Jewish Woman Collapses While Testifying at Nazi Criminais Trial; Recognizes Her Tormentor

Sophia Litwinska, one of the Jewish women who survived Nazi torture at the Oswiecim extermination camp, today collapsed while testifying before a British military court here, when she recognized among the 45 Nazi criminals on trial one of the S.S. guards who forced her and 3,000 other women to parade naked, before sending them to the gas chambers.

The guard, whose name is Hoessler, was one of the deputies of Josef Kramer, the “Beast of Belsen,” who is on trial with 44 of his assistants, for atrocities committed upon the inmates of the Oswiecim and Bergen-Belsen camps. Mrs. Litwinska was able to resume after she was given first aid by a British Army nurse.

Facing the 45 Nazis responsible for the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Jews and others – among whom there are nineteen women Mrs. Litwinska wept as she told of her horrible experiences in the Oswiecim gas chamber where she and other Jewish women were driven under showers that sprayed posson gas Instead of water. She described the frantic cries of the victims and the dense, choking fumes.

Mrs. Litwinska was taken from the gas chamber while still alive, because the camp administration decided at the last minute that she could still be used for forced labor. She was put to cleaning latrines with her bare hands, she told the court emphasizing that she was arrested in Lublin by the Nazis only because she was a Jewess, and was sent to the Oswiecim camp immediately after her arrest in May, 1940.