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(Volume V, pp 1870-1873)

TESTIMONIES ON STERILIZATION

[The following testimonies on sterilization, given in
camera, were referred to at the beginning of Session 69,
Volume III, page 1255. Although their full names appear in
the record of proceedings, they are referred to here as
Witness A.:and Witness B.]

[The witness was sworn.]

Attorney General:  Witness A., at the end of 1942 you were
in Auschwitz.

Witness A.:Yes.

Q.  What was your number in Auschwitz?

A.  ...

Q.  After you had been there for some time, you were taken
to the
    hospital together with a group of people. Correct?

A.  Correct.

Q.  Was there a doctor there?

A.  Yes.

Q.  What uniform was he wearing?

A.  Air force.

Q.  What did they tell you and the other members of the
group to do?

A.  When they brought us to the clinic, they told us to
climb up on to the chair. There was a machine there and we
were told to place the entire organ on the machine. Then
they told us to get down again.

Q.  Were there any marks on your penis?

A.  Yes.

Q.  What marks?

A.  There was black on both sides.

Q.  Black patches?

A.  Yes.

Q.  Did you continue to work?

A.  Yes.

Q.  What happened about four months later?

A.  Four months later they brought us...what happened
earlier was in Birkenau. Later they brought us to the clinic
inside Auschwitz and carried out tests.

Q.  On all the group?

A.  On all the group.

Q.  What tests did they carry out on you?

A.  They removed sperm from each one of us most brutally.

Q.  How many of you were there?

A.  There were about twenty?

Q.  From there they took you to the hospital in Block 10.
Correct?

A.  Yes.

Q.  What did they do to you?

A.  After we arrived at Block 10 we lay there for one day.
The next day they gave us an injection in the spine and took
us to the place where the operation was to be performed.
They tied our hands.

Q.  Just a moment. They gave you an injection in your spine?

A.  Yes.

Q.  What was the reaction to that injection?

A.  The reaction to the injection was that the entire lower
part of the body was completely numb.

Q.  No feeling?

A.  No feeling at all.

Q.  Then they transferred you and performed the operation?

A.  Yes.

Q.  What sort of operation?

A.  They removed the organ on one side.

Q.  The testicle?

A.  Yes.

Q.  They tied your hands?

A.  They tied my hands.

Q.  How long were you in hospital after that?

A.  Four to five days.

Q.  Were you in pain?

A.  I had terrible pains.

Q.  Then they sent you back to work?

A.  Yes.

Q.  In the winter of 1943 they sent you back for another
operation. Correct?

A.  Yes

Q.  What did they do to you this time?

A.  This time I was in another camp. I was in the Janina
camp. This was  near Auschwitz, where they mined coal.

Q.  One of the branches of Auschwitz?

A.  Yes. I worked my full shift from six in the morning till
the next shift. There were three shifts. At two o'clock in
the morning they woke me up and told me that I was going out
to work.  They put me into a car and brought me to the
hospital. There was another group of young men and they did
the same to all of us.

Q.  What did they do to you this time?

A.  They did the same to the other side.

Presiding Judge:  That is to say, a second operation?

Witness A.:  Yes

Attorney General:  They removed the other testicle?

Witness A.:  Yes.

Q.  What happened to the group of twenty who were subjected
to all these experiments?

A.  The first time?

Q.  Yes.

A.  The group who were there the first time - half were sent
back, the other half remained there and were not allowed to
go work.

Q.  What happened to them?

A.  Many of them were ill and many died.

Q.  What happened to those, like you, who were sent back to
work.

A.  We worked all the time. Many of them died after the War.
I met many of them and many are still alive.

Presiding Judge:  Any questions, Dr. Servatius?

Dr.Servatius:  Could we clarify if there were always the
same groups and the same treatment given.  Could we also
clarify the length of time medicine were administered and
whether these  were serious experiments or was this some
medical amusement.

Presiding Judge:  Did you understand the question?

Witness A.: Yes.

Presiding Judge:  Can you answer?

Witness A.: Yes. They took a group of young men and each
time they performed operations not on one or two but on an
entire group - ten or twenty men. They didn't do less. When
I was there they operated on twenty men. Then they took
others and performed operations.  Once, there was a clothing
factory close by and they went there one day and took people
from there. They were short of their quota, they had fifteen
or twelve men - they brought another eight and operated on
them. It happened each time.

Dr.Servatius:  I have no further questions to the witness.

Judge Raveh: Do you have any idea how many men were
subjected to this treatment?

Witness A.: As far as I know, they did it to about one
hundred men.

Q.  Do you know how many of these one hundred died?

A.  I only know that very, very few survived.

Q.  Very, very few - about how many is that?

A.  About twenty men might have survived.

Judge Halevi: Do you know the purpose of these operations?
What did they do it for?

Witness A.: No. We had no idea why they were doing this.
When they took us there they said that it was to be
registered that the young men were being taken out to a
transport and we were being taken to work. That meant that
we were being taken to work in Birkenau.  We had no idea at
all why they were doing it, what they were doing and what
they wanted to do. This was not work. They only did this.

Q.  After the operation, did they explain the reason for it?

A.  No. They didn't say anything.

Presiding Judge:  How old were you then?

Witness A.: Sixteen and a half, seventeen.

Q. Who was present at these operations, men in uniform?

A. There was one person in air force uniform.

Q. Did he have any medical badge, I think that there was a
special badge for a doctor. Do you know if there was a badge
of a doctor?

A.  I did not know.

Q.  Who else?

A.  There were also SS personnel. The person who operated
was a doctor who was also in the concentration camp.

Q.  A Jew? German?

A.  No, Polish.

Dr.Servatius:  Have you heard the name Dr. Rascher?

