LOUISE ALCAN

On 25 August 1947 in Kraków, a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Appellate Investigative Judge Jan Sehn, acting upon written request of the first prosecutor of the Supreme National Tribunal, this dated 25 April 1947 (file no. NTN 719/47), and in accordance with the provisions of and procedure provided for under the Decree of 10 November 1945 (Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland No. 51, item 293), in connection with Article 254, 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed the inmate of the Auschwitz concentration camp named below as a witness, who testified as follows:


Name and surname Louise Alcan
Date and place of birth 17 February 1910, Paris
Citizenship and nationality French
Place of residence Paris, 48 Avenue de la Motte-Picquet
Occupation secretary of the Association of Former Inmates of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp

I was deported to Auschwitz in a mass transport from Drancy near Paris. This transport was comprised of 1,200 people of all ages and both sexes. There were many children in this transport.

On 6 February 1944 we arrived at the ramp in Birkenau. There the SS men carried out a selection, during which only 49 women, including me, and about 150 men were selected from our transport. The rest – some thousand people – were sent to the gas chambers straight from the ramp.

I stayed in the Auschwitz camp until 18 January 1945. After quarantine I worked in a weaving workshop (Weberei) in Birkenau, and from 6 October 1944 onwards in the subcamp in Rajsko. Aufseherin Bormann was the head of that camp (Lagerführerin). Some time later, Aufseherin Alice Orlowski and her friend Elert arrived in Rajsko. Both of them took up quarters there and ran our subcamp in the place of Bormann, who left Rajsko after their arrival. Orlowski stayed in Rajsko for a few days. I witnessed how she beat prisoners in the face during roll calls at the time. After a few days, Orlowski was transferred to the subcamp in Budy, and Elert assumed command of the camp in Rajsko.

I was transferred from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück, and from there I was sent to a subcamp in Malchow. I arrived there on 11 February 1945 and stayed until 2 April 1945. A few days after my arrival in Malchow, I met Aufseherin Luisa Danz, who took command of that camp as its Lagerführerin.

She maintained strict discipline in the camp. We suffered from hunger. At first we received only one loaf of bread for five prisoners per day. Next, Danz cut the ration to one eighth and later one tenth of a loaf per prisoner. Danz starved us in this way although the storerooms were full of bread, which was rotting.

During this short period of time which I spent in Malchow, Danz punished all prisoners with prolonged standing (Strafestehen), which lasted for 4–5 hours each time. I also witnessed how Danz beat a prisoner about the head with her hands so hard that the woman fell to the ground.

The report was read out.