(AFP-Barron's) Dario Thuburn - The pyres of burning bodies in the forests around Nazi Germany's Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig still haunt Marek Dunin-Wasowicz, 93, a witness in the trial of former SS guard Bruno Dey. Dunin-Wasowicz spent several months in the camp aged 17 after being arrested as a suspected member of the Polish resistance. He said he felt "honor-bound" to speak out for the more than 60,000 people killed at the camp and for the few survivors who are still alive. By the time he arrived, the concentration camp was turning into an extermination camp, part of the Nazi plan to systematically eliminate European Jews. He remembers seeing "silhouettes" of people walking towards the gas chamber, undressing before entering, and later some prisoners who "hauled out the corpses." "The crematorium couldn't keep up with the cremations, so they started to burn corpses on pyres outside the camp," he said.
2020-07-23 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive