Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982
Arrival at Dora
Did you know anything about any experimentations...
No.
....on people being done?
No, not to my knowledge.
All right. Any killings by execution that you're aware of?
No, not, not that time.
Okay.
Not that time. Anyhow, we stayed there for a short time, like maybe ten, eleven, twelve days, we got new clothing and...
Striped uniforms and wooden shoes.
Yeah, striped uniforms, you know, and, and uh, very little food. Because the--at that time all those camps--it--the German, they were already in very bad shape and they, they didn't even have where to put the people anymore. They brought them in from Poland and Czechoslovakia, from all over, wherever they had. And those camps they were not built to, to take in so many people. But anyhow, we stayed there for a few days.
Oh, just days. Did you stay in an area called the Little Camp?
No, no. They took us--we stayed there just for a few days and then they took us to Dora.
To Dora.
Yeah, that was something--Dora was located--there was mountains from three sides, very, very high mountains ???. That place was guarded by planes. If a, if a plane went through within the mountain the sky it was not taller than this. I...
Four inches.
Yeah, you couldn't say that the space, the space up in the sky--the top of the mountain was just, just, just like this. And inside in the mountains they cut out factories--a whole city, not underground but in, here. The mountain--it was here--the mountain ends...
Mm-hm.
...there was railroad tracks and all things, and all kind of things. And they cut out insides, you could, you, you...
Tunneled, they tunneled the mountain...
Tunneled the mountains, yeah.
...and inside the mountains they built factories.
Yeah, in two side, in two sides, from one side they blow in air, because there were no air inside. And the other side the air went--it was miles and miles. There was twenty-eight different plants in there. Twenty-eight different holes they called it. Number one is twenty-eight. Every one was as big as a, as a factory at Ford Motor Company. When they did it prepare? How they did it prepare? Nobody, nobody knows. Where the built it they, they--the ??? the rockets. The first rockets--the first generation of rockets were built there. So from one side they had fifty thousand civilians working over the Germans, or maybe forced labors from the European country, which were not in concentration camp.
Prisoners of war.
Prisoners of war. And from the other side, there was a concentration camp. Nobody could survive there more than a few months.
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