Barbie Trial -- Day 12 -- A witness and a civil party testify

Barbie Trial -- Day 12 -- A witness and a civil party testify 

Barbie Trial -- Day 12 -- A witness and a civil party testify 

16:07 The next witness, Mrs. Raymonde Guyon, presents herself to the court and is sworn in; the witness describes her participation in the dissemination of clandestine Resistance newspapers during the war, while in high school and then university; her fiancé at that time met law professors who were involved in the Resistance and they both became formally involved through these professors; she describes creating false papers, with which entire families of Jews were able to escape to Switzerland, and outlines the challenges involved in writing, printing, and distributing the newspaper 'Témoignage Chrétien' ('Christian Testimony) clandestinely 16:12 Mrs. Guyon describes the infiltration of 'Témoignage Chrétien' by a Gestapo agent; her husband's arrest and her subsequent attempts to warn her network; her own arrest by plainclothes Gestapo agents; imprisonment at Montluc and repeated interrogation by Barbie, who threatened to arrest her parents if she and her husband would not speak; Barbie interrogated Mrs. Guyon and her husband together, and he threatened to kill her husband in front of her 16:21 The witness describes her deportation from Montluc to the Romainville transit camp and then to Ravensbrueck; her arrival in Ravensbrueck and the terrors witnessed there; her subsequent departure on a work transport to a salt mine and its adjacent subterranean V2 missile factory; she describes daily life in the mine and factory, particularly the lack of hygiene 16:32 The witness describes the forced evacuation of the camp by train, which seemed to travel randomly through the countryside without destination; the women ate and drank almost nothing for 12 days, and each morning were told to throw from the train the bodies of those who had died the previous night; they arrived at a police camp in Hamburg, where they were forced to dig mass graves; she was then sent on another train to the Danish border, where the Danish Red Cross fed them and transported them to freedom in Sweden 16:37 President Cerdini asks the witness how she identified her interrogator as Barbie 16:38 Prosecutor Bermann comments on the execution of the witness' husband, Doctor Belot, and asks the witness whether she is capable of forgiving Barbie and others responsible; she replies that she is not 16:41 Cerdini suspends the hearing 17:19 Cerdini resumes the hearing and calls a civil party, Esther Majerowicz, to testify; the victim presents herself to the court; she describes her arrest and preliminary interrogation in an abandoned tobacco factory, and subsequent transport to the Gestapo headquarters at Place Bellecourt, along with her brothers and sisters; two weeks' incarceration at Montluc; transport to Drancy on a passenger train and month spent there 17:32 The witness describes being called to meet with several Gestapo officers, where they beat her and told her she would be sent 'to a place from whence she would not return'; she describes the transport to Auschwitz via cattle train;"the arrival in Auschwitz is impossible to describ" 17:42 End of tape