The Agonizing Echoes of Pain: Testimonies from Nazi Camps
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| A U.S. soldier reaches toward prisoners at Dachau concentration camp during its liberation in April 1945. The image captures a moment from the liberation of a camp where prisoners endured Nazi persecution and brutality. U.S. Army/AP |
The Nazi regime established a vast system of concentration camps, forced-labor camps and extermination centers across German-occupied Europe. Millions of people, including Jews, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish civilians and other persecuted groups, suffered imprisonment, forced labor, starvation, disease and mass murder. The surviving records of these crimes include personal diaries, hidden manuscripts, letters, memoirs, court testimony and reports written by Allied soldiers who entered the camps during liberation.
The testimonies gathered in this article preserve the voices of prisoners, survivors and witnesses who experienced or documented these events. Some wrote secretly while imprisoned, hoping their words would survive even if they did not; others recorded their memories after liberation. Read alongside historical documents and verified archival evidence, these accounts help establish what happened inside the camps and preserve the experiences of the people who endured Nazi persecution.
Part I — The Voices from Hell: Testimonies of Nazi Concentration Camps
Testimony 1 — Załmen Gradowski: A Message from the Ashes
Name: Załmen Gradowski
Role: Jewish prisoner forced to work in the Sonderkommando
Camp: Auschwitz-Birkenau, German-occupied Poland Date of events: 1942–1944
Date of Writing: During his imprisonment, before his death in the Auschwitz uprising of October 1944
Source: The Scrolls of Auschwitz, edited by Ber Mark.
Excerpt from His Hidden Manuscript (English Translation)
The surviving manuscript was written by Gradowski, but the English wording is a translation—not his original language.
Gradowski secretly recorded what he witnessed while forced to work among the dead. His writings were concealed because the perpetrators were trying to destroy evidence of their crimes.
Testimony 2 — Dario Gabbai’s Recorded Holocaust Testimony
Name: Dario Gabbai
Role: Greek Jewish Holocaust survivor and Sonderkommando prisoner forced to remove the bodies of victims from the gas chambers and work in the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Camp: Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp, German-occupied Poland.
Date of Event: April 1944–January 1945. Gabbai described witnessing the bodies of women and children after the gas chambers were opened. He was later transferred to Ebensee concentration camp in Austria, where he was liberated on 6 May 1945.
Source of Testimony: Dario Gabbai, testimony recorded by the USC Shoah Foundation on October 9, 1994; also cited in Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: A New History (2005), p. 234.
Original Testimony
“Gabbai heard children and their mothers crying and
scratching the walls of the gas chamber as they died. Once the killing was
over, the ventilation system extracted the gas, and then the door would be
opened. Gabbai says that:
"When they opened the door...I see these people that half an hour before were going [into the gas chamber, I see them all standing up, some black and blue from the gas. No place where to go. Dead. If I close my eyes, the only thing I see is standing up, women with children in their hands."
Testimony 3 — Henryk Mandelbaum: Dismantling the Crematoria
Name: Henryk Mandelbaum
Role: Auschwitz Sonderkommando survivor and witness
Camp: Auschwitz-Birkenau
Date of Testimony: March 1947
Source: Postwar testimony concerning the crematoria and the work imposed on prisoners
Excerpt from Postwar Testimony (English Translation)
"They set about dismantling the crematoria. First, they ordered us to remove the shingles and rafters, and ordered us to take the furnaces apart. We bored holes in the walls by December 1944. They placed dynamite charges in these holes. They sent all of us to the camp, and then they blew it all sky high."
Testimony 4 — Filip Müller: Franz Hössler’s Deceptive Speech at Auschwitz
Name: Filip Müller
Role: Slovak Jewish Holocaust survivor and member of the Sonderkommando—prisoners forced by the Nazis to work in the gas chambers and crematoria. He secretly gathered evidence of the atrocities and later gave testimony about what he witnessed.
Date of Event: April 1942–January 1945 at Auschwitz; forced on a death march in January 1945 and later transferred to Gunskirchen, where he was liberated on 4 May 1945.
Source: Filip Müller, Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers, translated by Susanne Flatauer.
Original Testimony
Filip Müller, one of the very few Sonderkommando
members who survived Auschwitz, paraphrased Hößler's speech given to trick a
group of Greek Jews in the undressing room at the portals of the gas chambers:
“On behalf of the camp administration, I bid you welcome.
This is not a holiday resort but a labor camp. Just as our soldiers risk their
lives at the front to gain victory for the Third Reich, you will have to work
here for the welfare of a new Europe. How you tackle this task is entirely up
to you. The chance is there for every one of you. We shall look after your
health, and we shall also offer you well-paid work. After the war we shall assess
everyone according to his merits and treat him accordingly.
Now, would you please all get undressed. Hang your clothes
on the hooks we have provided and please remember your number [of the hook].
When you've had your bath there will be a bowl of soup and coffee or tea for
all. Oh yes, before I forget, after your bath, please have ready your
certificates, diplomas, school reports and any other documents so that we can
employ everybody according to his or her training and ability.
Would diabetics who are not allowed sugar report to staff on
duty after their baths.
— SS-Obersturmführer Franz Hössler.”
Filip Müller’s Suicide Attempt: A Prisoner’s Appeal to Bear Witness
Müller decided to enter the gas chamber with a group of Jewish prisoners from the Theresienstadt family camp, but a young woman urged him to survive and bear witness.
Original Testimony
"Sonderkommando units were periodically murdered to eradicate witnesses, but Müller managed to survive in Auschwitz for over two years. Müller reports that he decided to end his life by joining a group of the first liquidation of the Theresienstadt family camp inside the gas chambers. While awaiting his fate, he testified that a girl who recognized him came up to him, stating, "We understand that you have chosen to die with us of your own free will, and we have come to tell you that we think your decision is pointless: for it helps no one .
We must die, but you still have a chance to save your life. You have to return to the camp and tell everybody about our last hours. You have to explain to them that they must free themselves from any illusions. They ought to fight, that's better than dying here helplessly. It'll be easier for them, since they have no children. As for you, perhaps you'll survive this terrible tragedy and then you must tell everybody what happened to you."
Testimony 5 — Dov Paisikovic: The Destruction of the Evidence
Name: Dov Paisikovic
Role: Auschwitz survivor and witness
Camp: Auschwitz-Birkenau
Date of Testimony: 1964
Source: Dov Paisikovic, testimony recorded in 1964, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Witnesses’ Accounts — Liberation of KL Auschwitz
Original Testimony
"The SS ordered the dismantling of the crematoria in November 1944. We began disassembling the furnaces. We placed the fire-clay and bricks in neat piles. At first, we carried out demolition work in Crematorium I [II], and went back to Crematorium II [III] for the night. Crematorium II [III] was still operating at this time, burning corpses supplied from the camp. After the disassembly of the furnaces, the demolition of the chimneys of both crematoria began.
For this work, they sent additional prisoners from the camp, from other Kommandos [labor details]. The metal furnace parts were taken after dismantling to the railroad platform and loaded onto cars. Supposedly, they were being shipped to Gross-Rosen [concentration camp]... We did this and similar jobs until January 18, 1945."
