gspAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1944 (One Day Nearer Victory)
THE WAYNESVILLE MOUNTAINEER
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By W. H. Lawrence
Published In New York Times, August 30, 1944
LUBLIN, Poland, Aug. 27 (Delayed). I
have just seen the most terrible place on the
face of the earth the German concentration
tamp at Maidanek, which was a vertible
Kiver Rouge for the production of death, in
which it is estimated by Soviet and Polish
authorities that as many as 1,500,000 per
sons from nearly every country in Europe
WY killed in the last three years.
I have been all through the camp, inspect
its hermetically sealed gas chambers, in
-.cinch the victims were asphyxiated, and five
ttanaces in which the bodies were cremated,
and I have talked with German officers at
tached to the camp, who admitted quite
frankly that it was a highly systemized place
r annihilation, although they, of course,
n:,:ed any personal participation in the mural'.-.
I have seen the skeletons of bodies the
Germans did not have time to burn before
the lied Army swept into Lublin on July 23,
and I have seen such evidence as bone ash
Mill in the furnaces and piled up beside them
ready to be taken to near-by fields, on which
t was scattered as fertilizer for cabbages.
Ten Mass Graves Opened
I have been to Krempitski, ten miles to
the east, where I saw three of the ten open
ed mass graves and looked upon 368 partly
decomposed bodies of men, women and chil
dren who had been executed individually in
a variety of cruel and horrible means. In
this forest alone, the authorities estimate,
there are more than 300,000 bodies.
It is impossible for this correspondent to
Mate with any certainty how many persons
the Germans killed here. Many bodies un
questionably were burned and not nearly all
the graves in this vicinity had been opened
by the time 1 visited the scence.
But I have been in a wooden warehouse
at the camp, aproximately 150 feet long,
in which I walked across literally tens of
thousands of shoes spread across the floor
like grain in a half-filled elevator. There I
saw shoes of children as young as 1 year
old. There were shoes of young and old men
and women. Those I saw were all in bad
shape since the Germans used this camp
not only to exterminate their victims, but
also as a means of obtaining clothing for
the German people but some obviously had
leen quite expensive. At least one pair
had come from America, for it bore a stamp,
"Goodyear welt."
I have been through a warehouse in down
town Lublin in which I saw hundreds of
suitcases and literally tens of thousands of
Pieces of clothing and personal effects of
People who died here and I have had the
opportunity of questioning a German of
ficer, Herman Vogel, 42, of Millheim, who
admitted that as head of the clothing bar
racks he had supervised the shipment of
eighteen freightcar loads of clothing to Ger
many during a two-month period and that
he knew it came from the bodies of persons
who had been killed at Maidanek.
Evidence Found Convincing
This is a place that must be seen to be
believed. I have been present at numerous
atrocity investigations in the Soviet Union,
but never have I been confronted with such
complete evidence, clearly establishing every
allegation made by those investigating Ger
man crimes.
After inspection, of Maidanek, I am now
prepared to believe any story of German
atrocities, no matter how savage, cruel and
depraved.
As one of a group of nearly thirty foreign
correspondents brought to Poland on the
invitation of the Polish Committee of Nation
al Liberation, I also had an oportunity to
sit with the special mixed Soviet-Polish
Atrocities Investigation Commission, headed
by Vice Chairman Audrey Witos of the Pol
ish Committee, and to question six witnesses,
including three German officers Vogel,
Theodore Shoelen and Tanton Eamess who
will probably face trial for their part in the
administration of the death camp.
Responsible Germans Listed
For the correspondents, the commission's
prosecutor, a Pole, summed up the evidence
taken. He said it had been decided that
these Germans bore the main responsibility
for the crimes committed at Maidanek and
in Krempitski Forest:
General Globcnik, Gestapo and SS chief of
the Lublin district.
Governor Wendler of the Lublin district, de
scribed as a distant relative of Heinrich
Himmler.
Former Governor Zoerner of the Lublin dis
trict. Lisske, who had charge of all the concentra
tion camps in the Lublin district.
General Weiss, who was in charge of the
Maidanek camp.
Company Commander Anton Tumann, who
at one time had charge of Maidanek.
Mussfeld, who was in charge of the crema
torium. Klopmann, who was chief of the German poli
tical department in the Lublin district.
It is impossible in the space here avail
able to relate details of all the evidence of
crimes we saw and heard, but for the bene
fit of those who have not had the oppor
tunity to see with their own eyes, here is
the story as it came from the lips of a Ger
man who had been a prisoner in Maidanek
and was left behind by the retreating Ger
mans. He is Hans Staub, a 31-year-old, tall,
husky man with close-cropped hair, who had
been imprisoned for engaging in black mar
ket meat operations in Germany.
Despite German orders that prisoners
were to keep out of the crematorium area,
he managed to slip inside the brick fence
one day and secrete himself about the time
a truck loaded with about a dozen persons
drove up. Among them was a Polish woman
he estimated to have been 28 or 29 years old.
