A French scientist who survived the Nazi murder camp of Auschwitz testified today at the trial of Adolf Eichmann here on how 4, 000 Jewish children many of them as young as two years of age, were abused in the Drancy concentration camp in France and then shipped to the Auschwitz gas chambers.
The scientist, Prof. Georges Wellers, director of the French National Medical Research Laboratory and a professor of Sorbonne University in Paris, said he was permitted to move about the Drancy camp and could see what most other inmates never saw. He said that the Germans brought the children to Drancy in busses, and dumped them into a bare barracks, 120 children to a room, with only burlap bags on the vermin-ridden floors. They were ragged, starved and filthy. They received soup occasionally, but no spoons.
Prof, Wellers testified he helped to organize four teams of women to give the children some care, but the Nazis refused to allow adults in the childrens’ barracks at night. He said the children would awaken “and cry for their mothers, sometimes all the children in one barracks at one time. ” Their parents were already in the Auschwitz extermination camp.
The scientist said that the deportations from France reached a peak in the summer of 1942, when the children were brought to Drancy and then shipped to their deaths. He said that altogether he saw between 40, 000 and 50, 000 Jews sent to their deaths.
Dr. Wellers said that French civilian authorities tried to hide Rene Blum, brother of former Premier Leon Ehim, but the Nazis found him and sent him to Drancy with instructions for prompt shipment to Auschwitz, where he was tortured and killed.
He testified that the first important persecution of the Jews in France was in May 1941, when foreign Jews were ordered to report to the police station for registration. Some 4, 000 were arrested and taken to Orleans and Thiviers, the first two camps in France. The second big roundup took place on Aug. 2, 1941, when the Nazis made a house-to-house search of a section of Paris and seized 6, 000 Jews. He said he was arrested in December, 1941.
The witness replied to a question from Judge Binyamin Halevi, one of the three justices presiding, as to whether the Jews were unaware of the nature of the Auschwitz camp before they arrived there. He said that they did not know, and that the London radio had broadcast reports about gas chambers but that French Jews believed this was simply war propaganda.
LACK OF JEWS IN BORDEAUX FOR DEPORTATION PROVOKES EICHMANN’S FURY
Eichmann was portrayed in documentary evidence introduced in his trial here today–covering his program of deportation of Jews from Nazi-conquered France–as infuriated when a subordinate reported that a deportation train from Bordeaux had to be canceled because not enough Jews had been rounded up to fill it to capacity.
The documents were an exchange of letters between Heinz Roethke, Eichmann’s representative in France, and Eichmann, Assistant prosecutor Gabriel Bach, in introducing the exchange, said Roethke’s letter “caused great anger and frustration. ” Mr. Bach introduced a letter of reply from Eichmann in which Eichmann said the transport failure was “a matter of prestige, ” that it “had never happened before, ” and that “this thing is a shame.”
Mr. Bach quoted from the Eichmann letter a veiled threat in these words: “We may have to consider whether we should not forego the deportation of Jews from France. ” The assistant prosecutor added: “Certainly, this threat was too much for Roethke, who took steps to ensure that this would not happen again. “
Another document introduced today indicated that another Eichmann representative in France, S.S, Capt. Theodor Danneker, regarded deportation of Jewish children as an “urgent” matter. Mr. Bach cited the “urgent” report from Danneker to the Eichmann office in Berlin on July 4, 1942 in which Danneker asked whether the fifteenth deportation of Jews from France could “include children under the age of 16.”
Another document submitted today gave the reaction of Otto Abetz, the Nazi Ambassador to France, to a Foreign Ministry report of the plans for deportation of 40,000 Jews from France. Abetz simply requested that the deportations be carried out in such a manner as to stimulate anti-Semitism among the French populace.
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