Hamburg January 28
The Simon Wiesenthal Center's chief Nazi-hunter, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, today attended animportant session of the ongoing trial of Stutthof guard Bruno Dey, to hear the testimony of Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor Halina Strnad, a 93-year old retired medical scientist.
In an extremely clear and cogent testimony, Strnad described in graphic terms the horrificconditions for the Jewish inmates in the Stutthof concentration camp near Gdansk. Arriving there after 3 1/2 years in the Lodz ghetto, from which she was deported to Auschwitz, and a brief stayin that death camp, Strnad and her mother arrived in Stutthof in September 1944. She explained in great detail the trials and tribulations of the Jewish inmates who were housed in a barrackwithout any bunks, and only a bit of straw on the ground. Without virtually any hygienic facilities and very little food, the inmates suffered from intense hunger and, in many cases, disease. Sheherself came down with typhus, and her mother died in her arms of the disease.
According to Zuroff:
"If anyone needed any proof of the incredible importance of survivor testimony, even atthis late date, Halina Strnad's extremely lucid, graphic description of the conditions in Stutthof are a clear example of their value. In this case, the irony is that both the survivor and thesuspect are the same age, and each appears to be in relatively good health, reinforcing the validity of the prosecution of suspected Nazi war criminals, even when they reach this age."
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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over400,000 member families in the The United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin AmericanParliament (Parlatino).