On 5 February 1946 in Lublin, a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, Lublin District, Judge of the Court of Appeal Oskar Michał Blindże, interviewed the person specified below as a witness. Having been advised of the obligation to tell the truth and of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Zygmunt Smużewski |
| Father’s name | Tomasz |
| Age | 25 |
| Place of residence | Lublin, Krakowskie Przedmieście Street 76 |
In May 1940 I was trying to get to Hungary with several of my friends. Having crossed the border, I was detained at dawn with one of my colleagues and handed over to the unit of Ukrainian guards, then to the German Gestapo officers. First I was detained in the prison in Sanok, then in Tarnów. The prison was overcrowded because mass round–ups of the Polish people were carried out at the time in the streets of towns and cities.
On 14 June 1940 a large transport numbering 755 prisoners was sent away from the prison in Tarnów. At first we thought that we were being sent to labor in Germany, but it turned out that we were brought to Auschwitz. This was the first transport to Auschwitz. I was given number 13. We were placed in one barrack. We were not forced to work yet during the first month of our stay, but we did have to go through various physical exercises that lasted 12 hours a day. When the construction of the first three blocks of the main camp was finished, we were placed in these blocks and we did earthwork, carrying soil in wheelbarrows, tamping down the soil, and filling in ditches. We always had to work quickly, for sluggish and tired prisoners were beaten with sticks. Whoever fell down was then killed on the spot.
Further transports started arriving shortly afterwards. Many kommandos (squads) were created and assigned to various kinds of work. I was assigned to the agricultural kommando and worked driving a cart. Since I moved about the entire camp, I had the opportunity to observe many things.
In April 1941, large transports of Jews started arriving at the camp. In September 1941, the first transport of Russian prisoners was brought in, and the first attempt at the gassing of the prisoners was made. This occurred in the bunker in block 11. 980 people were gassed; they were mostly Russian prisoners of war, others were sick and unfit for work. The corpses were being transported to the crematorium in the “old” Auschwitz the entire following night. I heard that about 14,000 Russian POWs were transported to Auschwitz. I knew that from my colleagues who worked in the camp administrative office. These POWs died because of starvation and because of the cold before the spring of 1942, since they were hardly ever fed and frequently spent hours naked in the frost. Only a few dozen Ukrainians survived from this group and later collaborated with the Germans.
The number of prisoners in the camp was about 16,000. It was regulated in the following way: people who were weak, could not work or evaded work, as well as the sick from the hospital were gassed. The appropriate number of people from the newly arrived transports took their place, while the rest of the transports were marched from the train directly to the gas chamber in Birkenau. From the spring of 1942 I had the opportunity to observe the arrivals of two, three, sometimes more trains filled with men, women and children, who often carried big loads, dishes, and various house items. They were segregated on the ramp – the stronger people were assigned to work in the camp, and the rest was herded to a barrack where they were told to undress and leave their belongings. They were then herded naked to a building – supposedly a bath, where they were gassed. First, the corpses were buried in ditches, then uncovered and burnt in piles. Special crematoria were created later in Birkenau. In my opinion, about 10,000 people or sometimes more were killed daily in that manner.
Besides that, prisoners were also killed during work. This applied mostly to the penal company. The prisoners assigned to this company were Jews, or others who committed some offences (such as eating during work), or those sent from the camp on the orders from the Gestapo officers.
It was dangerous to be sick and to go to the camp hospital, because the sick were often killed in the hospital with lethal injections. Prisoners were often encouraged to go to the Revier [hospital].
Interrogations were conducted in the political department. Adjacent to the department was a barrack with all sorts of torture devices. I heard from the prisoners who went through interrogations that they were brutally tortured: beaten, tied up with ropes, hanged on a post while their hands were bound with a chain, and so on.
The daily food ration consisted of 300 g of bread with a tiny amount (20–30 g) of margarine or fruit preserve, or blood sausage, morning and evening tea and a liter of soup with potatoes, swedes, and cabbage. Not until November 1942 were we allowed to receive packages from home.
At the end of October 1942, all prisoners from Lublin – over 280 people – were called out during roll call and immediately shot in block 11. Similar group executions occurred quite regularly. The prisoners from Lublin were shot in connection with what happened in the Zamość region. A large group of members of the intelligentsia numbering about 40 people was killed in January 1943.
The following people participated in person in these and other executions: Untersturmführer Seidler, who was allegedly from Łódź (he spoke Polish), Rapportführer Palitzsch from the Sudetes, chief of the agricultural department in Birkenau, and Rosenthal (the correct name Różański) who was from Toruń and worked there as a post office clerk, as he said himself. He was also an agricultural instructor somewhere and a non-commissioned officer of the Polish cavalry. Michael Mokrus, a Pole from Silesia, from around Mysłowice was also brutal. The post of the camp commandant was held by Höß at the time. From other office workers and functionaries I remember Hössler and Aumeier who participated in the gassing of the prisoners in Birkenau. Schwarz was the commandant at the new camp in Birkenau.
In March 1943 I was transported to the camp in Neuengamme near Hamburg. At first, I worked digging clay, then digging corpses from beneath the ruins of Hamburg. Lütkemeyer was the commandant there. In March 1944 I was transferred to a camp in Barth, a subcamp of Ravensbrück. I stayed there until 30 April 1945, when I was evacuated and then liberated on the way by the Soviet forces on 1 May 1945. In that camp we worked at Heinkel’s aircraft factory. This required great effort from us – it was very hard to carry out the assigned workload. We were regularly beaten by the overseers and civilian managers for being slow. Kapos who especially tormented us were Swatoń from the Czech Republic and one Pole whose name I forgot. The function of Lagerführer [camp leader] was held by: Hauptscharführer Zeiss, Rapportführer Bielar, Unterscharführer Belsu (deceased), and Unterführer Rekbergen. I do not know what happened to them.