Escorted by American military police, a thousand of the citizens of Weimar marched six miles through lovely country to the Buchenwald concentration camp yesterday.
There in groups of 100 they were conducted on a tour of the crematorium with the blackened frames of bodies still in the ovens and two piles of emaciated dead in the yard outside, through huts where living skeletons too ill or weak to rise lay packed in three-tier bunks, through the riding stables where Thuelmann, the German Communist leader, and thousands of others were shot, through the research block where doctors tried new serums on human beings with fatal consequences in 90 per cent of the cases.
It was an experience they can never forget. Most of the women and some of the men were in tears as they moved from block to block. Many were crying bitterly. Some of the women fainted and could be taken no farther.
Substantial help of every kind has been rushed to the 21,000 prisoners in the camp when overrun by the Third Army, but men are still dying at the rate of forty a day. Many are beyond human help. Doctors say this one will die to-day, that one to-morrow, and others may have a month to live ╤ no more. Such is Nazism.
As I accompanied one group of Germans through the hut another victim died and his wasted white frame was lifted easily from the bunk where six other men still lay to the centre of the hut.
It is to the everlasting credit of the men at the camp that despite the dire continuous hunger, the children were not in too bad shape, though looking like little old men with yellow faces and sunken cheeks. Milk was brought in to children immediately. Also brought in in abundance were meat and vegetables from captured German stocks and 20,000 kilos of bread from German bakeries.
CAREFUL FEEDING
But the feeding had to be tackled carefully. Even so, after long malnutrition a number of inmates experienced stomach aches for the first day or two. They were fed mostly by the Germans with thin barley soup, and so the Americans have started with soup containing meat and vegetables which are gradually being increased. A start was made with 300 grammes of bread a day, but already it is up to 750.
The Nazis destroyed the camp water supply, but the Army has installed a water point and rationed supplies are available. Everyone in the camp is being dusted with D.D.T. powder, the inventor of which is believed at one time to have been an inmate here.
Among the inmates are 70 doctors of different nationalities. Not all are fit to work, but those able to are helping.
Walter Hummelshein, secretary in 1933 to Von Papen when he was Chancellor, who has been a prisoner of the Nazis for four years, told me that four or five days after the bombing of the factory area of the camp last August, Thulmann was brought to the camp as far as the riding stables where he and nine other Communist leaders were shot. He was never an inmate and was not killed in a raid.
April 18, 1945.
CANNIBALISM IN
PRISON CAMP
General Dempsey╒s senior medical officer said to-day that the Belsen prison camp near Bremen, with its thousands of typhus, typhoid, and tuberculosis cases, was ╥the most horrible, frightful place╙ he had ever seen. Here are some of the things he saw.
There was a pile ╤ between sixty to eighty yards long, thirty yards wide, and four feet high ╤ of the unclothed bodies of women all within sight of several hundred children. Gutters were filled with rotting dead and men had come to the gutters to die, using the kerbstones as back-rests.
╥The prison doctors tell me that cannibalism is going on,╙ the medical officer said. ╥There was no flesh on the bodies; the liver, kidneys, and heart were knifed out. There were five to seven births daily, but there was no water.╙
There was bunk accommodation for only 474 women out of 1,704 sickness cases. Another 18,600 women who should have been in hospital were lying on bare, bug-ridden boards. In the men╒s quarters there were 1,900 bunks for 2,242 acute cases with another 7,000 cases who should have been in hospital.
PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORD
Thousands of German prisoners have been paraded to the camp to see the conditions, the filth, disease, and death of patients of all nationalities ╤ including four British. A photographic record of this compound of human wreckage has been made.
Before the camp was completely taken over a burst of shooting disclosed that the guards were killing prisoners trying to take potatoes from a pit in the camp.
There were 28,000 women and 11,000 men in the two sections of the over-crowded camp and about 500 children.
╥The first night we put tanks round the food,╙ the brigadier said. ╥Turnip soup was all the Germans gave the prisoners. The British guards had to fire over the heads of prisoners desperate to get at stores. Our first priorities were food and water.
╥The next morning I drove round with the camp commandant in a jeep. He was a typical German brute ╤ a cruel, sadistic, heavy-featured Nazi. He was quite unashamed.
╥We saw compounds filled with dead and dying. There were a few plump people. They had obviously been there only a short time. One pit was choked with blackened bodies. There were several piles of unclothed dead.
╥In one compound typhus cases had not been segregated. Two or three had to share a tiny bunk. The hospital was only huts set aside.
╥I saw women lying on bare boards so weak they could hardly raise themselves on their arms to try and cheer as we went through.
╥There were between 100 and 150 doctors ╤mostly women ╤ in the camp. I mobilised them and told them my plans. One of the first things is to move all people who are going to die.╙
STARVED TO DEATH
╥I am told that 30,000 prisoners died in the last few months and I can well believe the figure,╙ the Brigadier added. One of the inmates was a German professor who had made rude remarks about Hitler.
╥Typhus caused far fewer deaths than starvation. Naked men and women tried to keep themselves clean with the dregs of coffee.
╥Those too weak to move had no food and died. We found a consignment of Red Cross stores sent to Jewish inmates by members of their race outside. It had not been distributed.
╥Children were in comparatively good condition. The women had not spared themselves to see that the children were as comfortable as possible. Medical stores were quite inadequate.╙
Getting food, water, medical supplies, and treatment to these mutilated thousands is one of the biggest jobs the medical personnel of General Dempsey╒s army has undertaken. The camp commandant is under close arrest.
