LONDON: A young Dutchman has escaped from a German concentration camp to tell how he and other prisoners were herded into gas chambers and treated as “Guineapigs” in a series of experiments. The man, who escaped from Malthaueren in Austria last spring and is now lying seriously ill in hospital, has arrived in a neutral country. His authenticated story reached Reuter last night [Dec 15].

Arrested in the summer of 1942, the Dutchman was the first sent to the camp near Malthaueren. He and 27 fellow victims were taken to a factory containing a number of laboratories and gas chambers the size of a living room, with three windowless concrete walls and a fourth wall of thick glass through which chemists and physiologists watched the “experiments”. After being sent into the gas chamber naked, but wearing gasmasks on two occasions, during the third experiment, 14 of them went in without gasmasks and were kept in the chamber for half an hour.

Describing this experience, the escaped man said, “After a few minutes all the men vomited and became dizzy ... For four days the vomiting and dizziness persisted. Six days later, we heard from the guards that 40 young Jews from Amsterdam had been exposed to the same ordeal and that all had died.”

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2018