Warsaw, 18 March 1947. A member of District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Warsaw, Acting Judge Halina Wereńko, interviewed the person named below as a witness, without an oath. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and the obligation to speak the truth, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Zbigniew Marian Tomaszewski, former Gross- Rosen concentration camp prisoner, no. 12,574 |
| Parents’ names | Władysław, Stanisława née Wyszkowska |
| Date of birth | 21 February 1916 |
| Education | secondary, three years at a university |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Styki Street 10, flat 2 |
| Occupation | bookkeeper |
I was transported to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp on 4 August 1944, along with the last cargo of approximately one thousand prisoners evacuated from Pawiak.
After a two-week quarantine and more than a dozen days of treatment at rewir 3 (the infirmary block) I became a Fleger (a medical assistant) in surgical rewir 6, where I stayed until the camp’s evacuation. My work consisted mainly of assisting in surgeries and managing the infirmary’s pharmacy. I should mention that my function was one of the most desirable, and I owe it to my colleagues from the time of my 3-year stay in Pawiak.
In Gross-Rosen, receiving transports was carried out more or less according to a procedure. After [the newcomers] crossed the gate, their number was carefully checked according to a list that came with the transport. Next, after a short, pithy speech given by one of the SS men concerning the camp’s regulations as well as punishments for the slightest offences, an order was given to strip down and give away all personal belongings.
Then personal data was collected and a number was given. The prisoner was hurried into the bathhouse, where he was thoroughly shaved and less thoroughly washed, usually under a cold shower. The inmates were handed old clothes or prison uniforms and wooden clogs and rushed to block 17 for the so-called quarantine.
The admittance ceremony could already break a prisoner mentally. It lasted a couple or maybe even a dozen hours and took place outside, no matter what the season, amid inhumane screaming, cursing and beating by the prisoner functionaries, usually German criminals, who were trying to show their devoutness in front of the camp authorities. And so a medallion or a photograph of a loved one kept by a newcomer was always a reason for beating and wounding. I saw during a transport admittance when a German prisoner functionary (I don’t recall his surname) took a leg prosthesis from a disabled person and chopped it up into pieces to check if there were no valuables inside. I saw an old man, who complained to the SK [penal block] Scharführer about a prisoner who beat him, and the Scharführer knocked him down with a punch in the face in response. I remember hundreds of such occurrences.
The quarantine lasted from one to two weeks. In order to “pull” the zugangs into the camp’s regular life, they were assigned to the heaviest of works, for example in the quarries or at barracks construction. Before being assigned to a block permanently, a thorough tooth inspection was carried out and those who had gold implants were noted down. Their names were passed on to the camp offices.
A camp’s statute per se didn’t exist. The existing regulations were made by prisoner functionaries. Every kapo or block elder was allowed to provide their own regulations freely. The SS men were solely making sure about the times of roll calls and the times the komandos set out for work. The roll calls were held three times a day: in the morning, at noon and in the evening. If the number of prisoners didn’t match, the roll call dragged on until a missing person was found, or – if they weren’t found – for as long as the authorities wanted.
Theoretically, cleanliness and order were kept in the blocks, but in reality it was one more element, apart from the heavy labor, that was supposed to break a prisoner, to automatize him, give him no rest.
Every prisoner belonged to some komando. I should list the most important of them: Baukommando (barracks construction), Kanalbaukommando (canal construction), Eisenbahn (railway works), Elektriken (electricians), Gärtnerei (gardeners), Weberei (weavers), Steinbruch (quarrymen), Bachdecker (tinsmiths), Siemens. The work was done no matter what the weather. Elderly men worked in the quarries too.
The camp’s watch was comprised of an SD unit, spread among watchtowers situated 40 meters from each other, outside the barbed wire. SS men rarely showed up inside the camp. They came solely to inflict punishments and hold roll calls. The direct authorities were the prisoner functionaries. Responsible for maintaining order and discipline within the camp was the Lageraltester, with kapos who were in charge of a couple of blocks each reporting to him. The blocks were managed by block seniors and their deputies, who were supervising sztubowi. A working komando was watched by a kapo, who had a few deputies – Vorarbeiters This way, the block senior (or a kapo – at work) was master over life and death. Just to get a portion of food, they could kill a prisoner with a baton. SS men seemingly didn’t pay attention to their actions. However, when a komando was carrying more corpses on their way back from work, it was carefully noted by the Rapportführer, and the kapo of the komando would get a better position or more food, robbed from parcels sent by prisoners’ families.
