An American survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp described here yesterday weeks of systematic torture he suffered at the hands of Perry Brod, one of the 22 Auschwitz camp guards on trial for war crimes.
In his testimony, Joseph Neumann, of Skokie, Ill., said that one of his most grueling jobs in the Birkenau section of the camp had been to make a daily count of the inmates who had committed suicide by flinging themselves against the electric fence. He said there were “10 or 12 such cases each day.” He also described a dramatic escape attempt in which a block leader took part and was killed while aiding others to escape.
Stanislas Kaminski, a War saw journalist and another survivor of the camp, told the court that “shooting, crowning and the beating of inmates to death by the guards was part of our daily bread.” He accused another defendant, Klaus Dylewski, of ordering the guards in charge of the punishment company to dispose of all the Jews. He said they had been savagely beaten to death in the camp gravel pits.
Noting that about 20 of the inmates were killed with special bestiality, Kaminsky told the court that the guards trampled on the throats of those who had been beaten down. He described an incident in which one of the inmate trustees had attempted to put in a good word for a Jewish youth and was immediately shot by Dylewski.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
