When the Tiso regime in Slovakia introduced anti-Jewish laws, Bleich and his brother had to leave high school and attend a Jewish school. Their father’s business was aryanized. On 7 April 1942 Bleich, then aged 17, and his younger brother were arrested by the Hlinka Guard and were sent to Poprad and from there to Auschwitz. The account reports particularly vividly and with many details the unspeakable horrors of that camp. At first Bleich was allocated to road work, later to the building of the crematorium and the Buna works. Atrocities, suicides of the prisoners and murders by the Kapo were daily occurrances. When prisoners, Bleich among them, reported sick, they were given fatal injections or sent to the extermination block 7. Miraculously, Bleich was spared, although twice the lorries to take the victims to the gas chambers, halted in front of the block. Due to starvation and excessive work Bleich became one of the Muselmänner.

His brother Eugen also eventually came to Block 7, and after some time Bleich was told that all the inmates had been gassed. Caused by utter lack of sanitation and vermin, typhoid and boils spread and killed hundreds. When the epidemics endangered also the SS. extensive delousing operations were carried out, but the interminable roll-calls and inspections gave renewed chances for brutalities. In 1943 Bleich was ordered to peel potatoes. As he ate the raw peels, he contracted dysentery and skin diseases and lost this coveted job. He was sent back to building work and collapsed.

In March 1943 he accidentally met a friend, Meyer Mittelmann, who worked in the “Canada” Commando, and due to the energetic efforts of this man and despite many obstacles, Bleich was given medical care, some food and eventually a job in Mittelmann's commando, where he worked until August 1943 and enjoyed the various advantages involved. During that time with the Aufräumunskommando Bleich recalls the arrival of 2 transports: all the 3,000 prisoners of one were suffocated, while the 1,200 prisoners of the second were gassed immediately. Finally B. could not stand the handling of corpses any longer, and in August 1943 he volunteered for work in Warsaw on the site of the old ghetto. During their work, prisoners found hundreds of corpses, but also quantities of goods and valuables.

When the Russians approached, the camp was evacuated, the ill and weak prisoners were shot, the others had to march in the summer heat without water, and the SS shot anyone trying to quench his thirst. In Silesia they were crammed into cattle trucks; many of the prisoners went almost mad with thirst. Dachau was in a state of liquidation, the prisoners stayed there only for 2 weeks and proceeded to Ampfing. They worked on an underground factory and lived in underground huts. When Germany collapsed, an order was given to shoot all inmates, but the commandant of Ampfing did not obey this order and send the prisoners on yet another transport which led them to the liberating American army. After short periods in Munich under American care, at his home town and in the DP Camp Feldafing, Bleich married and emigrated to Australia.

A voluntary statement by Max Gymnich in his own defence. He was born in Cologne and was a driver by trade. In June 1940 he was conscripted and became driver to the Gestapo. Four weeks before the attack in Russia, he was sent to the police school in Pretsch/Elbe, from there to Schawli in Latvia and finally to Riga. He became the driver of Obersturmführer Krause, the Commandant of the Riga Ghetto.

He cites the following persons as witnesses for his innocence: Hauptscharführer Georg Ogiermann, Oberscharführer Fritz Luedecke, Hauptsturmführer Ziegler, Sturmbannführer Azeis, Oberscharführer Heinz Cords, Hauptscharführer Harry Frielrichsohn.

Mrs Laszlo was a schoolgirl of thirteen when the German Nazis occupied her native town. The report describes the two ghettoes in Debreczen and her deportation in May 1944 (p.3-4) to Auschwitz, however the train which carried the girl and her family instead took the deportees to Vienna. The children - between 7 and 13 years old - had to clear the bomb-sites in the suburbs. They were always hungry, but sometimes non-Jews helped them to an additional ration, another time they helped to find their way back to the Camp when they got lost in the streets. Others hid them after a bomb hit the school in which they were interned (p.5-6). The children always lived in abandoned school-buildings and occasionally had to sweep the snow off the street around others.

Epidemics; transport (p.7-8), during which a disastrous attack ruined a station at Vienna; the survivors were taken back to the Camp, which was abandoned by the guards the next morning. Vivid description of the days that followed and the way home, partly covered on foot.

