Communist female prisoner testifies at Nuremberg Trial

(Paris 528) War Crimes Trials, Nuremberg, Germany, January 28, 1946. Continuation of Marie-Claude Vaillant Couturier's testimony. French prosecutor Dubost interrupts occasionally to ask a question. The witness talks about the wife of Georges Politzer, Hélène Solomon (wife of physician Jacques Solomon) and Danielle Casanova (surgeon), who launched a resistance movement among the women prisoners (49 of them made it back to France). One woman aged 67 had kept the rifle of her husband as a "souvenir," she died within two weeks in Auschwitz. She names and describes more women, all of whom died in Auschwitz. She then describes how they arrived at Auschwitz early one morning. They knew there was little chance for survival, seeing a group of "skeletons" going to work, they sang the Marseillaise to give themselves courage, their hair was shaved and they got a tattoo. She shows it to the court. She then tells the court of one night when they heard terrible screams, and the next morning they learned from the "Sonderkommando" that because of lack of gas, they had thrown children into the ovens alive that night.... At the time of liberation, the numbers prisoners were given had risen to 105 000+ ("cent cinq mille et quelque"). They were regularly rounded up for roll-calls, people were called out by their number and never seen again, the clothes were seen to return to the disinfection chamber....