Within this system, the prisoner was abused and beaten on every occasion, for the slightest offence and for no reason, in the block and at work. The mildest punishment was 25 strokes with a whip. There were also group punishments: “frogs” – hupfen, that is, jumping for several hours with our knees bent and hands in front of our bodies, rollen, that is, rolling on the ground, often in mud.
The most cruel punishment was to be sent to SK, the Strafkompanie [penal block]. Prisoners were put there for thievery, attempts at escape, political talk, or an aristocratic background. On average, a prisoner in SK lived for two, three months due to exceptional mistreatment and 16-hour workdays in the quarry. The SK block senior, Kurt Vogel, killed hundreds of people and drove many to death. The ones who survived the SK include Krzysztof Radziwiłł, Włodzimierz Bołądź, Jan Lech. Among others, Count Jan Rostworowski died there, having been sent to work in the quarries with a high temperature. He was especially harassed by Vogel, and – at work – by Paweł Dombek, another SK kapo. Eventually, he fell off a cliff into the quarry, dragged himself to the roll call square, collapsed, and died after being carried back into the block.
Files addressed to the Politsche Abteilung (political department) followed the political prisoners. There were interrogations in the camp if a case was reopened. Death sentences would come from the Gestapo posts from within the country or from Berlin. The executions were carried out by shooting or special phenol injections. Several times I was informed of an execution planned for the next day by my colleague, Jerzy Stiasny, who worked as a clerk in the camp’s offices, or by other colleagues. Those convicted would have no recourse. In the evening they were pulled out of their blocks, and next day in the morning I could hear the bullets cracking.
The following prisoners were executed by orders: the deputy commandant of the Warsaw Fire Department Lieutenant Colonel Lgodzki, and a Russian doctor nicknamed Wasyl (I don’t recall the surname). They were both shot in November 1944, along with a group of a hundred people. Several times there were mysterious executions of people brought from outside the camp, whom we didn’t know. In January 1945 about 40 women and men were executed. From November to February 1945 a couple of such single transports came, containing women and men in officer uniforms. Why those officers were not sent to a POW camp, where they came from, what were their names – nobody in the camp knew.
Executions by phenol injections were carried out by Oberscharführer Dehnel, who held a syringe in his hand even while visiting the infirmary.
The punishment for more serious offences was death by hanging. They always hanged people for attempted escapes, and to intimidate all other prisoners it was done publicly in front of the prisoners, all camp guards and SS men. Such events – judging from the interest they drew – were entertainment for the SS men, especially Rapportführer Helmut Eschner. None of the escape attempts succeeded during my stay. In October 1944 three Russians ran away, hiding during work outside the camp. Several days later all of them were caught. In December 1944, Polish prisoners plotted to escape. Eschner uncovered their plans. A couple of suspects were moved to SK and a general “blokspera” (a curfew prohibiting leaving the barracks) was imposed. One of the conspirators, Dmochowski, a Polish Army officer, died heroically, having been uncovered by an instigator, cruelly beaten in the Political Department. He hadn’t exposed his collaborators. On 1 January 1945, SS men beat prisoners in block 20 in connection with this case. As a result of the beating, several prisoners arrived at the rewir seriously injured.
The living conditions in the camp were very hard in the first years, then improved after the sewage system was built in 1943. After my arrival, they worsened again due to the massive influx of new transports. Up to September 1944, the prisoner inflow was controlled in a systematic and planned way, accordingly to the komandos returning back into the camp. By the end of 1944 and at the beginning of 1945, as the front was approaching, the camp became more and more crowded and it was expanded with an extra field. I can recall the following transports coming in during my stay:
At the beginning of December 1944, a transport of French people came from the Belgian border, from prisons, around 1.5 thousand people. Not used to the camp conditions, these people died massively, decimated by a typhoid fever epidemic.
In mid-January 1945, a group of several thousand Jews were hustled on foot from a camp near Wrocław. From 10 thousand of the Jews from that camp, 3 thousand made it to Gross- Rosen, only a few of them being able to stand without support. 50 per cent of them had no shoes, their bodies were covered with wounds plagued by insects. The transport was kept in the frost for a couple of days, without medical assistance.
In September 1944 came a group of civilians from Warsaw, supposedly as internees. The next day after their arrival all food and valuables were taken from them and they were appointed to various blocks like regular prisoners.
From October 1944 transports from Oświęcim, Zamość district, and Silesia began to arrive due to the approaching front.
