Eva Ackermann - December 6, 1982
Prosecuting a Kapo After the War
The Kapo?
Yes, I did. The Americans were uh, very interested and they uh, I don't know, I just signed an affidavit, I don't know if they brought him to trial. He happened to be a Lithuanian Jew and he was uh, he was a young man, a very cruel young man. He was--he had uh, authority over everybody and it was his doing that, it was his doing that it got to the SS. It was, it was uh, he was the one who reported it to the SS and it was his doing that I was so uh, put to shame innocently and uh, he did, he did a lot of cruel things, so after the war when they convinced me, a lot of people did uh, uh go after him, because he, he was the one with uh, good uh, good teeth that I mentioned before that uh, got knocked out of uh, I don't remember--I think living, they were still living because, God knows there were enough courts to uh, go around and to, uh....
He didn't knock the gold teeth out of the older men's....
Yeah, he did and he and his little crew of, I don't know, a few people, but they convinced me that I would be doing uh, the, the memories of all the other people that he uh, suffered under him. See, the Germans put him in charge. They would not put somebody who uh, couldn't do work than they did. He did worse, he did actually--why should they, why, what, they didn't have to do, they didn't do the dirty work. They, they knew who they would, I mean it was curiously enough, he was a very intelligent man, but he was a very uh, cruel man and I don't, I really don't know what, uh the outcome was, if he was uh, if he was prosecuted or not, I--this, this part is kind of hazy for me.
Do you remember his name?
He went by the name of uh, Negrus. They called him because he resembled uh, uh, the Abyssinian....
So he was black....
Well, he wasn't black, but he had....
But you don't know his real name.
Yes, and uh, that's what....
But you don't know his real name.
I don't know his real name, no. That's the name he uh, they, they called him.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn