Prominent Austrian Lawyer, Refugee, Now in Law School

After spending four months in a Nazi concentration camp and witnessing all the horrors of Jewish persecution in Austria, Dr. Ludwig Schiffer is now at Harvard in the Law School. Until he was forced to flee in December, 1938, Dr. Schiffer was a prominent lawyer in Vienna, but now he must start again as a first year student.

Because of the rapidly rising anti-Jewish sentiment, Schiffer was urged by friends to quit the country before it would be too late, but he decided to remain. Two weeks after he made this decision, the first great program came.

Together with over 2,000 other Jews, he was seized by the police and sentenced to a concentration camp. "The power of Poe would not be strong enough to describe the horrors of the purge and the trip to the camp," he said.

"I spent over four months in the concentration camps," he continued. "I was first sent to Dachu, near Munich, and was later transferred to Bucherwalde, near Weimar. These are the two worst camps in Germany. I can't go into all the details. They are too horrible.

"The prisoners in concentration camps are worse than slaves. Their treatment is terrible . . indescribable. People are beaton, flogged to death. As average of two men died of harsh treatment every day in the camps I was in. I was fortunate to escape without harm except for over exposure to the rains and cold."

Police Are "Beasts"

Schiffer declared that it was the Secret Police that were responsible for cruelty of the Nazi regime. "They are beasts," he said. "No one can imagine what they can do. No count has been made of the thousands of innocent people mercilessly killed."

After his release from the concentration camps, Schiffer was transported through a large number of state prisons. He was imprisoned in Vienna during the terrible day of November 9, 1938, when thousands of Jews were tortured at the hands of the "Nazi beasts." He considers the days of horror during this raid as the most terrible of his life.