political prisoners who occupied top positions in the camp.
The French—who were assembled at the Nordhausen prison—were separated into two groups on March 15—as Michel has noted. Poupault, Boyer, and Bordier stayed at the prison as did three others, Donnier, Ruskon, and Denais, whom Michel quotes and who were arrested under different circumstances.49 The others returned to the bunker at Dora. The criteria for this separation are unknown, and no one knew what their fate was likely to be.
Things took a tragic turn for the Russians, who were sent to be hanged either in the camp or the tunnel. Eyewitness accounts exist in both cases, though it remains to be determined—if possible—in which order the events happened.
Concerning the hangings in the camp, Spitz’s testimony is situated between March 9 and 14. According to him the rumor spread in the camp on March 9 that a mutiny had taken place in the bunker. Around twenty Russians had escaped after having knocked out an SS guard. After a search with dogs, they were recovered. They were executed a few days later in front of Spitz.
“When I got to the roll-call grounds, a cordon of armed SS obliged all those who passed by to head toward the gallows. A bunch of Russians, hands tied behind their backs and gags in their mouths, waited stoically. In groups of five, they stepped onto the stools, the Kapo of the Bunker put the noose over their heads and booted the stools out from under them. Grabbing the hanged men by the feet, he yanked violently on the body and undid the ropes. Stretched out on the ground, the hanged men were still moving. So the Kapo grabbed hold of one of the heavy stools and struck at their heads until they burst. [. . .] After some time, Sander was himself disgusted with the Kapo’s hysterical fury. He drew his revolver and he finished the last ones off with a bullet in the head. When the gallows were taken down, we were requisitioned to clean the area.”50
The following account is taken from Charles Sadron’s description of the hangings in the tunnel. Once again the Russians were the victims: “Normally it happened at the far end of Tunnel B, not far from the exit facing hall 41. The condemned were taken, during the break, to the execution site. They had their hands tied behind their backs and heads uncovered. A piece of rough wood, like a bit, was shoved between their jaws and kept in place by an iron wire quickly twisted behind their necks. That day there were nine of them, lined up slightly below us, because the precaution was taken to have them go down into the excavation—a foot deep—where a rail switch was located. Hanging above their heads were nine steel ropes, carefully parallel, ending in slipknots while the upper ends were attached to a long horizontal rod used to handle the torpedoes [rockets]. The rod was held up in the center by a cable that would—high above beneath the vault—coil around the drum of an electric winch. A high-ranking prisoner was there to put the noose carefully around the necks of his impassive fellow prisoners. A group of SS, presided over by Oberscharführer Busta—‘Horse Head’—supervised the operation. Next, the executioner went to his post and grasped the motor’s control gears. Busta motioned. The motor droned. Gently the strangled men rose as they spun slowly around. The motor stopped when they were a foot above ground. So their feet were at the same level as ours. A few spasms barely shook their bodies in which we could imagine the terrible rigidity. But that was not the end: it required more than a minute to die in that way. The young German secretaries who came to watch this ignominious spectacle got their money’s worth.
“We, on the other hand, had to parade past the skewer looking straight into the faces with their eyes rolled back—at the same height as our own. A fellow prisoner, who took his hat off in respect—received a serious thrashing.”51
According to the information given by Wincenty Hein, in March 1945 there were 162 executions—of which 133 were Russian and 24 Polish, the others were three Czechs, one Lithuanian, and a Gypsy.52
Two aspects of these executions are worth a closer look. The first is the high proportion of Soviets. Concerning the executions in March 1945, they were not linked to sabotage, though the Russians had previously been hanged for this reason. The victims of the last executions were Soviets arrested in December 1944, and many of them did not work on the V2 assembly. The Soviets seemed to have been eliminated for being Soviets, through racism, as had been a considerable number of prisoners of war as early as 1941. It was, it seems, what also happened to a group of Poles.
The second noteworthy aspect of the executions was the decision to use the tunnel for carrying out a certain number of them. This choice was not necessary if the point were to make an impression on the prisoners. The gallows at the roll call were more appropriate. It seems that the desire was also to make an impression on the German civilians, whose loyalty to the regime was no longer assured.
It should be borne in mind that a Führerbefehl—an order from the führer on March 19—imposed a scorched-earth policy in all regions just before they fell into enemy hands—including in the west. That meant the systematic destruction of the industrial infrastructure of the Ruhr and the Saar, for example. Speer and his section along with numerous generals made sure the orders were not carried out.
But in the final months there were among the Nazis a certain number of fanatics ready to draw the maximum number of victims into their own destruction, and the concentration camp prisoners were ideal candidates to be the first of these victims. The account of the “evacuations” of April–May 1945, which make up the sixth part of this book, will show to what extent the danger was real.