ODESSA - a fake or fact?

[David Guyatt]

Btw, I didn't mean to imply in the foregoing that SS Sturmbannfuhrer did not exist in reality. He did and was a beast, was tried for his crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment - a far too lenient punishment.

Axis History:

S.S. Haupsturmfuehrer Gebauer instituted at the Yanovska Camp a savage system of extermination. After his appointment to another post this system was "perfected" by camp commandants S.S. Obersturmfuehrer Gustav Wilhaus and S.S. Haupsturmfuehrer Franz Warzok.

"With my own eyes" (a former inmate of the camp told the Commission) "I saw S.S. Haupsturmfuehrer Fritz Gebauer strangle women and children. I saw them place men to freeze in barrels of water, in the depth of winter. The barrels were filled with water, and then the victims were tied hand and foot and put into the water. The doomed people remained in the barrels until they froze to death."

Other delightful specimens at the Yanovska camp had sport in different ways:

S.S. Haupsturmfuehrer Franz Warzok, for instance, liked to hang war prisoners to poles by the feet, and leave them in this position until they died. Obersturmbannfuehrer Rokita personally ripped open war-prisoners' stomachs. The Chief of the Investigation Department of the Yanovska Camp, Heine, used to perforate the bodies of war prisoners with a spike or iron rod; he used to pull out the finger-nails of women prisoners with pliers, then undress his victims, hang them by the hair and set them swinging. Then he would shoot at the "moving target".

The Commandant of the Yanovska Camp, Obersturmfuehrer Wilhaus, partly for sport, and partly to amuse his wife and daughter, used regularly to fire a tommy-gun from the balcony of camp office at war prisoners occupied in the workshops. Then he would pass his tommy-gun to his wife, who also shot at them. On one occasion, to please his nine-year old daughter, Wilhaus made someone toss two four-year-old children into the air, while he fired at them. His daughter applauded and cried: "Papa, do it again, papa, do it again!" He did so.

In this camp war prisoners were exterminated without any pretext, often for a bet. The witness Kirschner informed the Investigation Committee that Wepke, a Gestapo Kommissar, boasted to other camp executioners that he would cut a boy into two parts with one blow of a hatchet. They did not believe him, so he caught a ten-year-old boy in the street, forced him to his knees, made him put his palms together and hide his face in them, made a trial stroke, adjusted the boy's head and with a single blow of the hatchet slashed him in two. The Hitlerites congratulated Wepke warmly, and shook him by the hand.

[….]

The Germans conducted their tortures, beatings and shootings to the accompaniment of music. For this purpose they organised a special orchestra of prisoners. They forced Professor Stricks and the well-known conductor Mund to lead this orchestra. They told composers to write a special tune, which they called "The Death Tango". Not long before the camp was liquidated the Germans shot all the members of the orchestra.