George Wellers

Testimony about Conditions in France & Deportations from France

At the Eichmann Trial 9 May 1961

(Selected Extracts)

Presiding Judge: What is his full name?  

Witness: George Wellers

Presiding Judge: Please answer the questions put to you by Mr Bach

Answer: Yes

State Attorney: Where are you now living?

Answer: 6 Rue du Loing in Paris

Question: And what is your occupation?

Answer: I am Maitre de Recherches (Senior Researcher) at the National Centre for Scientific Research

Question: You also work at the Faculty of Medicine at the Sorbonne, don’t you?

Answer: Yes, I work at the Faculty of Medicine at the Sorbonne

Question: In what capacity?

Answer: I direct a laboratory of physiological research

Question: You were awarded a prize of the Academy of Medicine, weren’t you?

Answer: Yes

Question: Where were you born, Mr Wellers?

Answer: I was born in Koslov in Russia

Question: And when did you arrive in France?

Answer: In 1929

Question: You got married in Latvia and have two children?

Answer: Yes

Question: You have been a French citizen since 1938?

Answer: Yes  

Question: In 1939 you joined the French Army when the war broke out?

Answer: Yes

Question: Where were you in June 1940, when the Germans occupied France?

Answer: In the Bordeaux region

Question: And you were then released from the army and returned to Paris?

Answer: Yes

Question: And you went back to your work in the physiological laboratory at the Faculty of Medicine?

Answer: Yes

Question: Mr Wellers, which was the first razzia (round-up) carried out by the Germans against the Jews in France?

Answer: Well, the first major round –up took place in May 1941

Question: Who were the people arrested on that occasion?

Answer: Foreigners – the German, Austrian, Polish and Czechoslovakian Jews in Paris. They were asked to go to the Police station to check their civil status, and when they showed up they were arrested. These were all men, adult men.

Question: Where were these people taken?

Answer: They were taken to the Orleans region, a hundred kilometres to the South of Paris, to two camps called Beaune- la- Rolande and Pithviers. Those were the first two camps which were set up.

Question: When was the second time Jews were arrested?

Answer: The second great round-up took place on the 2 of August 1941 in Paris. They combed the 11^th arrondissment of the capital which had the densest Jewish population, and in one day – going to one house after another, one shop after another, and checking the personal documents of passers-by in the streets – they arrested all the Jews, all able-bodied men.

I forgot to point out that, in the course of these arrests, about 4,000 people were arrested, and in August, about 6,000 and in addition, in the city, outside the 11^th arrondisement, they arrested about forty of the most prominent advocates, including Pierre Masse, for instance, a very well known lawyer who formerly, in Clemenceau’s time had been a Minister.

Question: Which camp were these people taken to?

Answer: They were taken to the Paris suburbs, to the suburb called Drancy. They were put into a place which was a kind of “city” – a collection of buildings forming a square with an interior courtyard.

The buildings were not yet completed, so that the staircase led to large rooms of somewhat strange appearance. Each of them was to contain two or three apartments.

Presiding Judge: Was he at the place he has described?

Witness Wellers: No, not at that time, but I arrived there a few months later.

State Attorney Bach: Mr Wellers, when were Jews required to register as Jews in Paris?

Witness Wellers: It was a German ordinance signed by the Millitar- Befehlshaber in Frankreich (Officer Commanding the Military Forces in France) and dated 27 September 1940.

A short time afterwards – I think two or three days afterwards- there appeared in the French press – which at that time we called the German press in the French language – an announcement of Petain’s Police giving a timetable of the dates at which people had to present themselves for registration in alphabetical order. Thus, I personally was called on 19 October 1940.

Question: Mr Wellers, could you please tell us briefly how you registered, and also tell us what particulars you gave in the case of your wife?

Answer: Well, one had to present oneself and to declare oneself and one’s children. I declared myself as Jewish and I declared my children as Jewish, but I did not declare my wife, which was tantamount to declaring her as non-Jewish.  

Question: When were you arrested Mr Wellers?

Answer: I was arrested on 12 December 1941

Question: By whom?

Answer: By a single policeman who came to my home at five or six in the morning.

Question: A policeman?

Answer: One single German policeman

Question: And you were taken first to the Ecole Militaire (Military Academy) in Paris?

Answer: Yes

Question: When you were taken there, what explanation was given to you and to the others concerning your arrest?

Answer: Well, we were received by a group of SS men who received us shouting and joking. They told us that on the previous day, 11 December, Hitler had made a speech in which he had stated that Germany had declared war on the United States, and as Hitler had previously declared that if there was another war, it was the Jews who would pay for it, it was these Jews who would pay for the entry of the United States into the war.

Presiding Judge: Did Hitler declare war on the United States? I think the United States declared war on Germany.

Witness Wellers: No, I think it was Germany which declared war on the United States.

State Attorney Bach: After the Japanese attack on the United States, Hitler declared war on America. This is what I remember.

Witness Wellers: Might I just add something? 

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/wellers.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2010