The Pittsburgh Press (September 5, 1944)
Infamous murder factory decried by Nazi general
Russian press prints letter denouncing ‘killing of hundreds of thousands’
Moscow, USSR (UP) –
The Soviet press today published a letter by the captured former German commander at Lublin, Poland, in which he denounced the infamous Majdanek “murder factory” and called on all soldiers who were under his command to testify “about the unheard-of crimes which occurred in the extermination camp of which they have knowledge.”
The letter was addressed to the Red Army command by Lt. Gen. Milmar Moser, last commandant of the 372nd Feldkommandatur at Lublin. He said that to his knowledge “hundreds of thousands” of persons were killed.
Moser said:
I have always been an honest soldier, have participated in two World Wars and have been seriously wounded. I have no reason to be silent about Hitler’s great crimes or to cover them up.
‘Told not to pry’
Moser said he took over command at Lublin in late November 1942. His predecessor, Gen. von Altrock, told him there was a concentration camp nearby but that an army order strictly forbade a representative of the armed forces to visit the camp or make inquiries about activities inside.
The military commander of the Governor Generalship of Poland, Gen. Heinicke, also told him not to pry, for “things happening there are like red-hot iron, you can’t touch them,” Moser said.
Nevertheless, Moser said, he tried to get more information. On one occasion, while on official duty, he went 30 yards inside the barbed-wire fence surrounding the 19-square-mile camp, and learned “a great deal about what was going on inside.”
‘Women, children shot’
He said:
In the winter of 1943-44, a great number of people imprisoned in the camp were destroyed and to my great indignation they included women and children. The number killed reached hundreds of thousands.
Some were shot, some gassed. I was told several times that people doomed to death had to do extremely heavy work exceeding their physical strength and were forced to do it under heavy beating.
Moser’s letter continued:
I learned with indignation that prisoners were tortured before being killed. Last spring, numberless corpses were exhumed and burned in special furnaces to cover up traces of crimes committed on Hitler’s orders. Gigantic furnaces were built. They were crematoria with great capacity.
The smell of the corpses frequently reached the town of Lublin, at least the far eastern part of it, and even less informed people realized what was happening in the dreadful place.
Moser named the German commanders and German civilian authorities from whom he got most of his information.
“I find no words to express my indignation,” he said.