Following the afternoon recess, the Presiding Judge summoned witness Bertold Epstein, who was sworn in in German and testified as follows in the same language:
| Name and surname | Dr. Bertold Epstein |
| Date and place of birth | 1 April 1890, Pilsen (Czechoslovakia) |
| Parents’ names | Wilhelm and Julia |
| Nationality | Czechoslovakian |
| Religion | Jewish |
| Marital status | married, wife deceased, gassed at Auschwitz |
| Children | son, 23 years of age, presently in England |
| Profession | Professor of Pediatrics at Prague University |
| Presiding Judge: | Please describe your experiences starting from the time of your arrest. |
Witness: After the Hitlerites captured Prague, I emigrated to Norway, having been invited by the Norwegian government, on 15 March 1940. Four weeks later, the Hitlerites entered Norway. I worked in that country for two and a half years and was not persecuted by the Germans. However, I was haunted by the thought that I might be persecuted and oppressed. At the end of October 1942, I was arrested by the Germans in Oslo. I was interned in Berdwet and then in Berg, spending four weeks in the latter camp. It was still under construction – there were no furnaces or windows, and it was poorly equipped overall. After four weeks, under the pretext of an impending British invasion, I and the other prisoners were taken to Oslo, then to Szczecin, and finally to Auschwitz.
The transport was some 800 people strong. We traveled in goods wagons, each of which carried between 60 and 70 people. I was the only university professor on this transport. In Norway, there were around 1,200 Jews altogether, so the Jewish question was not an issue there. 95 percent of the Norwegian population was favorably disposed towards Jews. The Norwegian university authorities wanted to help me when I was arrested. The Norwegian authorities still made efforts to obtain my release even when I was in Auschwitz, however to no avail.
During my time in Norway, the camps were guarded by the Norwegian gendarmerie, and they treated us tolerably. It was only after we were loaded onto the ship that the SS men took over; they beat us, shouting insults all the while. In Szczecin, I was separated from my wife.
Before I arrived there, I had no idea what Auschwitz was. Our transport of 800 people was made up almost exclusively of Jews, with just several dozen individuals of Aryan origin. SS men were already waiting for us at Auschwitz train station. We arrived there on 30 October 1942, at around 7.00 p.m. Immediately after we were unloaded from the wagons, they divided us into two groups. One comprised strong and healthy men, and the other women, children, and all of the sick. Vans were waiting at the station, and they took the second group. We were moved by the fact that the Germans cared so much about the old, the sick, the women and children. When we arrived at the camp, we were swarmed by the prisoners, who took away everything that we had of value – hats, gloves, etc.; they comforted us by saying that we need not bother ourselves with this loss because these items would have been taken from us anyway. At that very moment I realized that nothing good awaited us at the camp. All this happened at Birkenau, where we had been sent to spend the first night.
Next morning we were taken to Auschwitz. There, at the camp proper, we were told to undress and surrender everything. No receipts were issued to the Jews, for they were treated differently. In light of this, I concluded that we, the Jews, were doomed to annihilation. After a hot bath, naked and wet, in the middle of November, we were rushed to a place located 2 or 3 minutes away. There, we were subjected to delousing: the procedure consisted in one of the senior prisoners smearing us with kerosene. He was a young man, and he asked me if I was professor Epstein from Prague. When I answered in the positive, he introduced himself as Dr. Schattin, a former student of mine of Jewish ethnicity. We were now co-prisoners at Auschwitz.
Member of Parliament Kuryłowicz: How many people from the transport were sent for gassing?
Witness: All children under 15, women, and the sick were sent to the gas chamber, and so only some 350 healthy men from the transport remained alive.
Because they had taken away all our clothes, shoes included, we stood naked. I received some old, worn clothes in which I looked like a cross between a circus clown and a street beggar; fortunately, my Norwegian fellow prisoners gave me various items of their attire so that I would not look so grotesque. The senior prisoners were somehow able to obtain slightly better garments, that is, they took them from one of the barracks. They called the process “organizing”.
