STANISŁAW GŁOWA

On 18 September 1947 in Kraków, acting judge, Associate Judge Franciszek Wesely, delegated to the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Kraków, acting upon written request of First Prosecutor from the Supreme National Tribunal, this dated 25 April 1947 (file no. NTN 719/47), and in accordance with the provisions of and procedure provided for under the Decree of 10 November 1945 (Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland No. 51, item 293) in connection with Article 254, 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed the person named below as a witness, who testified as follows:


Name and surname Stanisław Głowa
Date and place of birth 15 September 1898 in Igołomia
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Marital status married
Occupation counsellor at the Municipal Board in Kraków
Place of residence Kraków, Kościuszki Street 86
Criminal record none

On 6 August 1941, I was transferred from the prison at Montelupich Street in Kraków to the concentration camp Auschwitz I, and as a political prisoner I was assigned no. 20017. I have already given extensive testimony in the case of Höß, but having been presented with a list of members of the former SS garrison in Auschwitz who are now incarcerated in the Central Prison in Kraków, I would like to supplement my testimony with the following information: when I worked in Revier [camp hospital] for prisoners in the parent camp as a nurse at block no. 20 (infectious ward), I had the opportunity of coming across suspect Johann Paul Kremer, a Lagerarzt [camp physician]. I recongize him beyond doubt in the photograph presented to me (the witness was presented with the photograph of Johann Kremer).

Suspect Kremer was a physician in Auschwitz more or less in the second half of 1942, and at the time carried out selections of prisoners in the Revier. He conducted selections in the same ruthless manner as other SS doctors, for instance Entress or Rohde, which means that he didn’t examine the sick at all but chose them by their appearance. Moreover, he used non-commissioned officers to carry out the selections for him, and so non- commissioned officers, the Sanitätsdienstgrade [SS medics]: Klehr, Scherpe and others conducted them on his behalf, although they actually had nothing to do with medicine, since – as far as I know – Klehr was a shoemaker by profession, for example. The selections carried out by non-commissioned officers in Kremer’s name looked as follows: they chose certain prisoners on a whim and marked their patient cards with the appropriate markings.

I know that Kremer carried out allegedly scientific experiments on patients, which in many cases ended in the patient’s death. For this purpose, Kremer would choose sick prisoners from the Revier and use them for his experiments. I don’t know exactly what kind of experiments he carried out on the prisoners, but I heard that many sick people died as a result of these practices.

I heard that, similarly to Kleber (a professor at one of the German universities), Kremer carried out experiments with artificial insemination, and one of the Jewish nurses collected sperm from preselected Jewish prisoners, following which the women were artificially inseminated in block 10.

At the time when Kremer served as Lagerarzt in the camp, the prisoners also received phenol injections to the ventricle; the injections were usually administered by Sanitätsdienstgrade Klehr, assisted among others by such Jewish prisoners as Hermann Schwarz, a Slovakian Jew – as far as I know – a cloth merchant from Bratislava, and Schaja Gelbhardt, a musician from Poland who lived in Paris. The above-named men held the victims during the injections. Apart from Klehr, Pańszczyk also administered the injections, and he used to beat these Jewish prisoners to force them to help him.

As far as selections are concerned, they looked pretty much the same under Liebehenschel’s rule as under Höß’s rule. Just as it were previously, the prisoners were selected for extermination on the basis of their appearance, without any medical examination whatsoever. During Liebehenschel’s rule, the phenol injections were used less frequently; they were no longer in demand due to the enlargement of the crematoria in Birkenau.

I recognize suspect Dr. Hans Wilhelm Münch in the photograph presented to me (the witness was presented with a photograph). He was one of the heads of the laboratory in Rajsko. I got to know him better when he came to the Auschwitz I camp to visit his employee-prisoners who fell ill with typhus fever during epidemics of that disease. Among others, Dr. Münch paid frequent visits to a doctor from Lwów, Dr. Meisl, a Jew from the group of Prof. Weigl. Dr. Münch tended to the above named man and brought medicaments for him, and it was thanks to his efforts that Meisl’s wife, who stayed in block 10, could visit her husband every day, which had previously been inadmissible.

I recognize suspect Hans Aumeier in the photograph presented to me. He was a Lagerführer [camp head] in Auschwitz I. Due to his small height, he was nicknamed “Łokietek” [elbow- high]. He was a very mean creature who tortured the prisoners in an unheard-of manner – beating, kicking, and spitting on them. When I was incarcerated in a bunker in block 11 for helping some Polish prisoners escape, I saw Aumeier finish off some executed prisoners with shots to the ear with the revolver.

During my five-week stay in block 11, I came across suspect Grabner, whom I recognize in the photograph presented to me. Grabner, together with his helper Lachmann, interrogated me, and during this interrogation Grabner severely beat and kicked me all over the face andbody, bruising me and knocking out my teeth. In the course of the investigation, the above-mentioned Lachmann suspended me from the so-called post for 50 minutes, as a result of which I lost consciousness. The “post” was located at the attic of block 11.

When Aumeier was still a Schutzhaftlagerführer, 10 Jews – Belgian jewellers, diamond specialists – were brought to the Revier and killed with phenol injections to the heart because they had made diamond necklaces for the wives of Höß, Aumeier and Grabner, and the Germans wanted to obliterate all traces of the pillage of the Jewish belongings.

I recognize suspect Ludwig Plagge in the photograph presented to me. We used to call him “fajeczka” [little pipe]. He gained notoriety for his bestiality and harassment of prisoners. I very often saw him beat prisoners; his infamous punch to the face was so strong that no prisoner could stay on his feet after such a blow. It was widely known that Plagge carried out executions in block 11, and I frequently saw him enter block 11 with a Flobert gun in hand. My friends who worked as nurses and took out the bodies of the executed would later tell me that the execution was carried out by Plagge, who shot the prisoners with his Flobert. For a short period of time, in 1941 I think, Plagge was a Blockführer of block 11, and at that time held such executions most frequently. I often saw him on the camp premises in the company of Palitzsch, and if Plagge claims that he avoided Palitzsch, he lies.

I survived in the Auschwitz camp until 30 August 1944, working all the time as a nurse in the Revier, and on that day I was deported with a penal transport to the camp in Sachsenhausen.

At this point the report was brought to a close and, after being read out, signed.