Mr Larsch, a house-painter by profession but out of work at the time, was an active socialist. On 3 November 1933, he was arrested at Bielfeld and sentenced to penal servitude for three years. On 19 May 1935, his wife, mother of four children, was arrested at Essen; ill-treated by detective Schweim (later interned at Recklinghausen); sent to hospital, transferred to Düsseldorf, where she died on 29 May 1935; her smallest child was then three year old.

After his release from jail, Mr Larsch was interned at the police station at Düsseldorf, then sent to Buchenwald. Sadistic atrocities committed by Sommer (sentenced at Munich, 1958).

Free from 26 April 1939 until September 1939; from that time to the end of the War at Sachsenhausen. Foreman in brickyard. April 1945, most efficient bombing of a foundry: 300 dead, all of them prisoners - the free workmen could rush into safety. SS-Lagerführer Freesemann killed an officer who had bailed out of a plane. Ficke, Commander of “Totenkopfdivision.”

Evacuation and death march, April 1945. Destination was the Baltic Sea, where the prisoners should have been embarked and drowned. This was prevented by the quick arrival of the Allies, but many of the exhausted prisoners died on the march.

After the German occupation of Lodz in September 1939, anti-Jewish measures started immediately. Author lived with her mother and brother and sister; they were driven from their home in January 1940 and taken to Krakow. Hoping to save their possessions, author walked back to Lodz, but found everything seized by the Germans. She found a miserable, small room and was joined by her family in March 1940. When the Lodz Ghetto was set up in May, Lasmann's could remain in this room, as it was within the ghetto boundaries. Food became very scarce, as only those registered for labour had ration cards. The morale was extremely bad. The SS undertook frequent Aktionen, and author's mother had a narrow escape. Her brother was captured, but author succeeded in getting him released. Being trained as a secretary, she found work in the food office, but in addition she had to do hard, manual labour.

She joined the Resistance movement, and her office work enabled her to translate and type radio messages for distribution. Due to famine and overcrowding epidemics broke out. The sister was taken to the hospital and author, disguised, as a nurse, tried to save her from extermination, but all the patients had already been taken away. At the request of the SS., Jewish militia men had to select people for extermination. The victims were thrown into ditches and killed with quick lime. Sonderkommandos of the militia had to round-up children and hand them to the SS. for killing. Author reports the case of Mrs Leon Naymann who had hidden her two children and had to decide whether to save her husband who was taken as a hostage or surrender one of the children. She sacrificed the child, but the whole family perished later. At the end of 1944 Lodz Ghetto was liquidated. Its survivors, author and her family among them, were taken to Auschwitz. During the selection of the young and fit on arrival, a Jewish prisoner, attracted by the author's personality, saved her mother from death.

The women were then driven into a bathhouse, stripped, shaved and given dreadful rags for clothing. They were housed in horse stables, five to a bunk. The man, who had taken a liking to the author, continued his importunities until he was caught trying to enter the women's camp C and killed. In 1944 the author's mother died from Starvation. Later on, 200 girls were taken to work in an ammunition plant in Oederan near Chemnitz. Although the conditions were better, work was hard. The author tried to sabotage their work but was warned by an overseer who disclosed his anti-Nazi feelings to her. At the end of April 1945, with battle noise approaching, the factory was evacuated. 500 women under SS guard had to march for 2 days and travel for 8 days in coal lorries without food and water, until they arrived at Theresienstadt, already taken over by the Swiss Red Cross.

After the liberation, the author returned to Lodz. Here she learned that her brother, having been liberated from Auschwitz, died from over-eating. Another brother who had escaped before the Germans entered Lodz and joined the Polish Army under General Anders was in Italy and helped her to emigrate to Australia. She arrived there in 1948 and later married Paul Konewka.

The authoress was the only child of a well-off manufacturer in Vienna. In 1935 under the influence of the political situation, he moved with his family to Krakow, where he owned another factory. They lived in a most comfortable flat and the daughter studied philology, German and English. She reports here on the situation in Poland of the Jews, after the German army had occupied Poland.

In 1940 they were in Cracow (p.1, 3), in 1941 the Czknstochow Ghetto. This report includes details on Gestapo-chief Degenhard, the deportation to Treblinka of the older people (p.2), forced labour and ill-treatment for the remaining thousand by German SS, Ukrainians and Latvians (p.2-3). The authoress escaped together with her husband to “Nutzjuden” working outside the Ghetto, from there to Warsaw. Details forged documents and a job with the German “Ost Energie A.G.“. After several months of living with the family of a Polish army-officer (belonging, then unknown to them, to the Resistance Movement), everybody living in and arriving at the house was arrested and put in irons (p.4). Then, the men were taken to prison (Montelupe) and later back to the Ghetto, where the intellectuals were shot. The authoress whose husband was a doctor, never saw him again (p.4-5).