Testimony 6 — Rudolf Höss: The Commandant's Admission
Name: Rudolf Höss
Role: Former commandant of Auschwitz
Location: Nuremberg, Germany
Date: April 15, 1946
Source: International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, Nuremberg, April 15, 1946, testimony of Rudolf Höss.
Original Testimony
DR. KAUFFMANN: “From 1940 to 1943, you were the Commander of the camp at Auschwitz. Is that true?”
HÖSS: “Yes.”
DR. KAUFFMANN: “And during that time, hundreds of thousands of human beings were sent to their death there. Is that correct?”
HÖSS: “Yes.”
Note : Höss's testimony is an account from a perpetrator, not a victim. It belongs alongside survivors' accounts because it documents the machinery of mass murder from the perspective of someone who commanded it.
Testimony 7 — Leo Schneiderman: Separation on Arrival
Name: Leo Schneiderman
Role: Jewish deportee and survivor
Camps: Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen camp system, and Ebensee
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Leo Schneiderman Describes Arrival at Auschwitz, Selection, and Separation from His Family.
Original Testimony
“It was late at night that we arrived at Auschwitz. When we came in, the minute the gates opened up, we heard screams, barking of dogs, blows from...from those Kapos, those officials working for them, over the head.”
He described the separation of families:
“Men separated from women. Children torn from the arms of mothers.”
He recalled his mother's last words to him:
“Leibele, I'm not going to see you no more. Take care of your brother.”
Testimony 8 — Kate Bernath: The Struggle to Preserve Hope
Name: Kate Bernath
Role: Jewish prisoner and survivor
Camps: Auschwitz and Plaszow, followed by forced labour in Germany
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Kate Bernath Describes the Psychology of Survival in Auschwitz, oral-history transcript.
Original Testimony
“We were, uh, in the midst of all our troubles we were trying to cheer each other up.”
Bernath remembered how prisoners tried to imagine a future beyond the camps:
“We dreamed about things what we were going to do when we got liberated.”
She described the importance of refusing to surrender hope:
“If you lost hope, that was the end of it.”
Testimony 9 — Sam Spiegel: The Promise to Bear Witness
Name: Sam Spiegel
Role: Auschwitz prisoner and survivor
Camp: Auschwitz, followed by a death march Liberation: Soviet forces, January 1945
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Sam Spiegel Reflects on Survival During the Holocaust, oral-history transcript.
Original Testimony
Spiegel remembered the question that continued to trouble him after the war:
“A lot of times, even now, I think, why me, why nobody else from my family except me? I can't answer that question.”
He explained the promise made among young prisoners:
“Somebody has to stay alive to tell what was going on in that hell, what really was going on in those camps and everywhere else.”
Testimony 10 — Zofia Stępień-Bator — Auschwitz Evacuation Survivor
Role: Polish resistance courier, Auschwitz prisoner, and death-march survivor who helped an exhausted Jewish woman during the evacuation.
Camp: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbrück, and Neustadt-Glewe.
Date of Event: January 1945 — Auschwitz death march; liberated at Neustadt-Glewe in May 1945
Source : Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Archives, Zofia Stępień-Bator, Recollections, vol. 74, p. 167.
“A white road, and the large black walls of the forest on both sides... We could hear the squeaking of the snow and the labored breathing of the tired prisoners... Gunshots kept ripping the nighttime silence apart and women were constantly thudding into the ditch for their eternal repose. Then someone ahead of me fell over. I helped her up. She was a tiny girl, totally exhausted and as completely alone as I was. Every few steps, she stumbled.
She had a huge pack on her back. ‘Get rid of that, it’ll be lighter’, I urged her. ‘No. I’ve got bread in there. If I get rid of it, I’ll starve to death’. She was breathing heavily and whimpering like a baby. I threw her bundle to the ground. She wept out loud. ‘Don’t cry. I’ve got bread. I’ll walk with you and I’ll share it with you. You haven’t got the strength to carry anything’. I learned, walking along beside her and supporting her, that she didn’t have anyone at all in the world. She was a Jewish girl from the vicinity of Radom.
Her parents had been killed, and she didn’t have anyone or anywhere to return to. She used up a good deal of energy in her lamentation. In the end, I forbade her to talk or moan. I declared that she would come back with me to my home, and that I wouldn’t leave her. I begged her to gather up her strength, to hold out until dawn, because the sun would come up in the morning and that would make things easier. She calmed down, and went on for a while with a regular gait, and then she fell again. I picked her up. Now I was dragging her along. Nobody helped me. Prisoners barely able to stay on their feet were passing us. And I... I had lost so much strength, I was all sweaty from the effort, but I was past the point where I could have left her. And so we found ourselves at the tail end of the column.
When she fell for the final time, and I no longer had the strength to lift her up, I called for help, and somebody’s hand took hold of me and pulled me forward. I was very tired, and did not realize that I was not going to save that girl, and that I myself could die with her. One of the prisoners, a stranger, oriented herself in the situation, grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me along with her. A moment later, there was a shot. It was my poor little ward, whom I had promised not to abandon. She had stopped suffering... the echo of that shot still rings in my memory...”
Testimony 11 — Abraham Bomba: Cutting the Hair of Women Sent to Their Deaths
Name: Abraham Bomba
Role: Jewish prisoner forced to work as a barber
Camp: Treblinka killing center, German-occupied Poland
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Abraham Bomba Describes Cutting Women's Hair Before They Were Gassed in Treblinka, oral-history transcript.
Original Testimony
“We had scissors. From them we took bunches of hair. Cut off. Threw on the floor to the side…”
Bomba described the unbearable circumstances of the work:
“Most painful was because some of the barbers, they recognized their dear ones, like wives, mothers, even grandmothers.”
He explained the silence forced upon the prisoners:
“Can you imagine that you have to cut their hair and not to tell them a word because you were not allowed?”
Testimony 12 — Abraham Bomba: Describing the Treblinka Gas Chambers
Name: Abraham Bomba
Role: Survivor and forced labourer
Camp: Treblinka killing center
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Abraham Bomba Describes the Treblinka Gas Chambers, oral-history transcript.
Original Testimony
Bomba described the chamber in which people were murdered:
“The gas chamber, how it looked. Very simple. Was all concrete. There was no window. There was nothing in it.”
He recalled how victims were crowded inside before the doors were closed, and how prisoners assigned to remove the bodies were forced to work after the killings.
Testimony 13 — Abraham Bomba: Erasing the Evidence
Name: Abraham Bomba
Role: Forced laborer
Camp: Treblinka killing center
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Abraham Bomba Describes Cleaning Up Belongings Left by People Murdered in the Treblinka Gas Chambers, oral-history transcript.
Original Testimony
Bomba remembered the gate through which the victims disappeared:
“People went in through the gate. Now we know what the gate was, it was the way to the gas chamber and we have never see them again.”
He described the forced cleaning operation:
“In five, ten minutes this place had to look spotless.”
