On 5 July 1947 in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, the Municipal Court in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, Criminal Department, with Judge Ryszard Koch presiding, heard the person named below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, of the wording of Article 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and of the significance of the oath, the witness was sworn and testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Stefan Maliszewski |
| Age | 35 |
| Parents’ names | Bronisław and Konstancja |
| Place of residence | Błonie, Rynek Street 12 |
| Occupation | sheet metal worker |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
| Relationship to the parties | none |
In the photo shown to me (a photo of a man was shown, dated 29 March 1947 – 611616 with the name Hans Aumeier) I absolutely recognize Hans Aumeier, the Lagerführer [head of the camp] of the Auschwitz camp, who was nicknamed “Frog” by the prisoners because of his small height and screeching voice. This is the individual that I mention in my letter to the President of the Supreme National Tribunal.
I was transported to the Auschwitz camp on 31 January 1941. Before that I did a few months in Pawiak in Warsaw. My first Lagerführer was Fritzsch, who was transferred to the Flossenbürg camp in autumn 1941. Aumeier replaced him – from where, I don’t know. Aumeier initiated a regime against the prisoners that was far worse than Fritzsch, despite the fact that there was no lack of cruelty with him either. Whereas Fritsch never did any beating himself, Aumeier did and used to walk around with a whip. In block 11 there was a whipping table made especially – it is now in the museum in Auschwitz; I was there a few days ago and I saw this table.
I will give some specific facts regarding Aumeier’s savagery: he hated people praying. In the autumn of 1941, during the morning roll call, it was a Sunday, I don’t remember the date, after the “Mützen ab” [hats off] command, Aumeier noticed a young boy – 16, from Kraków, [called] Skorupka, I don’t remember his first name – cross himself. He pulled him out of the line and told him in German that it would not help him and started punching him in the face and kicking him. Then he called over Blockführer Schulz, an SS man who kicked Skorupka so severely in the stomach, that he fell over and didn’t get up again. Skorupka stayed where he was, and we saw no more of him. I should add that Schulz was a powerfully built man, we called him “Parobas” [farmhand].
The next fact: Aumeier organized “games” during work. They involved him ordering particular prisoners, through no fault of their own, to lie down on a piece of wood on their back and then calling up a German, a criminal, who then positioned the metal tip of a spade on this prisoner’s throat and stood on both ends of the shovel and rocked until the prisoner died – after a few minutes he was dead. There were cases when up to 20 people died in this way before lunchtime on Aumeier’s order. These executions took place almost every day, always on the orders of Aumeier. Aumeier hated the Poles, especially those who had small numbers, meaning that they had been in the camp for a long time. He tried to murder them by any means he could.
There were holes dug out for planting trees, which were full of water and 80 cm deep, and on Aumeier’s orders I also saw a Lagerältester [camp elder] (he was always a German criminal prisoner) stick a prisoner’s head into this hole and in a few minutes the prisoner would drown. This was without any fault on the part of the prisoners; it was just Aumeier’s sadism. The last incident happened in autumn, when the trees were planted.
In chronological order, I give the following facts, known to me personally.
1) In 1942, in the summer season, I was commissioned as a metal sheet worker to work in Birkenau on a kitchen building, from where I had a really good view of the punitive unit yard. The previous night, two prisoners had escaped from it, and the whole unit, numbering more than 200 people, were led out, and everyone was lined up in the so-called Kniebeugen [squat position]. Meanwhile, Aumeier arrived accompanied by some SS men and all [prisoners] were herded into the buildings. On the way, they were cruelly beaten and Aumeier played the biggest role in this beating and led the entire execution. Then each prisoner was called by name, and Aumeier and Kaduk personally shot them in the back of the head after they had been brought out, and in this way all 200 people were killed. It was a punishment for the escape of those two prisoners. A few days after this execution, the two fugitives – they were two Poles from Warsaw – were captured and publicly hanged. The unit only consisted of Poles.
2) On 2 September 1943, I was working as a metal sheet worker on the roof of block 10, which was connected to the courtyard of block 11. In block 10, the panes were painted black so that people from the neighboring blocks could not see anything. Nevertheless, we had made an opening in one of the painted panes, through which we could clearly see and hear what was happening in the courtyard of block 11. That day, a group of civilians, some Christian Poles from Bielsko, mostly women with small children, were shot. Using compressed air machine guns, Kaduk and Palitzsch did the shooting while Aumeier and Grabner – the head of the Political Department and apparently an attorney from Kraków – watched. Among those shot was a woman – a Polish woman, a mother with a five-year-old child. After the child had been shot before her eyes, she knelt down and began to pray aloud, which, when Aumeier and the SS men saw this, made them laugh loudly. Kaduk, who knows Polish well, said: “Módl się do swego Boga, ja poczekam, niech przyjdzie” [“Pray to your God, I will wait, let him come”]. Aumeier kicked her in the back as she prayed, and Kaduk shot her.
I don’t know the names of the people murdered in all these cases that I gave above. I know that Władysław Tempka was on block 3, he is a lawyer from Katowice. I saw him for the last time in 1943 and what happened to him, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about Stanisław Chodorowski, a banking official from Kraków.
I have testified everything. The report was read out.