Then, I again met up with the student whom I mentioned previously. He had made proper arrangements, of course illegally, so that I remained at the general block only until evening, when I was moved to the hospital – not as a patient, but to be among the patients. During the first week, I worked at the hospital. I had to clean the windows and keep the hospital barrack tidy. The hardest toil was moving 100-liter barrels which were full to the brim with food. I brought them in with another prisoner, but I had to take them back myself. I did all this while figuring on the sick list, however this job would have been too hard even for a fit man.
This state of affairs continued until 17 December 1942, when I was transferred to Buna. This was the so-called Außenlager [outer camp] Auschwitz III. The work performed there benefited the special industrial plants located in the vicinity of Auschwitz. They were under construction at the time, producing synthetic gasoline and rubber.
Member of Parliament Kuryłowicz: How were inmates treated at the time?
Witness: A Scharführer carried out selections and designated people for gassing, mainly Jews. I myself was exempt from the process, because as an orderly I only provided formal assistance during selections. At the time I did not hear anything about prisoners being exterminated with phenol. However, beatings and torture were frequent. I spoke to one Norwegian who was beaten so severely that he was returned to the barrack more dead than alive – the reason for the assault was that he wore glasses.
On 18 August 1943, I gained certainty that my wife was dead, for those in the neighboring female camp told me that there had been no incoming transport of women from Norway. If there had been one, it would have been recorded. And since it was not, it must have been sent for immediate gassing upon arrival, because such was the procedure applied as standard to transports of women.
I will now discuss the conditions at the Buna labor camp.
Eighty percent of the prisoners working there were Jews. The labor was very hard. The clothes were poor, too light for winter, the prisoners had no underwear, the shoes pinched (they were unlaced wooden clogs which hurt our feet), and the food was insufficient and bad. The distance between the camp and the labor site was 4 or 6 kilometers in one direction. Additionally, you had to stand during the morning and evening roll-call, for 1 or 2 hours. You could endure these conditions for three or four months, and after that people died of exhaustion and tiredness.
I did not take part in this hard labor because as a doctor I worked at the first-aid station, where I tended to the sick and provided medical assistance to those who needed it immediately. The daily number of patients passing through the station was between 500 and 600. I know about the working conditions at the Buna camp from those who worked there and told me about it. They said they had to do bricklaying jobs and other tasks necessary for setting up a factory. Cases of severe beating occurred frequently during work, and every day around 10 men were brought in dead or in such a state that they died soon after.
You could infer the working conditions and the general situation at the Buna from the fact that some prisoners asked the guards to execute them or threw themselves on the electric fence because they preferred to die rather than endure that torment. That situation continued until August, and it needs to be said that the prisoners working at the first-aid station tried to the best of their ability to help the prisoners working at Buna, but they could not do much.
Out of the diseases afflicting the camp, the most frequent ones were those following hunger and malnutrition; severe cases of phlegmon also occurred. Infections were relatively rare. Given the circumstances, it was curious and odd that there were few cases of nervous diseases. Prisoners generally acted calm, they were despairing and lethargic like a “Barge Hauler on the Volga”.
Jews of almost every European nationality were interned at the camp. The different nationalities reacted differently. Norwegian and Dutch Jews were characterized by a relatively low resilience, while the Polish Jews did rather well.
The previously mentioned factory and the Buna camp were built by the IG Farbenindustrie company, and they controlled the establishment.
A patient could stay at the hospital for no more than 14 days because that was the period allowed by the factory. If a patient did not recover during that time, he was sent to Auschwitz, where he underwent selection and was gassed. At the Buna camp itself, people were murdered with phenol and no selections for gassing were carried out there. The 14-day treatment period meant that doctor-prisoners had to discharge the patients. The way it was handled was that those in need of longer recovery were discharged from the hospital after 12 days and returned to work, and then, after two or three working days, they were admitted to the hospital again.
The conditions at that camp were so appalling that some prisoners volunteered to be sent to Auschwitz because they preferred to die there than to live at the factory and the Buna camp.
