On 28 August 1947 in Oświęcim, a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Appellate Investigating Judge Jan Sehn, upon written request of the first prosecutor of the Supreme National Tribunal, this dated 25 April 1947 (file no. NTN 719/47), 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 Art. 254, 107, 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed the former Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner who testified as follows:
Name and surname Feliks Myłyk (known in the case)
During my hearing concerning Auschwitz, I described the course of my detention in the concentration camp. Once more I note that I was detained at Auschwitz from 14 June 1940 to 16 October 1944. The entire time I worked in the Political Department. From the beginning of the camp to November 1943, the post of the head of this department was held by Maximilian Grabner, SS-Untersturmführer and Kriminalsekretär, later promoted to Oberkriminalsekretär [police ranks]. He bossed the whole camp around. He was independent. Camp commandant Höß did not interfere in the matters of the Political Department, and I rarely saw him in Grabner’s office.
Grabner was a cold, calculating and ruthless man, who would calmly sentence people to death with a simple gesture. One such instance occurred in 1943 when he was conducting a purge in the Effektenkammer [personal effects storage], Bekleidungskammer [clothing storeroom] and kitchen, in connection with some denunciation. All prisoners who worked in these institutions were assembled in front of block 24. Grabner conducted a selection and picked about 40 prisoners who were then shot in block 11. Józef Kral, residing in Podlesie near Piotrowice Śląskie, was also involved in this matter. Grabner personally interrogated him in the bunker of block 11 and in the political department office. Whenever an execution took place in block 11, the so-called Totenmeldungs [notices of death], brief case history and diagnosis came from the camp hospital to the Political Department. These documents served as the basis for completing further formalities. RSHA [Reichssicherheitshauptamt – Reich Main Security Administration] was among the institutions that were informed that the prisoner died from natural causes. A group of prisoners from Silesia were shot and their deaths were recorded as natural. I remember that the files of the two Czajor brothers, Pniok, and Hermann Krawczyk from this group had been marked with red crosses when the prisoners were still alive. At first we did not know what the crosses meant, but we found out when the prisoners were shot.
Around August 1941 the Political Department decided to cleanse the overcrowded hospital. A list of about 500 prisoners was compiled. It included two German kapos: the notorious Krankemann and a man with one hand. We were told to prepare the files of all these prisoners, put them in packages, and give out the records. I personally handed these documents to a functionary of the Political Department, Dzierżan-Hofer. This list was marked as Transport nach Dresden [transport to Dresden]. Everyone from this list was loaded into the passenger cars. I do not know where they were transported. All files and records came back to our office after some time. The files were supplemented by Totenmeldungs and other medical documents which included various dates of death, spread out in the span of about a month. I would like to add that once the transport had been sent, we were ordered to leave 500 numbers on the list of the dead empty. When the files came back, we were told to fill out the empty numbers with the data from these files.
From time to time, Grabner conducted selections in block 11 of prisoners who were then shot there. Their deaths were also officially recorded as natural and presented as such in the messages sent to Berlin. This was the opposite of what was done in the case of executions by firing squad, which were marked clearly as Exekutiert [executed] and put on a separate, official list in the Political Department. In these instances, files contained formal execution reports. When executions were covered up as natural deaths, Grabner not only passed a sentence, but also participated in the executions, just like he did when executions were officially approved. He was also present while people were gassed – first in the cellar of block 11, later in the gas chamber of crematorium I. Mietek Morawa, kapo at crematorium I told me that a wounded woman from a group of civilians shot in crematorium I regained consciousness, stood up and asked the Sonderkommando [special squad] prisoners and the SS man on duty for help. The SS man reported this to Grabner who came over and personally shot this woman.
Grabner and his subordinate Political Department functionaries were always on duty in Birkenau when the operations aimed at destruction of the Jews commenced. The SS men who gassed the victims arriving with mass transports and burnt their corpses were subordinate to him and he supervised their work. Prisoners working in the so-called Sonderkommando were quite frequently changed. We prepared lists of these prisoners based on a project sent from the branch of the Political Department in Birkenau. Prisoners on these lists were brought to Auschwitz under the pretext of being transported, most often to Gliwice. The following day we would get the list back with the headline “SB” written in pencil. We were ordered to sort their files and records, and to add “SB” annotations and dates. The letters “SB” stood for Sonderbehandlung [special treatment]. “Muslims” selected from the hospital and the camp were also marked on the list with “SB” once they had been eliminated. The political department made the decision to conduct such massive acts of destruction. There were no orders to carry out individual operations. Other camp authorities were not allowed to transfer a prisoner to another camp without the Political Department’s approval, let alone carry out such an operation. Lists of the prisoners who were to be transported to another camp were submitted to the Political Department. A prisoner had to remain in Auschwitz if the department objected to his transfer.
I would like to point out that executions of prisoners were ordered by the so-called Einweisende Dienststelle [administrative department which directed people to the camp]. This institution would send a written request in the form of the so-called Schnellbrief [special order]. In case of a major operation they would send a functionary with a list of those who were to be shot. These deaths were recorded as executions and not falsely attributed to natural causes, but their number was small in comparison to the executions covered up by the Totenmeldungs.
Grabner was a member of the Sicherheitsdienst [security service], he wore the sign “SD” on his sleeve. He and all SS men signed declarations stating that they would keep everything they learned during anti-Jewish operations secret, and that they knew that stealing the property gained from these operations was punishable by death. Despite this solemn declaration, Grabner and other SS men stole the items formerly owned by Jews. I personally had to steal various items for him. In his apartment in Auschwitz, I saw many suitcases and other objects taken from “Canada”. The names of the former owners were still visible on the suitcases. On Grabner’s orders I often sent packages to Vienna. They contained various items but presently I do not know what exactly was inside them.
I treat his famous downfall of November 1943 and the trial that followed it as his supervisors’ attempt at absolving themselves and the regime, and dodging the responsibility for what happened at Auschwitz. In this trial, Grabner was to be sentenced for 10 or 12 years in prison.
Grabner acted independently and on his own volition, but within the scope of what he was authorized to do by his supervisors. Otherwise, his conduct and details concerning the crimes he had committed, which were known to many SS men at Auschwitz, would not be possible to hide from 1940 to the end of 1943. The Political Department sent reports with statistics that included deaths marked with the letters “SB” to Berlin and received no reaction. The lawsuit against Grabner was filed only after the issue of crimes committed at Auschwitz became well known. The point was to downplay the role of the system and the regime within which Grabner operated, working with other posts and institutions.
The report was read out. At this the interview and the following report were concluded.