The women had to spend two months at Helclow after which all prisoners were transported to Auschwitz. Non-Jews helping Jews: an SS-official, like the authoress a grammar-school mistress, and a lady-doctor, interned as a Resistance-member, helped her to get a job with the Commando “Bauleitung“, where she worked for two years for the Chief, Sturmbannführer Bischof who proved to be human and helpful (p.6); their ‘Model Block’shown to Swedish Control Commission, in 1944; another model block was the ‘Experimental Block’ with lady-doctor Brewda, now London, and Dr. Fleck, his wife and child - the only child at Auschwitz - who returned back to Paris (p.6).

On 17 January 1945 she was evacuated and sent on a two-week death march to the Jiell of Ravensbrück. In February, she was transferred to nearby Malchow labour camp. Liberated on 9 April 1945 (p.6), the march back to Poland.

Since 1946 the author has been working with the Polish embassy in London. She has remarried and had a child; when she was called back to Poland; she left her job and stayed in England.

A report on ill-treatment of the worst kind, atrocities, horrible conditions of life in camps and during transports; mass-murders. Also includes information on the author's deportation from Frankfurt am Main to Minsk where he arrived in 22 November 1941; unbelievably bad conditions; vermin (p.1, 4, 6). The Robert Ley-House (p.1). Wehrmacht and SS (p.1). When a gun was found at the Loot-Commando, left there by Russian workmen, every seventh of the Jewish detainees was shot including a former reserve officer who held both Iron Crosses.

High death-rate because of starvation (p.2, 6, 8) and mass-murder (p.2-5). Unteroffizier Peter Greven late of Cologne, saved the lives of five men of the Heeresbaudienst Stelle on occasion of the massacre of 60 internees. In July 1942, 8,000 Jews were murdered during one Aktion (p.2). Heeresverpflecmagazin: Oberzahlmeister Heinrich (p.2-3) ordered the Yellow Star not to be worn in the Office, his successor did not object, but Oberscharführer Rübe (on 13 March 1943) had the 12 girls and 4 women of the Office led to the cemetery by sixteen Russians to be shot there, including the author's twenty-year-old daughter, his only child. On 26 May 1943, Gestapo-men shot dead every living being at the sick-bay, patients, nurses, children and visitors alike. On this occasion, the author lost his wife who had fallen ill when she learned of her young daughter's fate.

In September 1943, all bachelors and girls were taken to the SS-labour camp in Minsk; the married people and children were never heard of again. In vans said to be transporting 120 men each to the labour-places, the passengers were being killed by burnt gas (p.3).

The author was transferred to the Heinkel-Flugzeugwerke in Budztn, Poland (p.3-4). Ill-treatment by the German foremen; wretched conditions of life; vermin and epidemics (p.4). Loudspeakers recording music during the mass-murder of twenty thousand Jews, on 23 November 1943 (p.4). At Heinkels’ at Milec, a Hauptwachtmeister, late of a police-station at Frankfurt am Main, shot the Baracken-Älteste Zimmermann, because he found the place not clean enough; he was also responsible for cruel punishments and atrocities.

In July 1944, the author was transported to Welicka and in September was sent on a horrible transport to Mauthausen (p.4-6) which turned out to be worse than any of the dreadful places before. Doing incredibly heavy work in the quarry, rushed and beaten up constantly. Mass-murders. After three months, he was transported to the Hermann-Goring Works at the Camp of Linz of about two thousand men. Cruel ill-treatment. Public execution of three Russians who had tried to escape. Air-raid; a bomb killing 110 detainees at Block 13 (p.5). Starvation (p.6); frost; vermin. On 5 May 1945, the author was liberated by the Americans. The Spanish Legion. The Hermann-Goring-Lazarett (p.6).

The author lived in Vienna as a partner and manager of the Austrian Fleischverwertungsgesellschaft (Import and export of meat). When the Nazis came, he lost his job immediately and, some wekes later, was arrested and detained in a school-building, Karajangasse, together with many other Jews, until 1 June,1938, when they - about three thousand - were sent from the Westbahnhof to München; they were horribly ill-treated, and twelve of thern died on the journey (p.2).