He recalled the purpose of the work:
“Like there was never nobody on the place, so the next transport when it comes in, they shouldn't see what's going on.”
Testimony 14 — Szymon Srebrnik: A Handbag Among the Belongings
Name: Szymon Srebrnik
Role: Jewish prisoner and survivor
Location: Chełmno killing centre and surrounding forest
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia, “Chełmno (Kulmhof) Killing Center.”
Original Testimony
Srebrnik recalled discovering belongings that had belonged to victims:
“There were many handbags, a mountain of handbags.”
He described finding a bag containing his mother's photographs and documents.
Testimony 15 — Michał Podchlebnik: His Wife and Children
Name: Michał Podchlebnik
Role: Jewish prisoner and survivor
Location: Chełmno killing center
Source:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia, “Chełmno (Kulmhof) Killing Center.”
Original Testimony
Podchlebnik described the murder of his wife and two children:
“I lay down next to the body of my wife. I wanted them to shoot me.”
Testimony 16 — Alice Lok Cahana: Arrival at Bergen-Belsen
Name: Alice Lok Cahana
Role: Holocaust survivor
Camp: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Alice Lok Cahana Describes Arrival at Bergen-Belsen, oral-history transcript.
Original Testimony
Cahana described the camp in terms that remained with her throughout her life:
“And Bergen-Belsen was hell on earth. Nothing ever in literature could compare to anything what Bergen-Belsen was.”
She recalled the dead lying where they had fallen:
“When we arrived, the dead were not carried away any more, you stepped over them, you fell over them if you couldn't walk.”
Testimony 17 — Fela Warschau: The Desire to Live
Name: Fela Warschau
Role: Prisoner and survivor
Camp: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Fela Warschau Describes Liberation by British Forces at Bergen-Belsen, oral-history transcript.
Original Testimony
Warschau remembered reaching a point where she could barely continue:
“I'm going into the barrack, and I'm going to lie down and just die in there.”
Yet she also described her resistance to dying forgotten:
“I do not want to die and people should just step over me like others do.”
Testimony 18 — Gina Rappaport: The Day of Liberation
Name: Gina Rappaport
Role: Holocaust survivor
Camp: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Liberation: April 1945
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Witnesses, Testimony 2: Gina Rappaport (written account).
Original Testimony
Rappaport described being transported by train for seven days before liberation:
“After two years they [the SS] told us to pack our things and go to the station, and they put us on a train which travelled for a [sic] unknown destination. We were seven days in the train travelling very slowly, when we were liberated by the American army on the 13th of April.A few minutes before the American soldiers arrived, we were told that we should have to go on foot over the Elbe River. But the American army saved us from a sure death, which we will never forget. I was also sad this day because I remembered how many people of value had died and couldn’t see the liberation and the fall of the barbarian, Hitler.
I shall never forget what I owe to the American army. I hope that I will be able to estimate the right value, what the Americans have done for us. Now, after five years of suffering I shall know how to appreciate the more my liberty.”
She recalled seeing an American soldier after years of imprisonment and suffering, and described her relief at the arrival of the Allied forces.
Testimony 19 — Lucjan Salzman: Liberation at Wöbbelin
Name: Lucjan Salzman
Role: Polish Jewish prisoner and survivor
Camp: Wöbbelin concentration camp, Germany
Age at Liberation: 17
Liberation: April 1945, by the US 82nd Airborne Division
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Witnesses, Testimony 11: Lucjan Salzman.
Original Testimony
"I ran in that direction and as I came onto that place I noticed many prisoners yelling and screaming and jumping and dancing. And there standing amongst them were seven giants, young people. They must have been 18 or 19—American soldiers. There were seven or eight of them standing inside the camp. Apparently they cut the wire and came into the camp.
They were bewildered by us. Wild and unkempt and dirty and, I’m sure, smelly people, jumping and dancing and trying to embrace them and kiss them. And I did too. I also joined the crowd and yelled and screamed and somehow knew that the day of liberation has come. It was a strange feeling for me, however, because as I remember it, on the one hand, I was, I was overwhelmed by this unexpected and unhoped for encounter of freedom, but at the same time, what was happening was outside of me.
I really-I didn’t know what to make of it. I knew I was free, but I didn’t count on it. I somehow didn’t know what it meant. And I knew it was great, but I, I was overjoyed because all people around me were overjoyed and were singing and dancing and, and—but I, I was 17. I, I was free, but what it meant I wasn’t sure."
Testimony 20 — George Salton: The Body Near Collapse
Name: George Salton
Role: Survivor of multiple concentration camps
Camps: Ten different camps, including Wöbbelin
Liberation: American forces, May 1945
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, George Salton Describes His Physical Condition Upon Liberation, oral-history transcript.
Original Testimony
Salton described his condition in the final days before liberation:
“I couldn't, I couldn't walk very well. My, my hip hurt me, and I was really very weak.”
He remembered how close he believed he was to death:
“I think if I wasn't liberated, in a matter of days, I would have been one of those bodies that was laying in mountains of dead in front of the toilets.”
Testimony 21 — US Nurse Pat Lynch: Treating the Survivors
Name: Pat Lynch
Role: American nurse who treated liberated prisoners
Location: Evacuation hospitals serving survivors of Nazi camps
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, US Nurse Pat Lynch Describes Condition of Surviving Camp Inmates Upon Liberation, oral-history transcript.
Original Testimony
Lynch described the physical condition of the prisoners:
“They were so thin. I couldn't pick any of them up. I tried to, but if I were to pick them up I'd tear the skin.”
She explained the care required to move the survivors:
“So it would take, oh, about at least three people, one, one person take the head, one person take the legs, and very carefully lift them up.”
Testimony 22 — Alexander Vorontsov: Filming the Liberation
Name: Alexander Vorontsov
Role: Soviet military camera operator
Location: Auschwitz-Birkenau
Source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Witnesses’ Accounts, “Statement by Alexander Vorontsov.”
Statement (English Translation)
When we talked with these people and explained to them who we were and why we had come here, they trusted us a bit more. The women wept, and – this cannot be concealed – the men wept as well. You could say that there were pyramids on the grounds of the camp. Some were made up of accumulated clothing, others of pots, and others still of human jaws.”
Testimony 23 — Dr. Irena Konieczna: The Evacuation and Liberation
Name: Dr. Irena Konieczna
Role: Medical witness and survivor of the final period at Auschwitz
Location: Auschwitz-Birkenau
Source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Witnesses’ Accounts, “Account by Dr. Irena Konieczna on the Last Days of Auschwitz and Liberation.”
Account of the Final Days and Liberation (English Translation)
“The final evacuation on foot of women from Birkenau began on January 18, 1945. They ordered the prisoners to prepare immediately. The SS men were going around trying to talk women into joining the transport. They said that the whole camp was mined and that they were going to blow it up after they left. Many women asked me: should they go with the transport or stay there? I told them that I was staying, because, if I was going to die, I wanted to die on Polish soil, but that they had to make up their own minds.
