The precise conditions in the various camps is known to me from numerous reliable reports, although I was not arrested. I assume that the mistreatment and bullying, to which the arrested Jews in the concentration camps were exposed, are well known and only want to refer to the fact that SS men were commandeered from a camp located on the Dutch border in Esterwegen to Sachsenhausen, in order to teach the SS men there the punishment of so-called “Rollen”. The instruction was imparted to them using the Jews located in the camp. The Oder canal was built near the camp and the imprisoned Jews were laid along the edge and in fact parallel to the edge. The SS men took a section of this line of Jews, marched forward and pushed them into the canal with their feet. The Jews then had to be back up on the bank within 20 seconds. If they arrived later the SS men trod on their feet and pushed them back into the canal again. No one remained uninjured, the injured and bleeding people were then laid in a heap which – as was reliably confirmed to me – was often one and a half metres high. The men then sat down quietly in their garden which was by the camp, ate bananas and openly delighted in the spectacle.
Consistent reports about these events have aroused in me the impression that it was a case of pathological-erotic release for the young SS men.
In total there were 3,000 SS men in Sachsenhausen.
Whenever the order was given that in the afternoon one was to go into the water, one knew immediately that it involved “Rollen”; a terrible panic would then spread. One Sunday afternoon the prisoners in Sachsenhausen were told that they had a free afternoon and should go and have a chat, play cards or do something else near the Appellplatz. As they complied delightedly with this concession and sat down casually in groups on the square, 50 journalists appeared who were presented with this scene of humane treatment in the concentration camp. At the same time the whole square was filmed from an adjacent tower.
One day all of the 18,000 prisoners were marshalled to sing in front of the Lagerkommandant; the Jewish prisoners did not do it, despite being beaten.
When during the song Das Wandern ist des Müllers Lust [Walking is the miller’s delight] came the line Die Steine selbst, so schwer sie sind [The very rocks, they are so heavy], the Jewish prisoners wept so much that an SS man standing there turned around and wept himself.
During the early weeks prisoners in Sachsenhausen had to go on an endurance run each day for seven hours, later they had to work at the canal and in the forest.
A rabbi from Bremen was ordered by an SS man in Sachsenhausen to recite a Jewish saying in Hebrew and then translate it. To this when he said, “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep”, he was thrashed and forced to deliver a sermon about the Talmud.
Next to the Appellplatz, where prisoners were whipped, naked, almost daily, there was a garden for the SS men where they would sit comfortably at tables, drink and smoke. The Lagerkommandant, who was an animal lover, had laid out a small zoo and on a wooden wall mounted a row of cages of birds, which he particularly liked. Above was a large sign with the three words:
Please do not torment!
Right next to the daily site of the most brutal human torment!
The SS men were all trained in Ordensburgen and in my opinion were never suited to war, but only to cowardly mistreatment of the defenceless.
Reporter: Rabbi Dr. Nussbaum, Berlin
