The dark history of rocket science

6:05pm Wednesday 7th March 2001

"I was 17 years old when I came to Camp Dora from Auschwitz in an open railway wagon, packed full with hungry and exhausted slaves, on January 28, 1945.

"On arrival the few who were still able to move were sitting on dead people. I was lame in one foot and at first I wasn't fit to work in the tunnel. This meant I was on half rations one slice of bread and a one centimetre square of margarine half a centimetre thick and slept in a barrack in Dora Camp on top of a hill.

"In Dora I recall being beaten by the guards' gun butts and a civilian hitting me with a piece of wood with a nail in it after I fell over with too great a load.

"Actually I was lucky, as he could have said I was doing sabotage and then I would've been another body hanging from the cranes in front of the window of Nazi scientist and second in command to Wernher von Braun, Herr Dr Arthur Rudolph."

Such are the memories of Rudy Kennedy of Bishops Avenue, East Finchley.

He is a Jewish survivor of Camp Dora in Mittelbau Dora, Germany the home of slave labourers many of whom were worked to death making Nazi Germany's V2 "wonder weapon" rockets.

Born and raised in Germany Mr Kennedy's testimony of life in the hands of the Nazis is the inspiration behind a new play "Woman in the Moon" to be shown in East London by BAFTA playwright Julia Pascal. She explains: "I wanted to know about his experiences at Auschwitz as well as Camp Dora rather than use just book research.

"Camp Dora was kept quiet because of the way the US used the knowledge of SS scientists, such as Wernher von Braun, as a major part of their space programme.

"The Americans used Nazi know-how to land the first man on the moon. And I was fascinated that while America was prosecuting Nazis at Nuremberg on the one hand on the other they were flying them in to the US and hiding their SS past."

The play, which is filled with sardonic humour, explores the V1 and V2 bombers made by Wernher von Braun and his fellow rocket scientists, the US space programme and slave labour in the Third Reich.

Julia hopes her play will make the audience "aware that our modern technologies like the mobile phone come off the back of research done during the Third Reich".

"The moon rocket was a development of the V1 and V2 programme," she said.

"Wernher von Braun was seen as a 20th Century hero but I want people to see he had a deliberately hidden history, as during the Cold War the US government was more interested in beating the Soviets in the moon race than arresting these Nazis."

Her play is aimed at all ages and faiths as there were thousands of, Jewish, French, German political prisoners, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs and Russians in the camp.

And Julia promises there is nothing gruesome in the depiction of the Holocaust experience as the material is often treated surreally and ironically: "As one Dora survivor told me, this material has to be done with poetry and satire or it won't work."

Mr Kennedy's own memories of Camp Dora are vivid enough.

"The tunnel I worked in was cold and wet with a chemical acid-like smell because of the stone," he said.

"It made me cough and eventually I was coughing up blood. I worked a 12-hour day shift. The allies knew that a weapon facility was in this area but it was well camouflaged.

"Often we couldn't leave the tunnel because of air raids which meant we had to work a longer shift and our food was missing when we got back to camp. In general the water wasn't drinkable so we were only given water at prescribed times.

"On April 4, 1945, evacuation started. I hid in an abandoned barrack with some other prisoners and the next morning we heard Nazi guards with dogs checking the area for people.

"Some of the group ran out over a hill and were chased so I decided to go the other way and managed to hide among an orderly group of Dutch who broke rank. We got onto a train at Nordhausen station and two hours later allied bombers destroyed the last train to leave.

"My next stop was at Bergen Belsen, where I was surrounded by plenty of bodies. I was one but was lucky. I was still breathing when the British arrived and someone kicked me and shouted 'thee Inglish?'

If you would like to see Woman in the Moon showing at The Arcola Theatre, 27 Arcola Street, E8, from 8pm every evening from March 13-April 7, call the box office on 020 7503 1646.