I remember how the SS men from the infirmary were urging me at the last moment to go with them in the transport. In the final minutes before the column started out, they were looking for me in the blocks. I avoided evacuation by lying down alongside a sick prisoner on the top tier of one of the camp bunks. After the departure of the last evacuation transport, there were about 2,000 patients left in the women’s camp hospital, and a mere handful of more or less healthy prisoners to care for them.
There were no more SS guard posts to be seen, only individual SS men who came into the grounds of the camp. I also heard that groups of SS men entered the camp sporadically and shot many Jewish women. I would refer to the period before the arrival of the first lines of the Soviet troops as an “interregnum”. Total anarchy reigned in the camp.
No one obeyed anyone, or showed any respect to the previous prisoner functionaries. No one carried corpses out of the block and no one cleaned up the filth. The prisoners required treatment and food, but there was a lack of willing hands to look after them. Some prisoners managed to bring some food products back from the SS warehouses, and tried to prepare hot meals. Together with several fellow prisoners, including Dr. Sara Marinette, I “bent over backwards” to help the greatest possible number of bedridden patients, in terms of both medical care and food.
We tried to keep up the spirits of all our fellow prisoners, so that they would not give up but rather hold out until the moment when they returned to their families. Someone told me that men prisoners had carried a certain amount of food, or rather delivered it on carts, to Birkenau from the storehouses in the Main Camp. I remember that there were personal confrontations between some of the women during the days of the “interregnum”.
As far as I know, some prisoners exchanged sharp words or even blows. I even talked one of my fellow prisoners, who was in danger, into leaving the camp immediately. I know that a fair number of prisoners left the camp during the “interregnum” period and set off for home on foot. Several Soviet soldiers-scouts with their rifles ready to fire-entered the grounds of the women’s camp hospital on January 27, 1945. The prisoners rushed joyously towards them.
Some time later, a horse-drawn military column drove up in front of the blocks. When the Soviet soldiers realized what our situation was like, they supplied us with food of the highest quality (excellent army bread baked in pans, melba toast, and natural fats). A day or two later, several beautifully built Soviet officers, dressed in long, clean white sheepskin coats, appeared and carried out a precise reconnaissance of our needs.”
Testimony 24 — Elsie Maréchal (young Elsie) :
Name: Elsie Maréchal (young Elsie)
Role: Belgian resistance member who worked with the Comet Line, helping Allied airmen evade German capture and escape occupied Europe. She was imprisoned by the Nazis for her resistance activities.
Camp: Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany; later transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
Date of Event: 1944–1945. She arrived at Ravensbrück in 1944, was transferred to Mauthausen in March 1945, and was liberated by the Red Cross in late April 1945.
Source: Mary Moynihan, “Elsie Maréchal,” Comet Lines, p. 61
Elsie Maréchal’s Recollection (Published English Translation)
"They didn't shoot the women. We were to die of misery, hunger and exhaustion...when we arrived at Ravensbrück, it was the worst. The first thing I saw was a cart with all the dead piled on it. Their arms and legs hanging out, and mouths and eyes wide open. They reduced us to nothing. We didn't even feel like we had the value of cattle. You worked and you died."
Testimony 25 — The Survivor's Responsibility
Name : Sam Spiegel
Role: Auschwitz survivor
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Sam Spiegel Reflects on Survival During the Holocaust, oral-history transcript.
Original Testimony
“And we also promised each other that somebody has to stay alive to tell what was going on in that hell, what really was going on in those camps and everywhere else.”
Testimony 26 — Dallas Peyton: Two Survivors Reunited at Dachau
Witness: Dallas Peyton
Role: US soldier, 70th Armored Infantry Battalion, who entered Dachau with the liberating troops.
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum oral-history transcript
Original Testimony
Peyton described the encounter with survivors and the bodies found by Allied troops:
“Most of the things I saw were so horrible that they've been blocked mentally, I guess from self-preservation or something, that I don't remember the details very much.”
He recalled two prisoners recognizing one another:
“They got within a few yards of each other, stopped, stared at each other, and then they tried to run, and embraced.”
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Dallas Peyton Describes His Recollections of the Liberation of Dachau.
Part II — The Perpetrators Speak: Nazi Officers' Statements and Admissions
Testimony 27 — Johann-Erasmus Freiherr von Malsen-Ponickau: Speech to SS Guards at Dachau
Name: Johann-Erasmus Freiherr von Malsen-Ponickau
Role: Nazi SS officer who addressed SS guards and encouraged brutal treatment and dehumanization of concentration-camp prisoners.
Camp: Dachau concentration camp, Germany.
Date of Speech: 11 April 1933
Source: Zeitgeschichtswerkstatt Dachau, historical account of the Dachau concentration camp.
Published English Translation of a Historical Speech
The speech given on that day by Johann-Erasmus Freiherr von Malsen-Ponickau Comrades of the SS!
“You all know what the Fuehrer has called us to do. We have not come here for human encounters with those pigs in there. We do not consider them human beings, as we are, but as second-class people. For years they have been able to continue their criminal existence.
But now we are in power. If those pigs had
come to power, they would have cut off all our heads. Therefore, we have no
room for sentimentalism. If anyone here cannot bear to see the blood of
comrades, he does not belong and had better leave. The more of these pig dogs
we strike down, the fewer we need to feed.”
Note: This English version is reproduced in secondary historical accounts; its complete wording has not been verified against a surviving primary transcript.
Testimony 28 — Rudolf Höss: Testimony on the Orders for the Final Solution
Name: Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss
Role: SS officer; commandant of Auschwitz
Camp / Location: Auschwitz-Birkenau, German-occupied Poland
Date of Testimony: April 15, 1946
Source: International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, Volume 11, April 15, 1946, morning session, testimony of Rudolf Höss.
Original Testimony
Höss testified about receiving instructions from Heinrich Himmler:
“In the summer of 1941 I was summoned to Berlin to Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler to receive personal orders.”
He described the order he said Himmler conveyed:
“We, the SS, must carry out that order.”
Höss also testified that the operation was to be kept secret. Asked whether Himmler had stressed secrecy, he answered:
“Yes. He stressed that point.”
“This conference concerned the two of us only and I was to observe the strictest secrecy.”
Asked what the instruction meant, Höss explained:
“No one was allowed to speak about these matters with any person.”
Testimony 29 — Otto Ohlendorf: Reports of 90,000 People Killed by Einsatzgruppe D
Name: Otto Ohlendorf
Role: SS general and commander of Einsatzgruppe D
Location: German-occupied Soviet territory Date of testimony: January 3, 1946
Source: International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, Volume 4, January 3, 1946, morning session, testimony of Otto Ohlendorf.
Original Testimony
COLONEL AMEN: “Do you know how many persons were liquidated by Einsatz Group D under your direction?”
OHLENDORF: “In the year between June 1941 and June 1942 the Einsatzkommandos reported ninety thousand people liquidated.”
COLONEL AMEN: “Did that include men, women, and children?”
OHLENDORF: “Yes.”
Ohlendorf was then questioned about how the victims had been killed.
