Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982
Treatment in Dora
What was the treatment like? Were there Kapos--Jewish Kapos?
No, no, I told--there was no Jewish problem anymore, that, that, the Jewish trouble was already solved in there.
But were there Kapos there?
There was Kapos, every few people had their Kapo. The most of them were criminals.
They were German criminals.
Not Jews. Even Germany--criminals from all over Europe, you know. In, in, in--under--in Hitler Germany, if somebody committed a crime, a crime like we considered an act--a criminal act and he got a, and he got a, a jail sentence, a year or ten months--after he finished his sentence he didn't release that person, he sent 'em to a concentration camp.
And uh, they were your supervisors.
The supervisors were German professionals. You, we couldn't built rockets. You had to have uh, Von Braun was the chief over there.
Oh, and how did they...
From, from every, every step you have German engineers, German civilian people were supervising those things--they were watching those things. And SS--armed SS were watching the things, because we couldn't built it, we could just, we just schleppers, you know.
Oh, in other words you didn't really assemble it.
We assemble--we, e...e...even the assembling required a lot of feasible, visible work, you know.
Oh, so you didn't...
But we--everything was done under strict supervision. Let's say the Germans put together the pipes and they, and they took one of the prisoners and asked him to tighten the thing like this.
Uh-huh.
You know, they, they used as much help as they could.
So the treatment was particularly cruel there.
Very cruel, very cruel.
There were beatings?
Not, not, not, just--by going by, you can beat you up for nothing.
And you didn't find that in these other uh, labor camps that you were in.
There were beatings there too, but, the, the situ...the, the, the, the atmosphere was a little bit--the people were there were different.
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