Leaving Kestner, Matignon, and Savigny to go to the Prison St. Michel in Toulouse, Bömelburg and I, accompanied by six SS men, set off on the sixty-five-kilometer drive south to Le Vernet. Frau Kemmerich did not come with us, as it seemed her husband was after all in another French concentration camp at Moisdon-la-Rivière, in Brittany.

Le Vernet was near Pamiers and the camp was a short way south of the local railway station, which Bömelburg described as “convenient.” There was a cemetery to the north of the camp, but he neglected to mention if that was convenient, too, although I was sure it would be: Le Vernet was even worse than Gurs. Surrounded by miles of barbed wire in an otherwise deserted patch of French countryside, the many huts looked like coffins laid out after some giant’s battle. They were in a deplorable state, as were the two thousand men who were imprisoned there, many of them emaciated and guarded by well-fed French gendarmes. The prisoners labored to build an inadequate road between the railway station and the cemetery. There were four roll calls a day, each of them lasting half an hour. We arrived just before the third, explained our mission to the French policeman in charge, and he handed us politely over to the care of a vile-looking officer who smelled strongly of aniseed, and his yellow-faced Corsican sergeant. They listened as Oltramare translated the details of our mission. Monsieur Aniseed nodded and led the way into the camp.

Bömelburg and I followed, pistols in hand, as we had been warned that the men of hut 32, the “Leper Barrack,” were considered the most dangerous in Camp Le Vernet. Oltramare followed at a distance, also armed. And the three of us waited outside while several French gendarmes entered the pitch-black barrack and drove the occupants outside with whips and curses.

These men were in a disgraceful condition—worse than at Gurs, and even worse than Dachau. Their ankles were swollen and their bellies distended from starvation. They wore cheap-looking galoshes on their feet and the same ragged clothing they’d probably been wearing since the winter of 1937 when they had fled the advance of Franco’s Nationalist Army. Some of them were half naked. They were all infested with vermin. They knew what was coming but were too beaten to sing “The Internationale” in defiance of our presence.

It took several minutes for the barrack to empty and the men to line up again. Just when you thought the barrack couldn’t contain any more men, others came out until there were 350 of them paraded in front of us. The judgment line from purgatory to hell could not have looked more abject. And with every second I was confronted with their emaciated, unshaven faces, the more I wanted to shoot Monsieur Aniseed and his fat gendarmes.