COLONEL AMEN: “How had the women and children been killed previously?”
OHLENDORF: “In the same way as the men—by shooting.”
Asked what happened to the bodies, he stated:
“The Kommandos filled the graves to efface the signs of the execution, and then labor units of the population leveled them.”
Testimony 30— Heinrich Himmler: Speaking to Senior SS Officers
Name: Heinrich Himmler
Role: Reichsführer-SS and chief of the German police
Location: Posen, occupied Poland Date: October 4, 1943
Source: Heinrich Himmler, speech to senior SS officers at Posen, October 4, 1943.
Original Statement
“We can now very openly talk about this among ourselves, and yet we will never discuss this publicly.”
Testimony 31 — Hans Frank: The Governor General's Admission
Name: Hans Frank
Role: Governor General of German-occupied Poland
Location: Occupied Poland; testimony at Nuremberg
Date: April 18, 1946
Source: International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, Volume 12, April 18, 1946, morning session, testimony of Hans Frank.
Original Testimony
Frank took the witness stand during the Nuremberg proceedings. His testimony must be read alongside his official diaries and recorded statements about persecution in occupied Poland.
His role placed him at the head of the German occupation administration in a territory where ghettos, deportations, forced labour and mass murder took place.
Q: Did you ever participate in the annihilation of Jews?
Hans Frank: “I say ‘yes;’ [...] my conscience does not allow me to throw the responsibility solely on these minor people.”
Q: Did you ever have hostages shot?
Hans Frank: “My diary contains the facts. I myself have never had hostages shot.”
Q: Did you introduce forced labour in the Government General?
Hans Frank: “Forced labor and compulsory labor service were introduced by me in one of the first decrees…”
Q: Did you introduce Jewish quarters in the Government General?
Hans Frank: “I issued an instruction regarding the setting up of Jewish quarters.”
Q: What did you say about Germany’s guilt?
Hans Frank: “A thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased.”
Testimony 32— Dieter Wisliceny: An SS Officer in the Deportation System
Name: Dieter Wisliceny
Role: SS officer involved in the persecution and deportation of European Jews
Location: Nuremberg, Germany
Date: January 1946
Source: International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, Volume 4, January 3, 1946, testimony of Dieter Wisliceny.
Original Testimony
“I know Eichmann since 1934. In 1934, at about the same time, we joined the SD together.”
“Eichmann told me that within the RSHA he personally was entrusted with the execution of this order.”
“It was perfectly clear to me that this order spelled death to millions of people.”
“I said to Eichmann, ‘God grant that our enemies never have the opportunity of doing the same to the German people,’ in reply to which Eichmann told me not to be sentimental; it was an order of the Führer’s and would have to be carried out.”
“In every case Auschwitz.”
“They were without exception destined for the so-called final solution.”
“I mean it in the sense that they were biologically exterminated. As far as I gathered from conversations with Eichmann, this extermination took place in gas chambers. The bodies were subsequently burned in crematoria.”
Testimony 33— Gottlob Berger: Responsibility for the Camps
Name: Gottlob Berger
Role: Senior SS official and head of the SS Main Office
Location: Nuremberg proceedings
Date of Statement: September 20, 1945
Source: Gottlob Berger, sworn interrogation, September 20, 1945, Nuremberg Trials Project, Harvard Law School Library.
Original Statement
During his sworn interrogation at Nuremberg on 20 September 1945, senior SS official Gottlob Berger was questioned about responsibility for concentration-camp atrocities.
On who was responsible for the atrocities:
“The first one, the commandant; the second one, Glucks, because he was practically responsible for all the interior direction of the camps.”
On prisoners being marched away from Dachau:
“These people made a very starved impression on me.”
On his order concerning the prisoners:
“Then I wrote a letter to the commandant, to send no more people by foot to any place, but whenever the Allies advanced any further, to give over the camp completely.”
Note: Berger’s statements attempted to shift responsibility toward camp commandants and other SS officials. They represent his own account and should not be treated as an impartial explanation of the Nazi camp system.
Testimony 34— Johann Paul Kremer: Postwar Testimony
Name: Johann Paul Kremer, SS camp doctor at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Role: Nazi physician and anatomy professor who participated in prisoner selections, witnessed mass killings, and conducted research on the effects of starvation using prisoners selected for death.
Date of Event: 30 August–18 November 1942, his period of service at Auschwitz-Birkenau. His diary recorded selections and killings, and later became evidence in his trial.
Source: Johann Paul Kremer, postwar interrogation before the Polish Supreme National Tribunal, 1947.
Excerpt from Postwar Interrogation (English Translation)
Testimony 35— Anna David: Instructions of Duties.
Name: Anna David
Role: Conscripted female concentration-camp guard (Aufseherin) who gave testimony about her arrival, uniform, oath, and training in prisoner supervision.
Camp: Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany.
Date of her Recorded Testimony: June 1942 — her recorded testimony describes arriving at Ravensbrück and receiving instructions for her duties.
Source: “Female Guards in Nazi Concentration Camps,” section “Acclimatisation and Training.”
Published English Translation of Anna David’s Testimony
"At the very beginning, we were issued a uniform and had to
give an oath. They instructed us on methods for dealing with prisoners. We were
told that escape attempts must be prevented at any cost, and that we were to
report even the smallest violation on the part of the prisoners…During the
training course, every graduate had to take part in various duties, and learn
how to carry them out in accordance with camp regulations."
Testimony 36— Pery Broad : SS-Unterscharführer Describes Prisoners Facing Execution at the Death Wall
Name: Pery Broad (also spelled Perry Broad)
Role: SS-Unterscharführer who worked in Auschwitz’s Political Department and later wrote an account describing executions and other crimes committed at the camp.
Camp: Auschwitz I, at the execution site known as the Death Wall, in the courtyard between Blocks 10 and 11. Thousands of prisoners, mainly Polish political prisoners and resistance members, were shot there.
Date of Event: 1942–1945, during Broad’s service at Auschwitz. His account describes prisoners facing execution at the Death Wall
Source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, “Executions,” citing KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS, pp. 140–141.
Original Testimony
"Although they are tottering skeletons – more than one has languished in a stinking basement cell where an animal would not cope – barely able to stand on their feet, many of them in the very last second call out ‘Long live Poland!’ or “Long live freedom!”
Part III — What the Liberating Armies Witnessed
Testimony 37 — Lieutenant-Colonel R. I. G. Taylor: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen
Name: Richard I. G. Taylor
Role: British Army lieutenant-colonel, Royal Artillery
Location: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Germany
Date: April 1945
Source: Lieutenant-Colonel R. I. G. Taylor, Report on Belsen Camp, April 1945; The National Archives.
Original Testimony
"A great number of them were little more than living skeletons, with haggard yellowish faces. Most of the men wore a striped pyjama type of clothing – others wore rags, while the women wore striped flannel gowns, or any other garment that they had managed to acquire. Many of them were without shoes and wore only socks and stockings."
