The second day of the trial, 12 March 1947.
The witness enters the courtroom and provides his personal data to the Court: Kai Feinberg, born in 1921 in Oslo, Norway, student, Jew, no relationship to the parties.
Presiding judge: (to the interpreter) Please tell the witness that he is obliged to tell the whole truth under pain of legal consequences for making false declarations.
Are there any motions regarding the mode of hearing the witness?
Prosecutor Siewierski: The prosecution exempts the witness from taking an oath.
Attorney Umbreit: So does the defense.
Presiding judge: The Supreme Tribunal has decided to hear the witness without an oath, as requested by the parties. Will the witness please tell us in what circumstances and for what reason he was brought to Auschwitz and what were his experiences there? Please give us the whole picture of what life in the camp looked like when the witness was there.
Witness: I was arrested in September 1942 in Oslo, together with my family: my father, mother, brother, and sister. We were sent to Auschwitz in December in separate groups: the men were separated from the women. My mother and sister were loaded into a truck and taken straight to the crematorium. Initially, I was transported to Birkenau, and then to Auschwitz, where I spent three days. Then, I was transferred to the Monowitz camp near Auschwitz. I spent three months in Monowitz and I lost my father there – he died. I wanted to kill myself in that camp; I tried to commit suicide twice. I had pneumonia and I was supposed to be sent to the gas chamber, but I was lucky and there was no train car for me, so they took me back to Auschwitz, where I spent 14 days in hospital. Then, I was again selected to be sent to the gas chamber. There were hundreds of sick people and, out of those hundreds, only ten were not taken to the gas chamber. I left the hospital as a laborer and was assigned to work, although I was weak and actually unfit for work. I did all possible sorts of jobs in Auschwitz, like carrying cement and stones, breaking stones, or carrying boards. I fell sick with typhus and was transferred to the hospital. They did experiments on me, using some new medications for typhus. After having recovered, I returned to the camp and continued working as a laborer. I weighed 45 kg. When I recovered, an SS man came to our ward and forced all of us to have a shower. There were 300 men among us who were very weak and destined for the gas chamber, including me. We waited three days on the roof of a house until they decided what to do with us. To this day, I cannot comprehend why a hundred prisoners were excluded from the group and sent back to work. I worked in Auschwitz in various divisions until the Russians arrived in 1945. They liberated me and I worked with them until April.
Presiding judge: The witness has mentioned selections. What was it all about? The witness has also mentioned medical experiments. Could the witness please tell us what those experiments consisted in?
Witness: In 1943, the Germans injected us with urine. I saw myself that having received such an injection, people died in terrible pain and torment within three hours.
Presiding judge: Were these scientific experiments?
Witness: Actually, these were experiments, but driven by the desire to watch people suffer.
Presiding judge: The witness has mentioned that he is a student. Of what faculty?
Witness: Mathematics.
Presiding judge: As for the urine injections that the witness has spoken about, did a lot of prisoners receive treatment of this kind?
Witness: Yes, about 200. I saw it myself.
Presiding judge: In how much time?
Witness: In two months.
Presiding judge: And did it usually or always end in death?
Witness: These were all fatal incidents.
Presiding judge: How would the witness explain those experiments with injections? What was their purpose?
Witness: The Germans were simply sadists – they wanted to murder and torture people.
Presiding judge: Did they do it for a long time?
Witness: It took place only in one hospital ward.
Presiding judge: Did it also happen in other wards? Was it a rule? A system? Were there any other experiments?
Witness: The same experiments were for sure performed in other hospital wards. I know that kerosene injections were made, and there were also experiments in the women’s wards.
Presiding judge: What kind of experiments? The witness has mentioned kerosene injections. What was their purpose? What did people say about them and what does the witness know?
Witness: The injections were administered mostly to people who were already so weak and ill that they did not want to live, they did not care what kind of injections they were given. Two people who underwent such experiments have survived to this day. They have problems with their legs and cannot walk, because the injections were given in the legs.
Presiding judge: The witness has mentioned experiments on women. What kind of experiments were these?
Witness: First of all, artificial fertilization. I heard that semen was collected from men.
Presiding judge: The witness has said he lost his father and other family members.
Witness: When we arrived at Auschwitz, my mother and sister were immediately sent to the gas chamber.
Presiding judge: Did the witness see such transports to the gas chamber? Did he have any contact with people who were sent there?
Witness: I worked at the crematoria, I dug ditches, so I saw it many times. I saw women and children going to the crematorium.
Presiding judge: Were those women and children taken to the crematorium directly from the train station or were they subjected to a selection?
Witness: Directly from the train. The selection took place by the train tracks; the people were loaded into cars and taken to the crematorium.
Presiding judge: How big were the transports?