In November 1944 a few high-ranking French and Belgian officers were brought in, who supposedly had POWs’ rights. But the only difference in that case was that they weren’t forced to work. We prisoners didn’t know the rights of different incarcerated groups. Everybody was treated equally badly, even though we would sometimes hear that some person or another was captured as a hostage or a war prisoner.
Groups of people were brought (regarding which I testified above) that were executed with lethal injections of phenol or shot.
In January 1945 a transport of approximately a thousand Greek Jewesses arrived, almost all of them ill and in a state of extreme exhaustion. I don’t know where the transport came from.
The camp was kept clean and tidy only at first glance and only when it came to its external looks. Apart from a thin blanket a prisoner wouldn’t get anything to cover himself with. Lack of proper bedsheets, disinfection and no changes of the straw on the beds intensified the outbreaks of contagious diseases and skin diseases. Monotonous diet, insufficient amount of calories (dinner: beetroots or cabbage, supper: a piece of bread with chestnut flour and a small piece of margarine and horse sausage) made avitaminosis and scurvy widespread. Even though 20 per cent of the prisoners were patients in rewirs, people from the blocks died at worksites. Lack of medicines and poor hygienic conditions in the rewirs (keep in mind that the rewir’s supplies were managed by the kapo) made mortality very high, despite the fact that the medical personnel, comprised of prisoners, was greatly dedicated to their work. Four wounded patients would be placed on a bed that measured 2 x 1.2 meters. From October 1944, due to influx of new transports, the conditions got even worse. 30-40 people died daily. The Komandos also brought bodies from the worksites.
I’m not able to provide death statistics for the camp. When it comes to the number of prisoners, up to September 1944 there were 10 thousand of them. From September 1944 till January 1945 the number reached 36 thousand, excluding the komandos. Counting the prisoners who had gone through the camp, and judging from their numeration, a number of over 140 thousand seems right, however still inaccurate, since some of the numbers of deceased prisoners were given to the newcomers.
Epidemics intensified proportionally to the number of new transports, usually in the quarantine period.
I remember the following individuals who were notably cruel towards prisoners:
1) The Commandant’s deputy, Ernstberger, responsible for the deaths of thousands of prisoners. I can’t report any specific acts committed by Ernstberger.
2) Scharführer Gallasch, an SS man, who murdered many inmates while escorting the evacuation transport from Gross-Rosen to Litomierzyce.
3) Former Warsaw policeman Unterscharführer Drozdowski, who tortured prisoners by whipping them on the face and kicking them. It was said in the camp that he single- handedly murdered many inmates.
4) Rapportführer Helmut Eschner, who organized executions and group punishments, usually during roll calls. He also snitched on prisoners.
5) Oberscharführer Dehnel, who performed phenol executions issued by the Gestapo.
Prisoner functionaries: Kurt Vogel, the SK’s block senior; Paweł Morgała, a former Polish Army officer, a senior at block 7.
Lageraltesters: Ebner Karol, Gottlieb Kaiser, and Georg Prill, who tortured prisoners even after he was locked up in the SK by the camp’s overseers. The senior of block 6, Kurt (I don’t recall the surname), who sadistically poured freezing water on sick prisoners stripped naked, in winter time. During the evacuation, he left for Litomierzyce. From the above mentioned, I heard that Vogel and Kurt are dead, killed by the prisoners after being freed.
The camp’s evacuation began on 6 February 1945. Some of the transports were hurried on foot, only the ill and the medical personnel were taken in coal wagons. I was in the last transport, headed to Litomierzyce on 9 February. On the way to the station, the SS men shot the weak who couldn’t keep up with the marching pace. I also saw dead bodies on the road, left after the previous transport, I suppose. Our group consisted of around 2 thousand people. On the way from the wagons SS men pulled out the weak prisoners and shot them in front of everybody. In Plauen they carried out a mass slaughter that lasted over an hour. Gallasch killed the most. This is how around 300 prisoners died on the way. Around eight hundred severely ill remained in the Gross-Rosen camp after our transport left. Contrary to our assumptions that they would be annihilated, I learned from Arkadiusz Lubicz (residing in Warsaw, Ząbkowska Street 39, flat 23), who had stayed in the camp at that point, that they were taken by car to the railway station and then sent to Belsen by a freight train. About 80 people died from the cold and exhaustion on the way, others lived long enough to be liberated.
On 8 May 1945, the Litomierzyce camp was liberated by Russian soldiers.
The protocol was hereby ended and read out.