Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust. Michael J. Bazyler

300 to 400 prisoners, many of which were inoperable in the winter. Two sinks were meant to serve 800 inmates. As a result, dysentery, tuberculosis, and typhus were rampant and no steps were taken to prevent the spread of contagious diseases.³⁵

      The daily ration for inmates was designed to starve them to death. Breakfast consisted of a half-liter of synthetic coffee; the midday meal was made up of three-fourths to one liter of “watery soup,” which occasionally contained cabbage leaves or rotten potato peeling; and the evening meal consisted of a slice of bread and a thin slice of sausage, cheese or margarine, and a liter of soup. Put together, the maximum daily caloric content of these meals was between 500 to 700 calories, on rare occasion reaching 1,000 calories. According to prosecution witness Dr. Franz Blaha, a Czech physician who worked at Dachau towards the latter part of its existence, sawdust replaced some of the flour in the bread, rendering the overall diet even more void of caloric and nutritional value. The workday of those given these minimal amounts started at four thirty in the morning with a roll call, and ended late at night, with eleven to thirteen hours of physically taxing labor in between.³⁶ It is a further barometer of the aggressiveness of assigned defense counsel that they objected to Blaha’s testimony on the ground that as a Czech, he was a citizen of a country not at war with Germany. The objection was overruled.³⁷

      A large number of frightening discipline devices were used by the SS guards. These were invoked for the slightest pretext or for no pretext at all. Many of these torture methods were interwoven with severe weather conditions, whether cold, snow, or rain. A representative, though definitely not complete, list of what Dachau prisoners were regularly exposed to, includes:

      1. The “twenty-five”—an inmate’s feet were locked in place, the inmate bent over, and twenty-five lashes with a whip were applied to the prisoner’s buttocks; more, if the prisoner failed to keep count as the punishment was administered or even at the whim of the SS individual administering or ordering the punishment.

      2. Hanging by the wrists for an hour to an hour and a half while being beaten. In a situation where simply surviving can be defined as heroism, one instance emerges that, for want of a better term, can be called heroism plus. One of the inmates, Bodigan Krajewski, was born in that part of Poland that was German at the time of his birth—presumably before the creation of Poland in 1918. One of the defendants directed Krajewski to designate himself as a German by birth. Krajewski refused, saying it would bring dishonor to him, that he was a Pole by birth, not a German. Krajewski was then subjected to whipping, while hanging by the wrists, again and again, but maintained his refusal to state he was German. The torture ended without Krajewski having relented.³⁸

      3. Solitary confinement for days in a dungeon without food or water.

      4. Standing in a cell about the size of a coffin not high enough to permit erect standing but too confined to permit resting in a position of comfort.

      5. Forcing an inmate to hold a lit cigar in the palms until it burned out completely—called euphemistically the “human ashtray.”

      Three additional methods went beyond discipline and were designed instead to end in death.

      6. Hanging, sometimes with a device so that the choking effect would begin once a prisoner loosened his muscles.

      7. Shooting.

      8. Medical experiments. These will be discussed in detail with reference to the defendants Weiss and Schilling.³⁹

      Finally, before turning to some of the individual defendants, we note the ubiquitous trains and their major role in the killing process, representing one of the primary symbols of the Holocaust. Dachau was at both ends of the process by which trains were used to murder and weaken those in the custody of the Third Reich. Persons sent by train to Dachau for confinement were cramped into brutally inhumane conditions and kept as such longer than many could possibly tolerate. By the time the trains arrived at Dachau, many had died from suffocation, hunger, thirst, or some combination of these horrors. Similarly, persons were sent from Dachau, usually to Auschwitz, for extermination. These involved comparable conditions, but now for inmates on the verge of death. Dachau inmates knew full well that a transport to Auschwitz, many hundreds of miles away, meant almost certain death. Since it was usually the sick and disabled who were sent, resistance was impossible.

      It would be impossible in these pages to deal with the evidence as to each of the forty Dachau defendants. With a view to providing as broad a perspective as possible, we have chosen to look at the evidence relating to four defendants: Martin Weiss, commandant at Dachau; Dr. Klaus Schilling, responsible for malaria experiments; Josef Jarolin, an SS officer responsible for discipline; and Emil Mahl, a kapo.

      Specific Defendants

      Martin Weiss: Commandant

      Weiss had a long history at Dachau. From 1933 to 1938, he was in charge of technical issues at the camp such as electrical power, heating, etc. From 1938 to 1940, he was adjutant—second in command. For the next two years he was commandant of smaller concentration camps, returning to Dachau is September 1942, where he stayed as commandant until November 1943. To some, Weiss was known as “the good commandant,” an image central to his defense.