The terrible plight of Jews sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany was described by three French survivors of the camp, at press conference at the French Embassy today.
Dr. Marcel Balechewski, chief of laboratories of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, who spent eighteen months at Buchenwald, told of the arrival from other camps aptured by the Allies of large numbers of Jews, including 5,000 Hungarian Jews. their physical condition was described as “terrific,” many of them weighing less than if their normal weight. They had been used as laborers in the Zeiss synthetio petroleum plants.
The extermination by injections of pure phenol and solution of cyanidic acid of 18,000 men too weak to work after months of forced labor was described by Dr. Balechewski. Compelled to assist in making anti-typhus vaccines for the German army, Dr. Balechewski stated that the Wehrmacht asked the SS to establish special blocs at Bachenwald in 1942 for experimental work needed by the Wehrmacht medical service. directives concerning details of the experiments, including use of prisoners of all ationalities for testing of different anti-typhus vaccines, he declared, came straight from Berlin.
He also stated that I. G. Farben manufactured chemicals used to inflict artificial burns on prisoners, for experimental study of burns resulting from incendiary bombs dropped by the Allied airforce. The collaboration of the German scientific world and of the army in the atrocities practiced at Buchenwald was made clear, Balechewski stated, from first-hand evidence which he himself witnessed.
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.
