The twelfth day of the hearing, 24 March 1947.
The witness provided the following information about herself:
Name and surname Ester Tencer
| Age | 38 |
| Occupation | accountant |
| Marital status | unmarried |
| Religious affiliation | Jewish |
| Relationship to the parties | none |
| (Witness Tencer | enters) |
| Interpreter: | (In French). What language does the witness wish to testify in? |
| Witness: | In German. |
| President: | May the witness present what is known to her on the subject of Auschwitz. |
| Witness: | I will provide only a few details, as it would take entire days – and fill many books – |
if I were to present everything I know about the camp in Auschwitz.
President: In what circumstances was the witness arrested and from where did she arrive in the camp?
Witness: I worked with the partisans in Belgium and was captured by the German field gendarmerie while working there. I was held in a prison in Belgium for an entire year, I was tortured by the Gestapo, and eventually I was brought to Auschwitz in January 1944. We travelled in cattle cars, with 50 people squeezed into a space where ten persons would normally fit. Women, men, and children, all together, with no food or drink. It took us one whole day to get to Auschwitz. Some died already during the journey.
When we arrived in Auschwitz, we instantly realized that we had arrived at a so-called death camp. The prisoners did not dare approach us. There were 98 women in our transport. We were stripped naked, shaved, and then kept like that in the bathhouse for the entire day and the entire night, without any clothing. Later, we were taken to a block and ordered to lie down in beds only one meter long. Ten of us were crowded onto a bed which could accommodate one person, and we had no blankets.
After two days in Auschwitz a rumor went round that there would be a selection. Everyone who was in Auschwitz knows what the word “selection” signifies. It meant death for thousands of prisoners – young, lively, healthy people. The selection was performed by German doctors. We stood completely naked, and then we had to pass one by one in front of a line of those doctors and we would only hear the words: “To the right, to the left, to the right, to the left.” We were not examined, we were not asked about anything, we were just picked for the gas chamber randomly. Ten women from my block were selected at the time. Two days later, those ten would be taken to the gas chamber. The work leader, the so-called Arbeitsführer, came to get them and called out their numbers and names. One person was missing. They looked for her and looked, but at first she was nowhere to be found. Her name was similar to mine and thus I was put on the list to go to the gas chamber in her place. She was later found. The Arbeitsführer lunged at her, knocked her down, stood on top of her in his hobnailed boots, and jumped all over her body so that she was streaming blood; he dragged her out of the barrack in that state. Even though they knew that she was not going to live long, she was thrown onto the wagon in that condition, a lump of blood and flesh. And we all had to look at the sight, as those people were brought in from all the blocks, completely naked, mutilated, bleeding, and we all knew that tomorrow we could suffer the same fate. The thing is, there was no method to these selections, nothing that would spare healthy people. No, they all had to die as victims of German fascism. And we were all aware that what happened to you today would happen to me tomorrow. Such selections took place once a month or once every two months, and candidates for gassing were brought in from all over, from the hospitals, from the sick ward.
I was appointed clerk at a certain block, one which housed those with scabies. People were selected for gassing from that scabies block very frequently. Being a clerk, I had more opportunity to walk around the camp during selections. The other inmates had to remain in their blocks while these selections of prisoners for the gas chamber were performed. During one such selection I was standing outside and I saw overseers Mandl and Drechsel drag women who had been picked out for gassing, and were crowded in a room and did not want to get on the trucks, refusing to board, by their hair and force them aboard.
There was a roll-call every morning, and we were counted to see if we were all there. These roll-calls were conducted by overseer Mandl. One day roll-call ran a few minutes too long. All the prisoners were then ordered to stay and do exercises – “down!”, “up!”, “down!”, “up!” – all day long in the mud. Many of the inmates, pushed beyond endurance, died during this punishment.
By October 1944, the Red Army was very close to Auschwitz, and the Germans started to evacuate the camp. Selections were conducted in the course of this evacuation. In order not to have to bring prisoners from specific blocks to the gas chambers, they were gathered in one place. The block I worked at as a secretary was one of those death blocks. All women were assembled there. I was kept there for three days before the head overseer arrived; the prisoners, who after all knew that they would be gassed, were terrified and did not stand straight to attention as was required when she walked in. At that point she lunged at them, started beating them and pulling them by the hair, shouting: “You know you’ll be gassed anyway, can’t you stand like you’re supposed to!”.
Those cretins, those beasts had no sense of humanity and very frequently indulged their criminal, sadistic lusts on prisoners, who were doomed to death anyhow. If a few of us survived the horrors of the camp, it is only because within us there survived a spark of hope that this system, the most terrible system in the history of man, must end at some point. And this hope allowed us – beaten and starved – to give each other valuable support and somehow survive this hell. It is the happiest day of my life, being able to stand here in front of that torturer who killed my mother and my sister, aware that he will be given a deserved punishment by the High Tribunal!
President: Can the witness say anything about the sterilization of women?
