Elvira_Manthey_testimony part 3 of 3
given at the Foucault Tribunal, Berlin 1998
for more info: www.foucault.de
“Then she stood in front of the table. The papers were checked and she turned around, made two large steps, opened the iron door. The child hung in the air and it tried to run and it moved it's legs but the legs hung in the air. The woman opened the iron door and threw the child into the gas-chamber. I wanted to start crying; I had tears in the eyes but I had a guardian angel. Suddenly there was a voice which said: "Don't you cry". So I didn't cry; I only watched. Suddenly I had a completely different emotion. All the children had gone into the gas-chamber and I still stood there between the table and the pile of clothes.

They shouted at me to undress as quickly as possible. I wore a dress with many buttons. I slowly opened the buttons and threw the dress on the pile of clothes. I was lucky again; I had shoes with laces. I slowly untied the laces and then I threw the shoes on the pile of other shoes. When I was naked, the man grabbed my left arm, pulled me towards the table and turned me around. I now stood naked in front of the table.

I was asked: "What's your name?." "Elvira Hempel." "How old are you?" "I'm eight." (It was shortly before my ninth birthday). I was allowed to put on my clothes again, which were still lying on top of the pile of clothes. So I put on the clothes again; I was brought across the yard into another building. We went up some stairs and there were iron bars which reached from the ceiling to the ground and in these iron bars there was a door. The woman unlocked the door and pushed me into the hall. Two children, who had also been on the bus, were there already. Then the door was locked again and we three children were locked in. They were very small cells and since this entire building was divided by iron bars, we could see the entire building or at least the entire floor. After we had recovered from our first shock, we found out that we were in prison. Today I know that it was the old Brandenburg-Havel prison.

Well, after I had recognized the prison on T.V., I wrote to Mr. Honecker and that was the first time that someone had told me that I was officially an “idiot, constituting a public danger, feeble-minded, hereditary ill, perverse, unkempt and unable to get educated“. This is still valid today. I wrote a book called: "The Hempelsche" and I fight for my human dignity. I think all these things must be taken away but it is unpleasant to talk about this because many of the offenders were awarded the "Order of the Federal Republic of Germany" later on. But my struggle goes on.”