Eichmann Trial -- Session 71-- Witness Vera Alexander

The camera fades in on empty chairs by the prosecution and defense tables followed by a fade out and cuts to an overhead shot of the same empty chairs. The camera zooms out to show the whole courtroom. People are heard talking in the background from the audience seating. (00:02:10). Adolf Eichmann enters the booth with documents in his arms. Attorney General Gideon Hausner enters. All rise as the judges enter and Judge Landau announces the opening of Session 71 (00:06:14). Hausner calls the witness Vera Alexander to the stand. Judge Landau asks for quiet in the court and the witness is sworn in. Alexander begins by giving an account in Hebrew of her arrest and deportation to Auschwitz (00:09:24) as well as her arrival at the camp and the block to which she was assigned. Hausner questions her about her work detail at Auschwitz and Alexander testifies to her appointment as a block elder (00:15:01). The witness states that she used her position to help other prisoners and describes her placement in the hospital block when she fell ill. She notes that once she was appointed a block elder she was given a whip from Irma Grese to beat prisoners with and defiantly states that she never used the whip (00:21:59). Testimony continues with Alexander describing the various staff positions at the camp, including those of the Rapportschreiberin and the Schreibstube (00:23:17). Hausner asks the witness whether she knew of the two Slovakian boys that had escaped from Auschwitz and Alexander states that she knew both of them by name (00:26:15). She gives an account of Dr. Mengele and his experimentation on twins (00:27:33) as well as the arrival of Hungarian Jews and the orders she received not to tell them about their fate. Testimony then turns to the subject of children: whether the witness saw children being taken to be killed and if the presence of children was a risk for adults (00:32:43). Alexander describes one incident in which a woman with a child came into her block and when the child was taken away the woman committed suicide by electrocuting herself on the electrified barbed wire fence (00:33:39). This duplicates footage found on Tape 2087 (at 00:45:28) but is more complete than Tape 2087.