"There were men and women lying in heaps on both sides of the track. Others were walking slowly and aimlessly about – a vacant expression on their starved faces.”
Testimony 38— Bill Barrett: The Boxcars at Dachau
Name: Bill Barrett
Role: American Army journalist
Date: April 1945
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Liberation.”
Original Testimony
Barrett described the bodies found in a railway car:
“There were about a dozen bodies in the dirty boxcar, men and women alike.”
He described the visible effects of prolonged starvation:
“They had gone without food so long that their dead wrists were broomsticks tipped with claws.”
Testimony 39— Harold Porter: An American Medic at Dachau
Name: Harold Porter
Role: Private First Class, US Army 116th Evacuation Hospital
Location: Dachau concentration camp, Germany
Date of Letter: May 7, 1945
Source: Harold Porter, letter to his parents, May 7, 1945; Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, World War II Participants and Contemporaries Collection.
Excerpt from a Letter Home
“Certainly, what I have seen in the past few days will affect my personality for the rest of my life. . . . It is easy to read about atrocities, but they must be seen before they can be believed.”
“...as we came to the center of the city, we met a train with a wrecked engine—about fifty cars long. Every car was loaded with bodies. There must have been thousands of them—all obviously starved to death. This was a shock of the first order, and the odor can best be imagined. But neither the sight nor the odor were anything when compared with what we were still to see...”
“Although I stood there looking at it, I couldn’t believe it. The realness of the whole mess is just gradually dawning on me, and I doubt if it ever will on you.”
Testimony 40— Soviet Soldiers and the Evidence Left Behind
Witnesses: Ivan Martinushkin
Location: Auschwitz-Birkenau
Date: 27 January 1945
Source: Euronews, “People Were Exhausted, Emaciated by Hunger,” Russian Auschwitz Liberator Remembers, January 27, 2020.
Original Testimony
“We approached one group, they stood by the barracks. People were exhausted, worn to a shadow, darkened, emaciated by hunger, hollow-cheeked.”
“We did not understand their language at all.”
“But when we looked in their eyes we saw that they understand one thing — the hell is over.”
“And we had this feeling that we brought liberation to those people.”
Testimony 41— Reverend T. J. Stretch: Thousands of Dead at Bergen-Belsen
Name: Reverend T. J. Stretch
Role: British Army chaplain
Camp: Bergen-Belsen, Germany
Date: April 1945, after liberation
Source:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “British Army Chaplain Describes Bergen-Belsen Upon Liberation,” film transcript.
Original Testimony
Stretch described the mass burial operation:
“This morning we buried over five thousand bodies; we don’t know who they are.”
He pointed to another burial pit and explained the cause of the deaths:
“All these deaths have been caused by systematic starvation and typhus and disease.”
Testimony 42— Major Leonard Berney: Entering Bergen-Belsen
Name: Leonard Berney
Role: British Army officer
Camp: Bergen-Belsen
Date of Events: April 15, 1945
Source: Royal British Legion, “The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen,” Major Leonard Berney’s recollection.
Original Testimony
Berney recalled the scene confronting the British soldiers:
“I remember being completely shattered.”
He described the dead beside the roads, starving prisoners behind barbed wire and open mass graves containing hundreds of corpses.
Testimony 43 — Douglas Paybody: The Smell and the Mass Graves
Name: Douglas Paybody
Role: British Army lieutenant-colonel
Camp: Bergen-Belsen
Date of Events: April 1945
Source: The Guardian, “The Liberator,” January 9, 2005, interview with Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Paybody.
Original Testimony
Paybody described the first sight of the camp:
“What we saw was a nightmare which beggars description.”
He remembered thousands of bodies lying across the grounds and the overwhelming stench. He also recalled that prisoners were so close to death that soldiers sometimes could not distinguish the living from the dead.
Testimony 44— William McCormick: The Train at Dachau
Name: William McCormick
Role: US Army soldier, 15th Reconnaissance Group
Camp: Dachau, Germany
Date of Events: April 29, 1945
Source: The National WWII Museum, “The Liberation of Dachau Concentration Camp,” testimony of William McCormick, 15th Reconnaissance Group, US Seventh Army.
Original Testimony
McCormick recalled the emaciated prisoners:
“When I first went into the camp, the first thing I saw was people walking around and they looked like skeletons.”
He also described the railway cars filled with bodies and the attempts to control the smell.
Testimony 45— Anthony Cardinale: A Hand Moving Among the Dead
Name: Anthony “Tony” Cardinale Jr.
Role: US Army radio operator, 42nd Infantry Division
Location: Railway cars outside Dachau concentration camp, Germany.
Dachau Date: April 29, 1945.
Source: University of South Florida, Concentration Camp Liberators Oral History Project, Anthony “Tony” Cardinale Jr., oral-history interview, March 2008.
Excerpt from Oral-History Interview
“I saw this hand weakly waving back and forth. It was poked up between some of the bodies on top of it. It was quite evident that its owner was alive, and had heard our voices, and was desperately trying to attract our attention.”
“He looked at me and said, ‘Frei? Frei?’”
“I said, ‘Du ist frei,’ several times.”
Historical Context (Summary of Cardinale’s Account)
Discovery of the Death Train: Cardinale was riding in a Jeep with Colonel Henry Luongo when American soldiers encountered a train outside Dachau filled with thousands of dead prisoners transported from Buchenwald.
A Hand Moving Among the Dead: While walking past the train cars, Cardinale noticed a hand weakly waving between the bodies. He realized that someone was still alive and desperately trying to attract attention.
The Rescue: Cardinale called for help. Lieutenant Colonel Don Downard and Captain Roy Welbourn searched through the bodies and reached the surviving prisoner, whose severely emaciated condition revealed the effects of starvation.
“Frei? Frei?” — “Free? Free?” The rescued man looked at Cardinale and repeatedly asked whether he was free. Cardinale answered, “Du ist frei” (“You are free”) several times.
Taken for Medical Assistance: The survivor was carried to a first-aid station. Cardinale later lost track of him and never discovered what happened to him afterward.
Witnessing the Camp's Horrors: After the rescue, Cardinale and the other soldiers continued into the camp, where they encountered starving prisoners and saw the crematorium, confronting the scale of Nazi atrocities firsthand.
Testimony 46— Sergeant William A. Scott III: The Reality of Buchenwald
Name: William A. Scott III
Role: US Army combat engineer and unit photographer
Camp: Buchenwald, Germany Date of events: April 1945
Source:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Witnesses: Audio Testimony Transcripts, Testimony 9, Sergeant William A. Scott III, 183rd Combat Engineer Battalion.
Original Testimony
Scott initially thought the camp looked like an ordinary prison. After driving farther inside, he saw the condition of the prisoners and realized that the situation was far worse than he had imagined.
He recalled:
“There's no way you can describe it.”
Scott's photographs and testimony belong to the record of American soldiers documenting the camp after liberation.
Testimony 47— Harry Snodgrass: Inside Buchenwald
Name: Harry Snodgrass
Role: US Army soldier and liberator
Camp: Buchenwald, Germany
Date of Events: April 1945
Source: The Nashville Holocaust Memorial, “Eyewitness Accounts,” Harry Snodgrass, liberator of Buchenwald.