Witness A.: No. I only remember the name - the person who
performed the operation was Dr. Duering.

Presiding Judge:  You have completed your testimony. Please
go with the officer and wait outside.

[The witness was sworn.]

Attorney General:  Witness B., on your birthday, 17 March
1943, you were expelled from .... to Auschwitz. Correct?

Witness B.:  Yes.

Q.  And after a journey which lasted ... you reached
Auschwitz?

A.  Yes.

Q.  You were given a number. What was it?

A.  The number was ...

Q.  Do you remember that in April 1943 you were told not to
go to work and to remain in the Block?

A.  Yes.

Q.  What happened the next day?

A.  On the day I was told to remain [in the Block] and not
to go to work, we were divided into groups by age from 16 to
30 and told to get into our age group. There were two
officers from the camp and the Lagefueher  whom we called
"Pharaoh" because he looked like a Pharaoh.  He was tall,
black and wore a black hat.

Q.  And then you were taken away together with another
thirty men. Correct?

A.  Yes.

Q.  Where were you taken?

A.  The next day we were taken to the women's camp, and we
were put into a wooden hut, all thirty of us.

Q.  Who was inside?

A.  There were two officers and a male nurse.

Q.  What officers?

A.  One had the badge of the air force. I don't remember
what the other was. I couldn't see because they were wearing
those white gowns.

Q.  What were you told to do?

A.  We stood in a row. I was twenty-five then. There were
others in front of me. The first ones began to go up onto a
semicircular machine, and the male nurse standing beside it
ordered us to pull down our trousers and place the testicles
on the machine. The two officers turned knobs which were
contained in a white box. The entire process took about two
and a half to three minutes for each person. After they went
through this, each man had to pass by the two officers who
examined the bottom of the organ.

Presiding Judge:  What do you mean by "bottom"?

Witness B.:  Bottom means from below.

Attorney General:  Were there any effects from what was done
to you?

Witness B.:  Effects - when it was my turn to go on to the
machine I felt stabs on my penis.

Q.  Were you brought back to that machine again?

A.  The next day I was brought back again - actually two
days later - I went through the treatment again. I underwent
the same treatment three time on that machine.

Q.  Did any marks appear on your body?

A.  Much later, marks appeared at the top of my penis.

Q.  What sort of marks.

A.  What sort of marks - I'm not a doctor, I don't know.
Patches.

Q.  What colour?

A.  Blue and red. Two colours. Such patches would also
appear at this spot as the result of lack of water in the
camp.

Q.  How many days later did they take you to the hut, shave
you, give you a bath and give you clothes.

A.  Eleven days later. One morning, an hour before the bell
was to have rung signalling us to wake up, the Block Elder
came in together with an SS man and got me up. I asked the
Block Elder where I was to go and he replied that he didn't
know.

Q.  Where did they take you?

A.  They took me to another hut where they shaved my entire
body and took me to the bathroom. When I emerged from the
bath, they gave me clothes as though I were going to a
wedding. Together with three of my friends who came from
other Blocks, I waited till eight o'clock.

Presiding Judge:  What do you mean by "as though I were
going to a wedding?" What clothes did they dress you in?

Witness B.:  Instead of the usual work clothes with stripes
we wore in the camp, they gave me blue clothes, absolutely
new, and instead of the wooden clogs I wore, which weighed
two and a half kilograms, they gave me leather shoes, all
the paraphernalia as though I were going to a wedding.

At eight o'clock they gave my daily ration of bread, about
200-250 grams of bread and margarine. At exactly eight
o'clock an SS man came in and took a group of four men to
Auschwitz.

Attorney General: Were these the same four men from the
group of thirty?

Witness B.:  No, others.

Q.  Where did they take you to?

A.  When we arrived at Auschwitz, the soldier who was
leading us - that is the SS man who was leading us - brought
us to the wooden hut in the camp, and then someone else
brought us to Block 20 in the camp at Auschwitz. There they
immediately extracted some sperm with a machine covered with
rubber.

Q.  What did they do to you after that?

A.  We were taken for a bath once again and they brought us
to Block 21. The next morning they took two of our group
away on trolleys. I was one of the first. These were
trolleys with four rubber wheels used for surgery. They
transferred us from the clinic to the surgery department
where they performed operations.

Q.  Who were the people who came to take you?

A.  There were two persons.

Q.  What unit were they from?

A.  I don't know, they weren't wearing uniform. They were
wearing hospital gowns. I was the first to be brought in on
the surgery bed. There were two doctors there. I remember
the face of one of them and I shall never forget it.

Q.  Were these the same doctors who treated you the first
time?

A.  No, they were others.

Q.  What did these doctors do to you?

A.  They laid me down on the surgery bed. I lay there; one
of them turned me on to my stomach and the other gave me an
injection in my spine. Ten minutes later three quarters of
my body was numb.

Q.  What did they do to you then?

A.  They made an incision on the left side and removed the
left testicle.

Q.  After that did they send you back to the sick bay?

A.  Yes. They sent me back to the sick bay. I stayed there
for eight days; eight days later they brought me back to the
same place and took out the stitches. One of the men in my
group had the right testicle removed, instead of having the
stitches taken out. He is still alive today. I can give you
his address if you want it.

Presiding Judge:  Who is alive?

Witness B.:  The young man from whom they removed the right
testicle as well.

Attorney General: They removed one testicle from you and
both testicles from him?

Witness B.:  Yes.

Q.  Were you then sent back to work?

A.  The next day I was sent back to Block 9.

Q.  To work?

A.  No, Block 9 was for a rest. I remained there for a few
days and was then sent to work.

Dr.Servatius:  I have no questions to the witness.

Presiding Judge:  Thank you, Witness B., you have completed
your testimony.


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