On 1 May 1943, we learned that gassings had been suspended at Auschwitz. Around that time, the living conditions at the Auschwitz camp significantly improved. A special ward for convalescents was set up, there were therapeutic exercise sessions for prisoners, camp discipline had been relaxed, all of which lifted the prisoners’ spirits. Sometimes, they even played football. We expected the war to end soon.
Member of Parliament Kornacka: What were the relations between the Jewish prisoners? Did they help each other?
Witness: Yes, they were very solidary and helped each other as best they could.
The head doctor at the Buna camp was Dr. Kitt, then Dr. Vetter, Dr. Tilo, and finally Dr. Enders.
It is common medical knowledge that people from Western Europe are less resistant to typhus than those from Eastern Europe. Despite this, Jewish prisoners from Western Europe, who were particularly vulnerable, had typhus bacteria injected to find out how they would react to the infection. As a result, such a patient developed typhus after six days and then, a few days after the onset of symptoms, died.
Presiding judge: What were the relations between prisoners and doctors? What did your contact with German doctors look like?
Witness: As regards the relations between doctors and prisoners, who were of various nationalities, they were exemplary and amicable. They helped each other.
Contact with German doctors was rather limited because they were not at the hospital very often, maybe an hour a day; they would come to carry out a selection among the prisoners or, given their deficit of practical knowledge, in order to learn some tricks of the trade from the prisoner-doctors, some of whom were good specialists, though not necessarily professors or assistant professors.
Citizen Nałkowska: Did the International Red Cross have access to the camp at that time? Did their activities improve the fortunes of prisoners in any way?
Witness: Despite my long internment at the camp, I neither heard about nor saw any Red Cross activity at the camp.
Member of Parliament Kuryłowicz: Were the German doctors working at Buna good experts?
Witness: No, they were young people who had just completed their university training and had no medical expertise. An incoming transport of prisoners would endure the harsh camp conditions for three or four months.
On 25 August 1943, I was transferred from Buna to Birkenau, to the hospital at the Gypsy camp. The Gypsies gathered there formed the so-called family camp (Familienlager). Initially, it housed around 19,000 people from different countries. This camp was located some 400 or 500 meters from the crematorium. During my time there, the number of Gypsy prisoners decreased to 10,000. This huge decline in the number of prisoners was caused by an outbreak of spotted typhus. I remember my first thoughts on arriving at the Gypsy camp. I thought that I was not in Europe but in the Sudan, somewhere deep inside the African mainland.
I was assigned to the Gypsy camp because a very rare disease called noma occurred there; it is a condition that is very dangerous for the patient and very unpleasant for the surrounding area. It was caused by vitamin deficits in the patients. The disease spread but we, the doctors, managed to contain it, as we did the spotted typhus outbreak, which was also cutting through the camp that year.
The Germans picked 2,000 Gypsy men unfit for work and sent them to Germany for labor. On 31 August 1943, the prisoners still at the Gypsy camp, whose number stood at only around 4,000 due to the epidemics and the treatment that was administered, were taken away in vans to be gassed. I remember that day. Security was particularly tight and after the Gypsies were delivered to their destination, I heard terrible screams coming from the direction of the crematorium soon afterward. On 1 September 1943, the Gypsy camp was completely empty. The only ones left were two small, forlorn children, who were taken away the following day, anyway.
The [former] Gypsy camp was now the Jewish transportation camp for the Jews from Łódź, Theriesienstadt, Hungary, and from other countries. The previously suspended gassings resumed in August 1943.
In May, June, and July 1944, the crematoriums operated around the clock. Looking in their direction, I could see thick smoke and fire rising from them constantly. Around that time, huge transports of prisoners from Hungary were arriving. So many people were being burned that the crematoriums could not manage the “workload”, so special stacks where prisoners were burned were put up in the fields behind them.
Member of Parliament Kuryłowicz: Was there any German doctor present when the prisoners were taken away to be gassed?
Witness: Yes, it was an SS doctor, Dr. Mengele.
Member of Parliament Kuryłowicz: Do you recall an incident whereby one Gypsy woman remained at the camp after the group with whom she was supposed to be incinerated was taken away? What happened to her?