Witness: Yes. When I arrived in Auschwitz, I was initially incarcerated in Birkenau. When the evacuation of that camp began, some of the prisoners were sent to Auschwitz, to the smaller camp. Block 10 was fenced off and other prisoners had very limited access to it. It housed women who were earmarked for experiments. Every time a transport arrived, well-fed, good-looking women were be chosen for experiments. They were handed over to a doctor whose name I no longer remember. Their ovaries were operated on and experiments with artificial insemination were performed. They were also used as blood donors for SS-men.
President: Has the witness encountered a woman who would have been subjected to such experiments?
Witness: Yes, I have.
President: Has the witness talked to her?
Witness: Yes.
President: What did she say?
Witness: This woman’s ovaries had been removed.
President: Is the witness aware of the X-ray procedures?
Witness: No.
President: The witness has mentioned overseer Mandl. Did she shoot at prisoners?
Witness: I did not see that myself, but she always had a revolver when walking around the camp, and the female prisoners said you should steer clear of her, because if she did not like something, she would shoot.
President: When encountering pregnant prisoners, did the witness gain any information about how they were treated?
Witness: Yes, I did.
President: Can the witness state whether these women were allowed to give birth and where such births took place?
Witness: In my block, where I worked as a clerk, there were some expectant women, and one gave birth to a child. There were two possibilities: either the woman could go to the gas chamber with her child voluntarily, or she could give birth and watch the baby being killed before her eyes.
President: Did the witness hear about such mothers being forced to kill their babies themselves if they wanted to live?
Witness: Yes.
President: Does the witness know of any such cases?
Witness: Yes, immediately upon the arrival of transports – the mothers would then be told right away: “You will either kill the child, or go with it to the gas chamber.”
President: This is not a precise answer. Did the mother have to kill the child herself?
Witness: No, I do not know of any such cases.
President: The witness has stated, among other things, that she served as a clerk. In which section did the witness perform that function?
Witness: In the block for scabies patients.
President: So this was a kind of an infirmary?
Witness: These people were not bedridden, but they did not go to work with the other kommandos [work details], they worked together in separate kommandos, e.g. sweeping the streets.
President: What were the hygienic conditions in the block where the witness worked?
Witness: It was a completely regular block, like any other, with no additional sanitary devices.
President: Were there many patients in such a block?
Witness: We had between 500 and 750 prisoners.
President: Approximately how many people was the room designed for?
Witness: 200 people.
President: Were patients with other diseases also placed there?
Witness: No, it was a block for scabies patients only.
President: What was the method used to treat scabies?
Witness: There was a female doctor and nurses. The sick were rubbed with salves.
President: And there were sufficient medical supplies?
Witness: No, there were very little supplies, they were indeed rare, and sometimes we had no supplies at all.
President: Would a scabies patient receive better food, were their living conditions better?
Witness: No, they had the same conditions [as the healthy].
President: What did a patient’s meal consist of?
Witness: Half a liter of rutabaga soup and a quarter loaf of bread, while twice a week we were given 20 grams of margarine. Sometimes there was coffee in the mornings, sometimes there was not.
President: The witness has mentioned selections. Were selections performed in the block that the witness mentioned?
Witness: Yes, they were.
President: Were they frequent?
Witness: When I was there, there was only one selection.
President: How did the selections proceed?
Witness: Dr. Mengele would come over – I do not know if he was a doctor, he was an SS man in any case – and everyone had to line up in front of the block, strip naked, and then he would walk along the row of prisoners and point people out: “This one, this one,” etc.
President: Was this how it was done, at random? Or would persons with serious diseases be picked out?
Witness: It was done completely randomly. He paid no attention at all to whether someone was sick or healthy.
President: So he acted as his whim took him, or perhaps he intentionally selected those who were old and emaciated?
Witness: They would go first, but in general it was completely arbitrary.
President: So young, healthy women would be selected too?
Witness: Yes.
President: And how was it percentage-wise, more or less? The witness has mentioned that all the prisoners from a block stood in front of the block for roll-call, together with the sick. How many, more or less, would stand for roll-call and how many would be selected?
Witness: From my block, some 30% would be selected.
President: Does the witness know the number of women with Belgian citizenship who were incarcerated in Auschwitz?
Witness: I do not know exactly. There could have been around 10,000 of them.
President: Was it a mixed block? Did the block house women of various nationalities?
Witness: There were all kinds of nationalities there.
President: Could the witness list the women of other nationalities who were in that block?
Witness: There were Poles, Russians, Dutch, Belgians, Greeks, Austrians.
President: Did the witness encountered defendant Höss personally?
Witness: Personally – no.
President: Did the witness see him in the camp?
Witness: Yes.
President: In what circumstances?
Witness: In no special circumstances, he would just go through the camp sometimes to perform inspections.
Defense Attorney: Did Höss walk alone or accompanied by other SS men?
Witness: I saw him twice, and on both occasions he was in the company of others.
Defense Attorney: In which months of 1944, more or less, did the witness see the defendant?
Witness: This I do not know.
President: There are no more questions. The witness may step down.
I order a recess until 4.00 p.m.