Vernichtungslager

Last week the Russian press published the first eye-witness description of a Nazi extermination camp. Wrote Soviet War Correspondent Roman Karmen:

"In the course of all my travels into liberated territory I have never seen a more abominable sight than Maiden, near Lublin, Hitler's notorious Vernichtungslager [extermination camp] where more than half a million European men, women and children were massacred. . . .* This was not a concentration camp; it was a gigantic murder plant.

"Save for 1,000 living corpses the Red Army found when it entered, no inmate escaped alive. Yet full trains daily brought thousands from all parts of Europe to be coldly, brutally massacred."

Biggest Crematorium. "In the center of the camp stands a huge stone building with a factory chimney--the world's biggest crematorium. The Germans attempted to burn it but most of it still stands--a grim monument to the Third Reich.

"Groups of 100 people would be brought here to be burned almost alive. They already had been stripped and then chlorinated in special gas chambers adjoining. The gas chambers contained some 250 persons at one time. They were closely packed ... so that after they suffocated they remained standing. . . . The human cargoes were dumped into a roaring furnace heated to 1,500DEG Centigrade. . . ."

Human Bone Meal. The victims' charred bones and ashes were moved into an adjoining department where an incredible process went on. These human bones were mechanically pulverized, placed inside large tin cans and shipped back to Germany for fertilizing the fields.

"It is difficult to believe it myself but my eyes cannot deceive me. I see the human bones, lime barrels, chlorine pipes and furnace machinery. I see the enormous dumps of shoes, sandals and slippers in men's, women's and children's sizes bearing the trademarks of a dozen European countries. . . .

"The cremation furnace was running day & night and its chimneys never ceased smoking. The capacity of its five compartments was 1,400 daily. . . . The Germans had begun to build an annex when the Red Army arrived.

"The Russian Army came in time to save the last set of victims earmarked for slaughter."

*One of the victims was reported to be France's ex-Premier Leon Blum.

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