At Dachau, the author met some decent and even benevolent people among the SS (p.2-3); he stresses also the decency of two camp-doctors, Dr. Wohlrat and Dr. Bader, whilst the doctor-in-chief would behave beastly as well as all the other SS-men; cruel punishments; informing Blockälteste, especially Dr. Ziffer who was slain by some detainees, after the transfer to Buchenwald (p.3-4). At Buchenwald, conditions were most dreadful - typhoid fever (p.4).

The author who already at Dachau had been a patient at the sick-bay was taken to Sachsenhausen, where the camp-doctor was rightly feared as a devil. Constant bribes for Blockälteste and Kapos, corruptible and informers all of them (p.4).

When his wife sent him a sham-visa for Argentina, procured by the friendly Consul General at Vienna, the author was released and came via Italy to England (p.5).

The author was a Landgerichtsrat in Danzig (p.1-6). In 1933 he was compelled to renounce his high position at the Court and had to go into retirement on “his free will”, in 1937, receiving a small indemnity for the loss of his pension (p.3). He wanted to emigrate to the USA, but an official of the consulate had been bribed so that he lost his opportunity. After trying in vain to get an entrance visa to other countries, the author and his wife succeeded in getting a tourist visa to Italy for four months. Italians as well as Danzig authorities proved helpful (p.4-6).

The only opportunity left to emigrate from Italy was to go to Central or South America which the author wanted to avoid as too many refugees had been robbed by the respective go-betweens (p.8).

In the summer 1940, there was a tansport of several hundred male refugees to Campagna near Eboli. Women and elderly couples were evacuated to Potenza (p.11-12). In both camps the refugees were permitted to live in private quarters. The author was transferred to the small camp of Tortoreto (province Teramo) which had a very unpleasant commander.

He was reunited with his wife in the large internment camp of Ferramonti - Tarsia near Cosenza. 1,500-2,000 prisoners behind barbed wire; self-government; the author’s wife became a teacher in the school for 100 children. The author himself was the leading judge in two weekly Judicial Sessions. Eager activities in various trades; a remarkable synagogue; 90 doctors and dentists doing good service; excellent musical performances, lectures, etc. (p.13-18).

Transfer to Picinisco near Cassino (p.18-34), where a remarkable part of the population had earned a fortune in England manufacturing ice-cream. Pleasant life in a beautiful villa of an absent Englishman; certain restrictions, unpleasant political official (p.20, 23, 33). The author underwent an operation in a nearby hospital where a Jewish prisoner was the chief doctor and his wife the chemist. Increasing difficulties to get food, i.e. the most necessary quantity. In 1943, the Germans began to collect Jewish refugees and to send them to Germany.

From October 1943, life in a small cave in the mountains near Fonteduno for 12 weeks, during which food was provided for the whole party by the author’s wife under the most difficult and dangerous circumstances (p.26-31).

On 28 December 1943 the couple journeyed back to Picinisco, where the German troops were behaving rather decently. Yellow Star. The interpreter at the Ortskommandantur gave them legal identity cards for a journey to Rome and later told them that he was a former Jewish prisoner of Ferramonti. On 6 January 1944, he warned them to flee the same night. German military drivers gave them a lift and one advised them to stay at Isola Liri, but the place and their nice room was bombed out already on the following morning. Lifts to Rome (p.36-44).

Signor Chierichietti gave them a room in Via Vittorio Veneto, the most beautiful street in Rome, where they stayed for 2½ years next to the German Generalkommando and the lodgings of the Commanding General, a district protected by specially strict measures. They got documents through the Red Cross, and through the most helpful and courageous Mr Levy, ration cards and orders for weekly payments. Convents provided soup and bread. When a lorry was blown up by a bomb, raids took place and 241 arrested were shot dead (p.40).

In June 1944 the last German troops left and the first Americans entered Rome. They were hailed enthusiastically and many refugees who had not dared to leave their houses for months went out into the streets to welcome them. The author’s wife found her mother in a dreadful state, as a beggar, in rags, living on refuse of vegetables in a half-rotten stable. She recovered in the camp of Cinecitta from where she emigrated to Mexico (p.42-43). Help through Joint and UNRRA. The USA offered all Jewish refugees free immigration, a year’s stay in the camp of Ontario and then complete freedom. About 900 accepted (p. 44). The author and his wife left for England in September 1946 where they joined their children after seven years of separation.