Witness: It is impossible to say because there were thousands, thousands of people.
Presiding judge: Since the witness saw the transports, how many people per day, more or less, were sent to the crematorium at a time?
Witness: It is difficult to give the exact number. I only know that in May, June and July, 600,000 Hungarians arrived and 550,000 of them were burned in the crematorium. Since it was impossible to burn so many people in the crematorium itself, pits were dug and some people were burned alive in there.
Presiding judge: And the crematorium operated as well?
Witness: Yes. It happened very often that people were thrown into the fire alive.
Presiding judge: Did the witness see such incidents?
Witness: I did not see it with my own eyes, but a certain six-year-old boy saw it and can confirm it.
Presiding judge: What is his name?
Witness: Władysław Taube.
Presiding judge: Where does he live?
Witness: In Rome, I do not know his address.
Presiding judge: Were many Norwegians, the witness’s compatriots, brought to Auschwitz?
Witness: There were 800 of us, including 400 elderly people, women and children who in Auschwitz were taken straight to the crematorium.
Presiding judge: Is that the total number of Norwegians deported or the number of people included in the transports the witness has mentioned?
Witness: It is the total number of Norwegians. There were three transports. Out of the 400 people who stayed in the camp, only thirty were left after two months. The Norwegians did not have a chance to survive the Auschwitz camp because they were mostly political prisoners. They were assigned to particularly hard jobs because the Germans thought the Norwegians were so strong that they could do anything. For example, on Christmas Eve we worked all day until 3.00 a.m. It happened very often.
Presiding judge: What kind of work did the witness do?
Witness: I did everything that was done in the camp. As I mentioned, I carried stones.
Presiding judge: Was the witness beaten or abused at work?
Witness: I have marks left by the Germans all over my body.
Presiding judge: What kind of beating was it? Was it a special kind of flogging or beating with a stick? And who did it?
Witness: They would beat us with anything they had around: a whip, rifle butt, stick.
Presiding judge: Did the witness suffer any kind of fracture, strain, or internal injuries, such as hemorrhage, due to the beating?
Witness: I had broken ribs.
Presiding judge: Does the witness know the defendant? Did the witness see him?
Witness: Yes.
Presiding judge: Did the defendant often visit the barracks? Did he take any interest in prisoners and prison life?
Witness: He was often present during inspections, but he only passed by.
Presiding judge: Did the witness see or hear the defendant beat or insult anyone?
Witness: No, I did not.
Presiding judge: Should we therefore assume that the defendant was rarely seen by prisoners in the camp?
Witness: We rarely saw him, but when he showed up, he was assisted by five or six aides. When he passed by, everyone was usually very upset, because he could not stand even the slightest disorder or transgression. Everything had to be very neat, because he was obsessed with cleanliness.
Presiding judge: Apart of the beating incidents, was the witness ever punished, that is, was he subjected to any disciplinary punishment in the camp, for example, was he sent to a bunker?
Witness: Once, a German told me to beat an old man. I did not want to do it, so I was sent to the bunker as punishment. The German declared that I must obey him unquestioningly.
Presiding judge: What did the punishment look like in practice?
Witness: I stood in the bunker for ten days. The bunker was roughly one square meter, and four men stood inside. They had to stand by night and work by day. Besides that, I got 25 lashes because I lit a cigarette during the day. After I received the beating, I could not sit for three months.
Presiding judge: The witness has said he spent ten nights in the bunker.
Witness: Yes.
Presiding judge: And by day the witness worked? How could the witness do his job?
Witness: I had to.
Presiding judge: Did the witness see any public executions? Has he witnessed such an execution?
Witness: I saw people being hanged after roll calls. I saw with my own eyes escapees being killed. Prisoners were usually hanged.
Presiding judge: I have no more questions for the witness.
Prosecutor: Will the witness please explain what affected him the most, as regards the camp regime?
Witness: What I consider to be the worst thing or what was my worst experience?
Prosecutor: Both.
Witness: The worst thing was when my father was killed.
Prosecutor: And as for the experiences resulting from the camp regime?
Witness: The most terrible things were the brutality and sadism with which the Germans treated the prisoners.
Prosecutor: Was beating a common practice?
Witness: Yes, it was a common phenomenon. The most terrible thing was that people came there just for three months to work, and they knew in advance that after these three months they would die.
Prosecutor: Was the witness allowed to receive packages or correspondence from his homeland?
Witness: During all that time, I got four letters and not a single package. One package arrived at Sachsenhausen, but I was not allowed to take it.
Prosecutor: The witness was not allowed to receive any packages?
Witness: Yes.
Presiding judge: Do the parties have any more questions for the witness? (No.)
The witness is excused.
I order a break until 4.00 p.m.