George Alexander: 
I wonder if you could tell the jury how you were selected and how the other children, with whom you shared the institution, were selected for being there?

Elvira Manthey (translated from German):
In this home there was a murder house – the children were murdered there. There were children with disabilties there and I assume they had been tormented and inspected and things. Completely healthy children were murdered right at the children's ward. They were murdered by injections. If there was a transport with children that arrived, within two or three days, there was room again and these bunks that had been set up were taken away. 

I can remember that one child that came had only one eye. It was completely normal. As a kid you know very clearly whether a child is normal or not. This child was given an injection and it was in our sleeping room and then the next morning when I was helping the child to be washed – I held the bowl – the child was dying. It was all curled-up like this and the nurse wanted to wash it's palm but it made a sort of cracking sound and she didn't do it and in the evening the child was gone. 

G. A.:
There were some children there, presumably because they were phsysical cripples, they had physical disabilities and there were some there like yourself, brought by the circumstances you described. Can you say any more about what you knew about how the other children, who were neither physically handicapped, nor connected with criminal acitvity, how they got there? How did you find that out?

One child was as old as me, roughly, and it had a lot of scars on it. It was a girl and she had quite a small mouth and it all seemed to be getting smaller. And I said to her: "What happened to you?" and she said: "I had epileptic fits at home and her face banged into an oven and these were burns that she had, scars from burns. And this child was killed with us. It was perfectly normal, apart from that.

G. A.:
Does any member of the jury have a question?

Richard Vatz:
I just have a question, because I misunderstand something. The fact that there were incorrect assessments of problems is quite irrelevant, isn't it? In other words, the killing of children, whether they are ill or not ill, is horrendously contemptuous. In other words, there seems to be – and I've heard this before – the argument made, that there was an incorrect assessment. But that seems to me to be quite irrelevant. Am I correct or incorrect. I am clear.

I think you're talking about this wrong diagnosis that I mentioned. I was sort of classified as an idiot, born as an idiot and incapable of being educated and this classification has remained with me. I have in my book said that I was never different and neglected and all of the things that they said. 

R. V.:
That is horrendous, but it just seems to me that the acts of brutality against children makes so secondary the correctness or incorrectness of diagnosis. But the compelling point is the tendency to harm the children. The fact that they were diagnosed correctly or incorrectly seems to me to be quite a secondary point. The violence against the children would seem to me to be the compelling point. Am I right?

Yes, I fellt it on my own body. But we were considered people who were simply not worthy and unworthy people were not considered as having the right to live.

Wolf-Dieter Narr (translated from German):
It is always horrible to have to differentiate here because the entire state was Nazi terror. But in this "selection" – to use the Nazi word – this choice of people, was it linked to psychiatry in any way? Many of the things you have said are "physical" disadvantages, if you like. What specifically had to do with psychiatry?

A selection on the basis of psychiatry. I was seen to have taken on through heredity the criminal aspects of my parents. My sister as well. They were taken to a Catholic children's residential home. Only because the Catholics were a little more careful. But Anhalt-Saxony, for example, was very much in the hands of the Nazis. Thuringen less so. My brother at age 12 had to forced labor and the proceeds went to this Catholic home. My third brother was a smithy and a carriage builder. He was the only one who had actually learned a trade. And he was treated very well by this Nazi, who he worked with and he volotarily registered with the "Waffen-SS" and he had to have a health-pass with him and there weren't allowed to be any people with mental health problems in his history, no Jews and no gypsies. And then he was allowed to go into the "Waffen-SS". 

Only my sister and I, because we stayed in Saxony-Anhalt, we were considered unworthy. At the age of eight I was to be sterilized, it says in my file and it also says that "the child is not yet capable of reproduction so there is time for this sterilization. And if I hadn't been able to leave by the age of eleven, I would have been sterilized. But this way I managed to have a daughter, two grand-children and three great-grand-children too – I am seventy.

G. A.:
Are you presently still officially listed as having a mental disability?

I am fighting at the moment to have these files not seen as "health files". I want to have these files myself, then I would feel rehabilitated. So far I have had no success in doing this, but I try and go public as much as I can and I know I am going to achieve this. I am not going to give up!

G.A.:
Please recall, members of the audience, that you are free to participate as well. So if you have questions, please raise your hand and we will put those questions to the witness as well. It may be that nobody further wants to elaborate the horror that has been presented by this testimony, which is easy enough to understand.

Audience:
I would like to know where this file is being kept. Who has your files?

E.M.:
People who were gassed, these files are in the federal archives and the files are always where the victim was last – gas-chamber, insitute. Those who died in an institute or murdered there, these files are with these institutes. My file was taken out of the institute I was in and is in the main archives in Magedburg and is read and I just think it is unbelievable that my address, my name are in this file. I just think this is unbelievable and I'm not going to give up – it is a humiliation that I am forced to go through here. I mean, we are victims – I mean there is protection of data, there is protection of human dignity in the constitution and these things are being violated here. 

Audience (translated from German):
My name is Kramer. I am horrified that you have not been given your own life story, your own files. I cannot understand that they are referring to the protection of data, the protection of files. The same was done to me. I did a history of a Berlin hospital and I came upon a forced labor camp in which Russian POW's were obviously murdered and I found out that in the registrar's office in ......... there were files still on this and I was refused access to these files. I spoke to the Brandenburg "Protection of Data" Commissioner and he said unfortunately it wasn't possible to give me the files. He said that this would only be possible if relations to this person wanted these papers. But here it is not relations who wanted access, but it's you yourself so I really think that everything must be done to make sure that you get these files as fast as possible.

[Applause]

Ron Leifer:
My name is Ron Leifer, member of the jury. Do you know whether these files are medical files or government, political files that are non-medical?

The files are not medical – I was not treated. It just says that "she [I] steals like mad, likes sweets, wets the bed even though woken up". This is a lie! It says "she beats other children for no reason". That's not true, it's a lie – I 've never hitten children for no reason! So it's just full of lies!

R.L.:
The department in which the files are kept, is that a medical facility or strictly political facility?

It's a murdering institute, where many, many children were murdered. Behind this institute is the mass-grave in the cemetary. I had to go there and stand there and look at where my friends were buried and these murderers got the Federal Oder of Merit. 

Alon Harel:
Have you seen the content of the files. You said  you know what is written there. Did they leak it? Did someone from the office tell you?

I knew that there was a file because when I was brought to Urtspringe, I sat at a desk and there was a woman there and she opened a file and I saw my picture. So I knew there is a file and I knew that everyone who was there had a file. This file was taken to Brandenburg. I saw files on this table and after the fall of the wall, I got a copy of this file. So it's only since then that I knew that  I was classified as an "idiot". I drove a taxi here – an idiot driving a taxi! 

G.A.:
Are there other questions of this witness? On behalf of the accusation and – I'm sure – speaking for the jury, I want to thank you for your testimony.