Mr Rothschild, born 1930 in Hamburg, emigrated with his parents to Antwerp. In 1940 all Jews there were forced to leave their flats, and Mr Rothschild went to Loewen, where he attended school until spring 1942.

When the Association Des Juifs De Belgique distributed the socalled “Labour Demand Notes“to the Jews, Mr Rothschild's mother, two brothers and several other relatives reported for work. They were deported and all of them perished. Mr Rothschild, with his Jewish nurse, went to an aunt, who managed to obtain a Haitian passport and pretended that Mr Rothschild was her child. They reported for internment in a camp for enemy aliens, and in June 1944 they were taken to Vittel near Nancy where they stayed until liberation.

Mr Rothschild's father had been interned first in St. Cyprien, then in Gurs, and from 1941 until 1944 he worked in the so-called “Groupement de Travailleurs Etrangers“.

In order to protect her younger daughter, the author took the advice of a friend of hers and approached a branch of the German ‘Arisierungs Kommission’, Den Haag (Dir. Dr. C Allmeyer) with the help of a Dutch solicitor. She declared that her daughter was the illegitimate child of an ‘Ayran‘ since living in America. The solicitor succeeded to get the young girl registered and by chance also her mother, and all of them (including the husband) got stamps certifying that they were excempt from the ‘Arbeitsdienst’. A year later, the young lady underwent a racial-biological examination at the university, where everybody proved eager to be helpful.

As conditions grew more and more difficult, the parents preferred to go into hiding, and their daughter had to pass another racial examination undertaken officially by a German professor of biology from Kiel who came to the Hague for that purpose twice a year. She was told he would charge fIs. 600 for her certificate, but would be satisfied to get a hundred. And for fIs.100 she became a Mischling Grade 1 and was saved from the yellow star and all difficulties and dangers.

The author, a Catholic journalist in Prague, was correspondent of the Berlin Film-Kurier, editor of Prager Montagsbeatt and-under the pen name “Christianus” author of Die Totengraber des Sudetendeutschen Katholizismus. After the Anschluss he helped Austrian refugees and worked at the St. Raphaelsverein. When Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, he fled with wife and child to Holland. He remarks bitterly about the bureaucratic attitude of the police who took him to a camp near Rotterdam and about the lack of understanding on the part of the camp administration in Sluis. Dr. Glaser's wife obtained a domestic post in England and took the child with her. Dr. Glaser became liaison man between the Czech National Committee in Paris and influential persons in occupied Czechoslovakia.

After Holland was invaded, Dr. Glaser fled to Belgium and was interned in Lombardzyde. Later, he lived in Middlekerke but was arrested by the Germans and after interrogations in Ghent and Allost, he was kept for weeks at the citadel of Huy under “catastrophic” conditions. After his release a fellow prisoner sent him to the monastery in Chevetogme whose prior found him a place in a refugee hostel in Brussels. Here, he earned his living by selling pictures of saints, published by the monastery. On the recommendation of the Abbe Augustin Van Roey Dr. Glaser got a room in an old men’s home in Ixelles in the winter 1940 - 1941, and was brought in contact with the Belgian resistance.

In August 1941 the Gestapo found out about Dr. Glaser’s earlier activities, and he had to report regularly at their offices in Avenue Louise. When the anti-Jewish laws were inforced, Dr. Glaser became a teacher at a Jewish school. In June 1942 he was given to understand at the Gestapo office, that it was advisable for him to disappear. With the help of Abbe Van Roey and the Resistance he reached Switzerland. He was interned at Neuenburg fortress, and during an interrogation in Berne he learned, that Dr. Jaromir Kopecky was helping Czech refugees. Dr. Glaser became Dr. Kopecky’s assistant in Geneva and tried to reach England via Spain in order to fill the post with the exiled Czech Government

Dr. Kopecky had obtained for him. But he was unsuccessful, and after his return to Switzerland he was sent to a labour camp in Mezzovico near Lugano. Upon intervention of “Caritas”, he later became secretary at the camps of Filisur and Inntertkirchen. In October 1943 he was released, and after a short period as civilian internee in Fribourg, he resumed his work for Dr. Kopecky. In March 1945 Dr. Kopecky’s office became the Embassy of the Czech Exile Goverment and was transferred to Berne, and in July Dr. Glaser was officially appointed Press Attaché. A little later he was reunited with wife and child.