Witness: Yes, I do recall this incident. It took place after the liquidation of the Gypsy camp. After the Gypsies were taken away, it turned out that one woman had managed to hide.
She was found and designated for incineration but she did not go to the crematorium in an open van and was put on a sledge instead. This is what Dr. Mengele decided, who then ordered that she be shot (they did not gas single prisoners) and burned.
In relation to what I said, I now recall that there was also a Reichdeutsche Gypsy woman in the Gypsy camp who had abandoned her children, thus leaving them to be gassed. Dr. Mengele asked her how she could leave her own children behind. The Gypsy then snapped at him, saying, “You scumbag, I know you’ll do to me what you did to my children”. Dr. Mengele immediately ordered that she be taken to the crematorium. She was shot and incinerated.
Yet another Gypsy woman was ordered to abandon her children, who were being taken for gassing. She refused, so she was gassed together with her children.
Member of Parliament Kornacki: If the crematoriums were located that close, why were prisoners taken there in vans?
Witness: This was to prevent them from escaping along the way.
Member of Parliament Kornacki: Do you know that the Gypsy camp served as a brothel for SS-men and kapos?
Witness: That was undoubtedly the case. Although I did not see any sexual intercourse myself, it definitely occurred. I am certain that intimacy took place between the prisoners themselves, if you consider their mood and the awareness that all that awaited them was death. It was the camp where both sexes had not been separated from each other until their dying moments.
In August, September, and October 1944, the camp was inundated with transports of Jews. Some were sent straight to the gas chamber, while others were left in the camp temporarily. Further selections soon followed, and those found unfit for work would be sent to the gas. At the end of October 1944, we learned that gassings had been suspended again. At that time, the evacuation of the former Gypsy camp commenced so I was transferred to camp F, located closest to the crematorium. The camp hospital was located there. When I was at that camp, I discovered that they had just begun to dismantle the crematorium.
The conditions at the camp improved again. And so the Jews no longer wore stars but were instead marked with a small yellow stripe against the red background. Invalids arrived at the camp from other camps, who would have surely been gassed under normal circumstances.
In the middle of January 1945, the evacuation of the entire camp commenced. On 18 January, an order was issued that all able-bodied prisoners who could march should leave the camp on foot. I was among those who were supposed to march out. Having departed in a group of 26 people – doctors, orderlies, and patients – we arrived at Auschwitz and went into hiding. Two or three days later, SS units arrived there; they had taken whatever they could from the camp, mostly food. On 25 January, an SD unit arrived on foot and ordered that all those who remained at the camp to report to the assembly area. The people thus gathered were divided into the three usual groups, that is Jews, Aryans, and Reichsdeutsche. We thought we had reached the end. At one point, some officer came up to the commandant of the SD unit and whispered something in his ear, after which the SD unit immediately left, leaving us to fend for ourselves. On 27 January, the Soviet troops arrived at the camp, bringing us salvation, which at that point we no longer expected, not at all.
Minister Rzymowski: How did prisoners exchange information about what was going on at the camp?
Witness: There were special working units, the so-called Kommandos (e.g. Dachendecker kommando), which did jobs at different parts of the camp and spoke to the prisoners who were there, and then, after returning to their blocks, informed us about what was going on at the respective locations.
Camps A, B, C, D, E, and F were located close to each other, separated only by wire. Despite the fact that it was specifically prohibited, prisoners would come up to the wires and talk to each other, sometimes for a very long time.
Minister Rzymowski: Did prisoners wonder why people from across the whole Europe were being brought specifically to Poland?
Witness: We did not discuss this issue. However, I suspect that we were placed at Auschwitz because of the camp’s central location in Europe.
Minister Rzymowski: Was there any prominent thought that was reassuring to the prisoners during their time at the camp?
Witness: As far as I am concerned, I did everything in my power to survive this very difficult spell so as to be able to inform the civilized world about the magnitude of German barbarism. I had decided to fight the methods introduced by the Germans for the rest of my life.