The prisoners were guarded by tommy-gunners,
who ordered them to alight from the
truck and undress. The woman refused and
this enraged Mussfeld, who beat her. She
screamed and Mussfeld lost his temper,
shouting, "I'll burn you alive."
According to Staub, Mussfeld then direct
ed two attendants to grab the woman and
bind her arms and legs. They then threw
her on an iron stretcher, still clothed, and
pushed her body into the oven.
"I heard one loud scream, saw her hair
aflame and then she disappeared into the
furnace," Staub said.
According to several witnesses, the peak
death production day for Maidanek was Nov.
u. liU.'i, when for some reason not made
clear the Germans executed a total of 18,000
to 20.000 prisoners by a variety of means,
including shooting, hanging and gassing.
Camp Covers 670 Acres
This is Maidanek as I saw it. It is situated
about a mile and a half from the middle of
Lublin on the highroad between Chelm and
Cracow. As one approaches he gets a view
of the concentration camp almost identical
with those pictured in American motion pic
tures. The first sight is a twelve-foot-high
double barbed-wire fence, which was charged
with electricity.
Inside you see group after group of trim
green buildings, not unlike the barracks in
an Army camp in the United States. There
were more than 200 such buildings. Out
side the fence there were fourteen high ma;
chine-gun turrets and at one edge were ken
nels for more than 200 especially trained,
savage man-tracking dogs used to pursue
escaped prisoners. The whole camp covered
an area of 670 acres.
As we entered the camp the first place at
which we stopped obviously was the recep
tion center and it was near here that one
entered the bath house. Here Jews, Poles,
Russians and in fact representatives of a
total of twenty-two nationalities entered and
removed their clothing, after which they
bathed at seventy-two showers and disin
fectants were applied.
Sometimes they went directly into the
next room, which was hermetically sealed
with apertures in the roof, down which the
Germans threw opened cans of "Zyklon B,"
a poison gas consisting of prussic acid crys
tals, which were a light blue chalky sub
stance. This produced death quickly. Other
prisoners were kept for long periods; the
average, we were told, was about six weeks.
Near the shower house were two other
death chambers fitted for either Zyklon gas
or carbon monoxide. One of them was seven
teen meters square and there, we were told,
the Germans executed 100 to 110 persons at
once. Around the floor of the room ran a
steel pipe with an opening for carbon mon
oxide to escape at every twenty-five centi
meters. i
Victims' Death Watched
We were told the victims always received
a bath in advance to execution because the
hot water opened the pores and generally
improved the speed with which the poison
gas took effect. There were glass-covered
openings in these death chambers so the Ger
mans could watch the effect on their victims
and determine when the time had come to
remove their bodies. We saw opened and
unopened cans of Zyklon gas that bore Ger
man labels.
About a mile from the gas chambers was
the huge crematorium. Built of brick, it
looked and was operated not unlike a small
blast furnace for a steel mill, operating with
coal as fuel fanned by an electrically operat
ed blower. There were five openings on
each side on one side the bodies were load
ed in and on the other ashes were removed
and the lire built up. Each furnace held live
bodies at a time.
We were told it took fifteen minutes to
fill each furnace and about ten to twelve
minutes for the bodies to burn. It was esti
mated that the battery of furnaces had a
capacity of 1,000 bodies a day.
Near the furnaces we saw a large num
ber of partial and complete skeletons. Be
hind a brick enclosure near by were more
than a score of bodies of persons who, we
were told, had been killed by the Germans
on the day the Red Army captured Lublin,
which they did not have time to burn be
fore fleeing.
Not far from the furnaces were a large
number of earthenware urns, which investi
gating authorities said witnesses told them
were used by the Germans for ashes of some
of their victims, which they sold to families
for prices ranging up to 2,500 marks.
We saw a concrete table near the fur
nace and asked its purpose. We were told
the Germans laid the bodies of victims there
just before cremation and knocked out gold
teeth, which were salvaged. We were told
that no bodies were accepted for cremation
unless the chest bore a stamp certifying that
it had been searched for gold teeth.
It is the purpose of the Polish Committee
of National Liberation to keep the main
parts of Maidanek just as it now exists as
an exhibition of German brutality and
cruelty for all posterity to see.
M. Witos struck the universal feeling when
he expressed regret that the section of Amer
ican and British public opinion that favors a
soft peace with the Germans will not have
an opportunity in advance of the peace con
ference to look at this plain evidence of the
brutality of the Germans practiced toward
their victims.
Among the few Polish people whom we
had an opportunity to talk there is a wid&
spread sentiment for stronger means of
vengeance against the Germans, and the be
lief that some of those directly responsible
for Mainanek should be executed in the ter
rible death camp they themselves erected.
This Message Published In The Interest Of Permanent World Peace
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