On 23 July 1947 in Staszów, the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes of the District Court with its seat in Radom, Branch Office in Staszów, Judge Albin Walkiewicz, an attorney in Staszów, interviewed the person mentioned hereunder as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the wording of Article 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Aleksander Maruszewski |
| Age | 32 years old |
| Parents’ names | Karol and Michalina |
| Place of residence | Staszów, Długa Street 18 |
| Occupation | the head of a PCH store |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
I lived in Staszów from the beginning of war until 1943. In 1942, when I was in Wiązownica Mała, Osiek Commune, I saw Germans – including SS men and SA men – arrive to the village in relation to a failure to deliver the required quota. If someone had not delivered only a small part of the required quota, they were hit in the face, kicked, or beaten with a stick, but those who had not delivered the quota at all were beaten with birch sticks until their body was battered. I also saw corpses of Jews in the Wiązownica forest following a manhunt organized by the gendarmerie from Rytwiany.
The following people from Staszów were taken to concentration camps: in 1943 – Teofila Socha, Julia Stępień, Barbara Łokieć, Andrzej Maj, Iżyłowski, Krzysztof Radziwiłł, Krystyna Radziwiłł, Aleksandra Koszycka and Kazimierz Koszycki, Kazimierz Czajkowski, Henryk Rzymkiewicz, Czesław Kozłowski, Zbigniew Chmielewski, Stanisław Sikara, Stefan Rzymkiewicz. Iżyłowski did not return – he died in the camp. What is more, the following people were taken away and died: Ignacy Raczyński, Wiktor Skrętek, Stanisław Rogala, Zdzisław Felczyński, Stanisław Warchałowski, Stanisław Łukasik, Wincenty Stępień, Jan Adamus, Maria Adamus, Wiktoria Martyńska, Stanisława Czapla, Kazimiera Rytfiańska, Antoni Durski.
I was arrested in July 1943 by the gendarmerie from Staszów, Janczewski checked my personal details, and then, when I was handcuffed with another prisoners, one of the gendarmes approached me and stubbed a cigarette on my face, burning out a small wound. They took me to the jail in Opatów. In the cell, I met a teacher called Podlasek, also from a village near Iwaniska. The gendarmes in Staszów beat him in the following way: he was told to bend over, his genitals were uncovered, the scrotum with testicles was pulled back and the testicles were hit with a rubber truncheon, as a result of which his genitals swelled up like balloons and he was not able to walk. In the jail in Opatów, I saw people who had been beaten – their bodies were purple and green, with festering skin on the back and below.
I was taken to Auschwitz, along with other people. On the way there and in the camp, beating was something normal and taking place on a daily basis. We were not people. For trivial reasons or for no reason at all, the Germans beat and killed those who were extremely emaciated and weak due to hunger and work. From time to time, the Germans carried out selections and took people to the gas chamber. Next, I was transferred to Buchenwald, and then to Dora, where I saw people being hanged with the use of a crane: a beam was installed on the crane with 2 ropes at its end. The ropes were placed over the necks of the victims, the crane was electrically turned on and it lifted the people. The people had their hands tied and their mouths gagged with a peg. They did not die quickly, but suffocated slowly. In the camp, I also saw a young boy who was told to bend over, while his pants were lowered and SS men, with bulldogs on leashes, set the dogs on him. When a bulldog seized his body – the dogs were pulled back, and then everything was repeated.
With the front line approaching, we were evacuated from Dora to the north – they gave every prisoner a loaf of bread weighing about a kilogram, but as we were hungry, we soon ate it. For the next 10 days we did not receive anything, so we suffered from hunger. We were squeezed into ordinary cattle cars, for example, there were 136 people in my car, so it was impossible to sit down and have a rest. We were becoming weaker and weaker. We were unable to remain on our feet, so the atmosphere became unbearable, the people turned into animals, fought over some space to sit down, and then they started dying. We would throw out several corpses every day, so there was more room at the end of the journey. On our way from Dora to Ravensbrück, about 40% of the transported people died.
I do not know anything else. The report was read out.