Dr. Kupferberg: What are your strongest impressions concerning the effect of experiences at the camp on a child’s psyche and behavior?
Witness: As regards these issues, I remember the following situation. When I was at the Gypsy camp, I noticed a group of children who were playing, arranging pebbles one atop another, in stacks. When I asked what they were doing, they said, “We’re pretending that we’re burning the Jews”. The children developed such instincts as a result of the executions of Jewish prisoners carried out by the Germans.
I also remember another situation. During a selection of children, SS men placed a bar on two posts at a height of 1.2 meters. All those children who passed under it were immediately sent for incineration. Knowing this, the small children stretched their heads up as high as they could, desperate to be amongst the survivors. Their instinct told them what would happen if they failed to catch the bar with their heads.
And another situation: some 600 children were designated for incineration. Once they were gathered in one barrack, they started to run and hide, making every effort to avoid being caught by the SS men, but they were all dragged back. I remember these children screaming: “We don’t want to be gassed, we want to live”.
Once, a selection was carried out among the children with the objective of sending some of them to the crematorium. Those designated for incineration were loaded onto vans and ferried off. At night, someone knocked at the door of my room. When I opened the door, I saw two naked children, possibly 12 and 14 years old, who told me that they had jumped off the van just before it reached the crematorium. They asked me to give them shelter, which I did by locking them up in my room, and then, when the corpses had been delivered to the camp, I reported two more bodies than I had actually received. That way, I was able to retain these children.
Member of Parliament Kuryłowicz: What happened to the Jewish camp in Theresienstadt?
Witness: I have no information concerning this camp. More details can be provided by Dr. Fischer, who – as I heard – was a witness in the case.
Member of Parliament Kuryłowicz: How many prisoners departed from camps A, B, C, D, E, and F on foot, heading for the west, on 18 January 1945?
Witness: Some 15,000 people departed from Birkenau.
Member of Parliament Kuryłowicz: Who would you blame in the first place for mass murders perpetrated at Auschwitz?
Witness: The idea of incinerating people and crushing them like pests always came from Berlin. There were periods which I would describe as peaceful, during which prisoners were not incinerated. Then, out of nowhere, burnings resumed on a large scale, and it could be felt that the initiative did not originate with the camp authorities but from their superiors. It was clear that the orders had come from the top. The instructions were to burn people especially during the Jewish holidays.
Member of Parliament Kuryłowicz: What was the life expectancy of the prisoners assigned to work at the crematorium? How long did they work there before they were liquidated?
Witness: I cannot answer this question. I can only say that every single prisoner knew that everybody was facing the same fate.
I remember that a prisoners’ revolt erupted at the camp in September 1944. It was suppressed. 500 people were executed on that occasion.
Member of Parliament Kornacki: You worked with Dr. Mengele. Could you tell us what kind of experiments he conducted on twins?
Witness: I have no information concerning this issue.
Member of Parliament Kuryłowicz: Were the prisoners assigned to the Sonderkommando gassed after some time and then replaced with other prisoners tasked with the same job?
Witness: My contact with the Sonderkommando prisoners was rather limited. Someone at the camp said at one point that something significant had happened – I do not know what it was but in any case, after this occurrence, the Sonderkommando prisoners were burned and replaced with others.
Minister Zalewski: As we know, the Germans were very meticulous. They were renowned for their good organization. They always tried to use up everything, to exploit everything, and to make the most of their undertakings. The Auschwitz camp was also designed as a profitable institution, which was supposed to bring enormous benefits to the German state because the individuals arriving at the camp were divested of all their movable assets. Are you not of the opinion that fascism is a child of capitalism?
Witness: That is correct. Only the fascist system, only the blind Hitlerite fanaticism could do all this. We must unconditionally denounce fascism and all its products, and, consequently, denounce capitalism, which – as my experience suggests – gave rise to fascism. Fascism could only have emerged thanks to capitalism.
The present report is a translation of the stenographic record from the 7 April 1945 session of the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes held in Oświęcim and presided over by the then Justice Minister Edmund Zalewski.
Kraków, 18 December 1946.