Original Testimony
Snodgrass remembered seeing prisoners lying among the dead:
He recalled being stunned by what he saw in the camp and described the experience as something that remained with him for decades.“Some dead and some alive under the dead…just lying there.”
Testimony 48— Lieutenant Beatrice Wachter, : Inside Nordhausen
Role: US Army nurse, Lieutenant Beatrice Wachter, of the 51st Field Hospital.
Camp: Nordhausen concentration camp, Germany, where she treated survivors shortly after liberation.
Date of Event: April 1945 — she witnessed the conditions at Nordhausen after its liberation and wrote a letter describing the survivors and atrocities she encountered.
Excerpt Attributed to a Wartime Letter
"I have seen the most horrible sights that I hope I will never see again as long as I live.... We are taking care of men from a German concentration camp—human wreckage, living skeletons, diseased, infested with lice and maggots, skin and bones. 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old boys who looked 60 and 70 years old, with hollowed eyes, sunken cheeks, sores all over—it just isn’t human.
Bodies were all over. Headless, no arms, burnt to a
crisp—little children, some babies, a few women, but mostly men. I’m working in
a ward with 60 of these men and the stories they tell!
They were allowed three potatoes and a cup of soup each day;
if too weak to work they weren’t fed at all. There were 30 to 50 of them who
died each day.... They were tied to stakes and beaten—I saw the stakes. They
were machine-gunned until their bodies were scattered all over the field in
small pieces. We saw hands and legs, parts of brains, lying all over. It was
horrible.
I see those rows of bodies, some naked, some with a few clothes on, in front of me now. God, how can such conditions exist?"
Testimony 49— Corporal Anthony Acevedo
Name: Corporal Anthony Acevedo
Role: Corporal Anthony Acevedo, combat medic with Company B, 275th Infantry Regiment, 70th Infantry Division, U.S. Army. He kept a wartime diary documenting fellow prisoners’ deaths and suffering.
Camp: Stalag IX-B, Bad Orb, Germany, and Berga an der Elster, a forced-labour subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp.
Date of Event: January–April 1945. Captured on 6 January 1945, transferred to Berga in February, and forced onto a death march in April. Liberated by American forces on 23 April 1945.
Source : United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Witnesses: Audio Testimony Transcripts, Testimony 5, Corporal Anthony Acevedo, 70th Infantry Division.
Original Testimony
“So,
we heard that there were tanks approaching, and we don’t—we didn’t know whether
they were Americans, or French, or English, whatever. Or Russians. But the
Germans started to feel the—the heat, and so they wanted us to follow them. And
so they push—they pulled the—the rifles against us, and pointed at us, and
says, w-we—either we go, or—with them, or they’ll shoot us. That’s what they
wanted to do.
So, as I yelled back at them, and the other medic. I mean, we’re medics, and we’re t-taking care of these men, and they’re dying. One just
died—or two just died just a—a while ago. So, how can we go, and— they can’t
walk any more.
So, before you knew it, they too escaped, and th-the guards turn in our—gave us our rifles and he says, we’ll stay with you. And we started to hear the rumbling getting closer, and we all started to run towards the highway, and when we got to the highway, the tanks were the 11th armored division, liberating us.”
Testimony 50— Sergeant Leon Bass Entered Buchenwald
Name: Sergeant Leon Bass, 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion, U.S. Army.
Role: African-American American soldier and liberator who entered Buchenwald concentration camp and witnessed the horrific condition of its surviving prisoners.
Date of Event: 12 April 1945 — entered Buchenwald near Weimar, Germany, shortly after its liberation.
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Witnesses: Audio Testimony Transcripts, Testimony 3, “Reconnaissance — Sergeant Leon Bass.”
Excerpt from Oral-History Interview
"We were in the intelligence reconnaissance section of our unit and we went right to Buchenwald. And that was the day that I was to discover what had really been going on in Europe under the Nazis because I walked through the gates and I saw walking dead people.
And just looking at these people who were skin and bone and
dressed in those pajama-type uniforms, their heads clean shaved, and filled
with sores through the malnutrition. I just looked at this in amazement and I
said to myself, you know, “My God, who are these people? What was their crime?”
You know?
It’s hard for me to try to understand why anyone could have been treated this way. I don’t care what they had done. And I didn’t have any way of thinking or putting a handle on it, no frame of reference. I was only 20. Had I been told, I doubt if I could have had, in my mind’s eye, envisioned anything as horrible as what I saw."
Part IV — The Prisoners’ Diaries: Secret Records from Inside the Camps
Unlike postwar interviews, these diaries and hidden manuscripts were written during imprisonment or preserved from that time. Some were buried before their authors were murdered; others survived because their authors lived to publish their experiences.
Each entry below identifies the writer, the camp, the date and the surviving record. Quotations are kept to verifiable excerpts; they are not presented as complete diary entries.
Testimony 51— Załmen Gradowski, the Buried Manuscripts of Auschwitz
Name: Załmen Gradowski
Role: Jewish prisoner forced to work in the Sonderkommando
Camp/Location: Auschwitz II-Birkenau, German-occupied Poland
Date of Testimony: Written in 1943–1944 Date of Events: 1942–1944
Source: Załmen Gradowski, From the Heart of Hell: Manuscripts of a Sonderkommando Prisoner, Found in Auschwitz, translated from Yiddish by Barry Smerin and Janina Wurbs
Excerpts from Secret Manuscripts (English Translation)
“Dear reader, I write these words in the moments of my greatest despair. I do not know, I do not believe, that I myself will live to read these lines ‘after the storm.’ Who knows if I will have the good fortune to unfold the secret I carry deep in my heart to the world? Who knows if I will ever again behold a ‘free’ man and be able to speak with him? It may be that these, the lines that I am now writing, will be the sole witnesses to what was my life.”
“Who was prepared to believe that a whole people was to be exterminated to compensate for failure in a struggle for power and supremacy? Who was prepared to believe that a people would blindly obey a law leading to death and destruction?”We have dug up a lot of graves, but there are still two open graves on the grounds of the second and third crematoria. Several graves are still full of ash... A vast amount of ash from hundreds of thousands of Jews, Russians, and Poles is scattered and plowed into the grounds of the crematoria...”
“But I will be happy if my writings reach you, free citizen of the world. Perhaps a spark of my inner fire will ignite in you, and you will fulfill at least a part of our life’s desire: you shall avenge, avenge our deaths!”
How can you wander about, dreamy, lovesick, enchanted as before, and not feel the terrible annihilation, the great misfortune brought down by them, the murderers and pirates of the world? How can you not feel?
“Mothers passed with small children in arms; others were led by the hands of their little ones. They kissed their children—a mother's heart cannot be bound—kissed them all along the way. Sisters walked arm in arm, clinging together, wanting to face death together.”
