On 1 October 1947 in Kraków, a member of the Kraków District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Municipal Court Judge Dr Henryk Gawacki, acting upon written request of the First Prosecutor of the Supreme National Tribunal of 25 April 1947 (Ref. No. NTN 719/47), in accordance with the provisions of and procedure provided for under the Decree of 10 November 1945 (Journal of Laws No. 51, item 293), in relation to Articles 254, 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed the person mentioned hereunder, a former prisoner of the Auschwitz concentration camp, as a witness who testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Zdzisław Pałasiński |
| Age | 28 |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Citizenship and nationality | Polish |
| Occupation | student at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków |
| Place of residence | Kraków, Wiślisko, Boczna Street 3, flat 9 |
| Testifies freely |
I was brought to the Auschwitz camp on 14 June 1940 with the first transport going through Tarnów, and I stayed there as a Polish political prisoner no. 462 until October 1943. At this time I left with a work group of about 150 people to the Czech city of Brno. I came back after two months and was assigned to Jawiszowice, where I stayed until 3 December 1944. Then I was transferred to the Buchenwald camp.
In Auschwitz, I first underwent a quarantine, which lasted about a month. Next, I did odd jobs, and in October 1940 I was assigned to the chimneysweeps’ kommando. In Jawiszowice, I worked in the kitchen. During the quarantine, I met SS men Plagge and Herman Kirschner. The former had the nickname “Little Pipe”, and the latter “Frog”. I recognized them both very clearly in the Central Prison at Montelupich Street. From time to time, Herman Kirschner would approach prisoners in the quarantine and help Plagge to torment and exhaust them with commonly known sports, exercises and music. I had a particularly hard time with a so-called dance which consisted of a prisoner spinning around in circles, at the same time holding his left foot with his left hand, keeping his head straight up and his right hand stretched out. Once when I fell down from exhaustion, I hid in the other end of the block, together with another prisoner, a Jewish secondary school professor from Tarnów. One of the Silesian prisoners gave us away and Plagge came for us. He took us to the block where he ruthlessly beat the Jew with his gun’s handle until he started bleeding. I (as an Aryan) was beaten and kicked by Plagge. Another time when I was working in the chimneysweeps’ kommando, Plagge caught us smoking cigarettes. He slapped us in the face, kicked us and reported us for punishment. As a result, we were punished with ten blows each in the Blockführerstube [guardhouse] and additional work on five Sundays. The work was very strenuous, because we were closely supervised by kapos and not allowed any rest. Some prisoners – I don’t remember the names – told us that “Little Pipe” would also shoot people in block 11.
Herman Kirschner had a special method of abusing prisoners in the quarantine. When we were exercising, he would walk around and flip a cigarette butt. Then, he would turn around and take the prisoner who had stooped to pick up the butt to the block and beat them really hard with his open hand on the auricular or on the chin.
When I was in quarantine, for the first time one of the prisoners, Wiejowski, escaped. As a form of retribution, all prisoners were ordered to stand naked from 4.00 p.m. until 1.00 p.m. the following day. When a prisoner ran out of the block at the roll call signal, staggered from exhaustion or moved to warm himself up, Kirschner, the “Frog”, ordered everyone to keep their hands on their neck for two hours straight. Then, they kept us in a squatting position for two hours. During that time, Kirschner slapped me a few times in the face because I moved. After that, I had no contact with Kirschner “the Frog”.
In the first half of 1943, I stayed five nights in the so-called standing cell (Stehzelle) in the bunker of block 11, filling in for a sick colleague, Mysiewicz. There I met Wilhelm Gehring, who was an SS-Oberscharführer at that time. I recognized him clearly too. One night when prisoners from the neighboring standing cell were crying out from exhaustion, I heard Gehring, whom I recognized by his voice, open that cell and take the prisoners upstairs, to the ground floor. After a moment, I heard the prisoners not screaming, but howling in pain. I suppose they were being beaten.
One day, Gehring caught me in block 11, where I had come to bring a letter to one of the prisoners. He commanded me to beat the prisoner who let me through the block’s gate. When I refused to do it, he ordered that very prisoner to do the same to me. After he lightly hit me, Gehring called over other prisoners to help him while he himself gave me 15 blows on the backsides with a whip. He also hit me hard with an open hand on the left ear (almost all SS men would hit in that way), breaking the tympanic membrane. I had to visit doctor Wasilewski in the infirmary for a long time and to this day I can’t hear well in that ear.
I also personally met Grabner, the head of the political department, who spread terror throughout the entire camp. Together with prisoner Kazimierz Pękała form Nowy Sącz, who now resides somewhere in Lower Silesia, I was caught with sausages stolen from the SS kitchen. We were taken to the political department, where Grabner interrogated us. When I refused to tell him where the sausages came from, he ordered the so-called swing. I had to hang by the knees and elbows on an iron rod, while the SS men whipped me on the backsides. I received ten lashes, and then I was released thanks to the intervention of an SS officer, the head of the boiler room in one of the Stabsgebäude buildings. Pękała, who took the whole blame, must have received more blows on that swing, because he spent three days in the bunker. Then he was transferred to a punitive company in Birkenau. After three weeks, he was transported to Neuengamme.
Prisoners were saying that from time to time Grabner would look through the files and single out prisoners for execution by firing squad.
Lagerführer Aumeier, whom I know very well, slapped me and another prisoner in the face several times, because he caught us sitting idly in the boiler room during working hours. Aumeier, just like Grabner, spread terror through the camp. From time to time, they both would single out prisoners from the bunker of block 11 for execution. I very often saw Aumeier going to or coming back from block 11 when executions were taking place there.
As a chimneysweep, I had access to the whole camp. Prisoners from the Effektenkammer [warehouse] and the Unterkunft [camp storerooms] told me that SS-Unterscharführer Artur Breitwieser, who worked there and whom I have also clearly recognized, spoke Polish and would listen to prisoners’ conversations. Then he would report them for punishment. The prisoners claimed that they were held responsible as a result of such conversations, and they assumed that it must have been Breitwieser who reported them.
At that the report was concluded, read out and signed.