On 12 September 1947 in Warsaw, a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Appellate Investigating Judge Jan Sehn, acting upon written request of the first prosecutor of the Supreme National Tribunal, this dated 25 April 1947 (file no. NTN 719/47), interviewed the former Ravensbrück concentration camp prisoner specified below as a witness, 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), with reference to Articles 254, 107, 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Aleksandra Rybska |
| Age | 47 |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Citizenship and nationality | Polish |
| Occupation | middle school teacher |
| Place of residence | Warszawa, Wyzwolenia Street 38, flat 6 |
I was detained in the concentration camp in Ravensbrück from May 1942 until April 1945. During the first several months of my detention in the camp, Maria Mandl was the so-called Oberaufseherin [head overseer]. Because of her wild and predatory behavior towards the prisoners, we called her the “Tigress”. At every opportunity, and usually for absolutely no reason, she beat the prisoners senseless. She would hit them under the chin, between the eyes, in the ear. The victims, lying on the ground, were kicked in the kidneys. She was infuriated by crosses on the prisoners’ necks. We made them out of buttons, toothbrushes and other objects of this sort. She considered this as sabotage and punished it harshly.
She tore a cross off my neck and beat me so hard that I fell, bleeding, and while I lay on the ground, she kicked me so hard that I have a kidney condition to his day.
She conducted very oppressive body searches and searches of the blocks. She always walked with a dog that she used during searches. If she discovered that prisoners were lying down covered with something more than a blanket (one blanket for four women), she beat them brutally. For trivial offences such as having an unbuttoned blouse or being slightly late for roll call, she punished individual prisoners by starvation. Whole blocks were punished if she, for instance, thought that in a given block dishes had been arranged improperly in a cabinet. Punishments of this sort were usually carried out on Sundays and combined with punitive marches during which she personally made sure that the prisoners were marching properly. Upon the slightest breach, such as uneven rows, her dog jumped on a guilty prisoner, and Mandl ran up to her and beat her.
While she was in command, prisoners were selected for joining the Puff [brothel] for German soldiers. Speaking on the behalf of the Polish political prisoners, a fellow prisoner, Kamińska, stated that as political prisoners we would not go to the Puff. Kamińska was punished by detention in the bunker, and Mandl punished the rest of us by having us stand to attention for three days. Non-political prisoners were recruited with the promise of being released after three months in the Puff. Having returned infected with a venereal disease, these prisoners were killed by lethal injection.
The ill prisoners were selected from the hospital and killed by injection.
The whole camp regime under Mandl constituted a harassment of prisoners. When she left Ravensbrück and was succeeded by Langefeld, the regime became less strict in every respect.
The report was read out. At this the hearing and the following report were concluded.