Testimony 52— Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz, the Dachau Diaries
Name: Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz
Role: German pacifist and prisoner who secretly kept a diary
Camp/Location: Dachau concentration camp, Germany Date of Testimony: Diary written from 1942 to 1945
Date of Events: 1940–1945
Source: Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz, Dachauer Tagebücher, Munich, 1997; English translation by Lesley Sharpe and Jeremy Noakes.
Excerpts from the Dachau Diaries (English Translation)
In his diary, Kupfer-Koberwitz wrote:
“These pages that I now begin to write would lead to certain death if ever they were found. But what is death? How few of those I know here are still alive today, how close to death we all stand! I can die here any moment, even if I take the greatest care.”
“Why should I not endeavor, even in the midst of these conditions, of this cruelty, to tell this gruesome story that no longer gives us goose flesh?”
“While I’m writing there are big explosions nearby.
A very unpleasant, but apparently true, bit of news: it’s said that there’s still a whole company of SS in the camp, but no Wehrmacht. So we rejoiced too soon and are now in danger twice over: partly from the SS and partly from the war that is now raging around us.
Suddenly, there are shouts outside and people running about: ‘The Americans have arrived, they’re in the camp, yes, yes, they’re on the roll call square!’
Everybody starts moving. The sick leave their beds, those who are nearly well and the nursing staff run out into the block street, jump out of the windows, climb over the partition walls. Everybody is running to the roll call square. One can hear people shouting hurray from a long way off. They’re shouts of joy. People keep running around. The sick have excited, ecstatic faces. ‘They’ve arrived, we’re free, free!’
Hardly any violence has occurred, although we had always thought it might. Everybody’s feelings of joy were evidently stronger than their feelings of hatred.
So, as far as the majority is concerned, what happened to the hatred, the burning hatred that everybody believed that they felt inside them? Joy trumped all that and … hatred is probably a sign of powerlessness, but now we are no longer powerless. But the fact that we are not behaving as the SS would have behaved, that’s only as it should be, but … it’s still a good thing.
The day has come to an end, this 29 April, – for the rest of my life I shall celebrate it as my second birthday, as the day that my life was given back to me.”
Testimony 53— Primo Levi, If This Is a Man
Name: Primo Levi
Role: Italian Jewish prisoner, chemist and writer
Camp/Location: Auschwitz III-Monowitz, German-occupied Poland Date of Testimony: Written after his return in 1945–1947; first published in 1947
Date of Events: 1944–January 1945
Source: Primo Levi, If This Is a Man, translated by Stuart Woolf; also published in the United States as Survival in Auschwitz.
Excerpts from a Survivor Memoir (English Translation)
“In a moment, with almost prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: we had reached the bottom. It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing belongs to us anymore; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they would not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains.”
And for many days, while the habits of freedom still led me to look for the time on my wristwatch, my new name ironically appeared instead, a number tattooed in bluish characters under the skin.”
Levi recalls Steinlauf urging prisoners not to let the camp destroy their humanity:
“Precisely because the Lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness.”
“Bread is also our only money: in the few minutes which elapse between its distribution and consumption, the Block resounds with claims, quarrels and scuffles.”
“The washroom is far from attractive. It is badly lighted, full of draughts, with the brick floor covered by a layer of mud. The water is not drinkable; it has a revolting smell and often fails for many hours.”
“Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint.”
Testimony 54— Hanna Lévy-Hass, Diary of Bergen-Belsen
Name: Hanna Lévy-Hass
Role: Jewish resistance fighter and prisoner
Camp/Location: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Germany
Date of Testimony: Diary written during her imprisonment
Date of Events: 1944–1945
Source: Hanna Lévy-Hass, Diary of Bergen-Belsen, 1944–1945, translated by Sophie Hand, with an introduction and afterword by Amira Hass, Haymarket Books, 2009
Excerpts from the Diary (English Translation)
“I have taken on the task of looking after the children. There are 110 children of different ages in our barrack, from three-year-old toddlers to 14- and 15-year-old boys and girls.”
Testimony 55— Miklós Nyiszli, Physician-Prisoner at Auschwitz
Name: Dr. Miklós Nyiszli
Role: Hungarian Jewish physician and prisoner forced to work under SS physician Josef Mengele
Camp/Location: Auschwitz-Birkenau
Date of Testimony: Memoir first published in Hungarian in 1946
Date of Events: May 1944–January 1945 Source: Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account
Archive/Reference: Miklós Nyiszli, declaration dated July 28, 1945; compared with Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, translated by Tibère Kremer and Richard Seaver.
Contextual Note on Nyiszli’s Postwar Accounts
Miklós Nyiszli was a Hungarian Jewish physician imprisoned at Auschwitz-Birkenau who was forced to work under SS physician Josef Mengele. His postwar declaration and later memoir describe aspects of his experiences at Auschwitz. These are separate accounts and should not be treated as one continuous testimony.
Historical Context — Mengele’s Twin Research
Josef Mengele conducted medical examinations and experiments on twins and other prisoners at Auschwitz. Nyiszli’s accounts describe his work under Mengele and the treatment of prisoners subjected to medical procedures. This section provides historical context rather than a direct quotation from Nyiszli.
Differences Between the Declaration and Memoir
Nyiszli’s declaration dated July 28, 1945, and his later memoir contain accounts of events associated with Mengele’s experiments. The details should be attributed to their respective sources rather than combined into a single narrative. In particular, claims concerning the deaths of 14 twins in one night and the use of particular injections must be checked against the original declaration and the corresponding passage in the memoir before being presented as established quotations.
Note: This entry provides historical context about Nyiszli’s postwar accounts. It is not a complete reproduction of his declaration or memoir. The two accounts are identified separately because their wording and details should not be assumed to be identical.
Related Reading: Auschwitz-Birkenau — The History of the Nazi Death Camp
To understand the history behind these harrowing testimonies, read our detailed account of Auschwitz-Birkenau: The History of the Nazi Death Camp, Its Victims, and Liberation. Discover how the camp system operated, the crimes committed by the SS, the suffering endured by prisoners, acts of resistance, and the liberation that revealed the full horror of Nazi atrocities.
The Voices That History Must Never Forget
The testimonies of Holocaust survivors, prisoners, liberators, and even Nazi perpetrators reveal different sides of a system built on persecution, forced labor, torture, and mass murder. Behind every recorded statement was a human life—someone who endured unimaginable suffering, witnessed the destruction of others, resisted when possible, or helped expose the crimes committed inside the camps.
Some witnesses survived to tell their stories. Others left behind diaries, letters, and secret manuscripts so the world might one day learn the truth. Their words preserve details that could otherwise have been lost and remind us that the victims were individuals, each with a name, a family, and a life beyond the barbed wire.
These accounts are more than fragments of a terrible past. They are historical evidence of what happened when hatred, dehumanisation, and unchecked power were turned into organized persecution and genocide. Each testimony must be preserved accurately, with respect for the people who gave it and care for the facts it records.
The survivors and witnesses cannot speak forever. Their words remain for future generations—not to sensationalize suffering, but to confront the truth, honor those who were murdered, and remember the human beings behind the numbers.
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