Sent to the Auditor General
avenue Louise 143, Brussels
Main Office for War Crimes
3 September 1945
Main Commissioner for State Security
Supervision BT Arlon
J. Wirtz
State Security
BT Luxembourg
Arlon
Witness interview report no. 3460
Regarding: testimony deposited by Estera Iczkovitz, born in [illegible] (Czechoslovakia), 16 January 1904, wife of Fischl Metzger, Polish national, living at rue des Jardiniers 37 in Antwerp.
Case: against Mengele, German doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp, member of the SS, accused of war crimes.
PRO JUSTITIA
On 2 September 1945 at 10.30 a.m., I, Denis Bodson, Commissioner for State Security, agent of the judiciary police assisting the Auditor General, am submitting the following report:
On 5 June 1945 I heard a woman of Polish nationality returning from a concentration camp in Germany, suspected of denouncing and abusing fellow prisoners, in the brigade office. This was Estera Iczkovitz (identity stated on the margin).
During the course of the interview it turned out that Mengele, a German doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp, a member of the SS, and other doctors belonging to the SS regarding whom we have compiled a separate report, carried out inhumanly cruel experiments on a range of political prisoners; experiments for which [Mengele] could be prosecuted as a war criminal.
We are therefore extracting the relevant excerpts from the testimony of Estera Iczkovitz and citing them below:
(…) I left Malines with the 20th transport heading in the direction of Germany. I was let out at Auschwitz (near Katowice in Poland), where the Germans had set up a Vernichtungslager (extermination camp). There, I was separated from my husband and, along with 500 [other] women, placed in what was known as the “experimental block”. We were kept extremely clean because the German doctors, all of whom belonged to the SS, conducted experiments on us. They would inject us with cancer germs and other horrible diseases and observed the reaction [of our bodies]. I don’t know if all the women who were with me are still alive.
The Germans also carried out a considerable deal of Rassenforschung (race research), and one day 28 of my companions were taken to Berlin after a medical examination. A few months later we found out from a Jewish doctor who was forced to work with the German doctors that those 28 young women had been killed in Berlin and embalmed. I am unable to confirm whether this story is true.
Two or three times a large number of young women was rendered infertile through a procedure [involving] electricity, which caused them pain that continued for months. Their stomachs and backs were completely covered with burns. Next many of them were subjected to a series of operations that ended their lives in some cases. These sterilization procedures were carried out by SS doctors, particularly on Greek women.
The SS doctors at the Auschwitz camp included: Wirths, who was a Standortarzt [garrison doctor] and who decided the life and death of prisoners; Globerg [Clauberg], a professor, conducting cancer research; Mengele, who conducted experiments on pregnant women; Weber, who took blood samples; and Schumann, who rendered young women infertile.
Her testimony having been translated into Flemish, the testifying witness confirms and signs [it].
We have compiled five separate reports in the case concerning the above five [doctors], one of which was presented to the Auditor General in its original form, and one copy has been forwarded to the Military Auditor in Arlon.
Dont acte. Denis Bodson
It must be noted that Estera Iczkovitz, whose identity was mentioned incidentally, was the
object of our report no. 1998 from 5 June 1945, which was forwarded to the Military Auditor in
Arlon on the same day because the subject is suspected of having denounced and maltreated
her prison mates.
Dont acte concluded, date as above. Denis Bodson.
Approved. Willy Evrard, Main Commissioner for State Security