On 28 August 1947 in Oświęcim, a member of the Kraków District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Municipal Judge Dr. Henryk Gawacki, on the written request of the first prosecutor of the Supreme National Tribunal 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), pursuant to article 254, 107, 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, heard as a witness the below mentioned prisoner of the concentration camp in Auschwitz, who testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Barbara Ibolya Pozimska, n ée Gross |
| Age | 24 |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Occupation | housewife |
| Place of residence | the State Museum [Auschwitz-Birkenau] in Oświęcim |
I was arrested in Kežmarok (Slovakia) and in a group of 3,000–4,000 people, some day in April 1942 whose date I no longer recall, was brought to the Auschwitz camp and placed here behind a prison wall [with number] 4662. I was in this camp until 18 January 1945, from where I was transported to the Ravensbrück camp, and from there I was placed in the Malchow camp (Mecklenburg) after a few days.
In the Auschwitz camp, at first I stayed for three weeks in camp I, then I was transferred to the women’s camp in Birkenau, and from there in February 1943 back to camp I, where I remained and worked in the Arbeitseinsatz [labor deployment office] until the end. Initially, I lived in camp I with other prisoners in the so-called Stabsgebäude [staff building] and worked in the Strassenbaukommando [road construction], loading potatoes and going to Rajsko, where we worked hard demolishing houses (Abbruchkommando). In the camp in Birkenau for the first two months I worked as a nurse in the hospital for female prisoners, after which for about two months I was assigned to the Schmutzkommando (carrying out chamber pots and refuse and garbage from the hospital), and finally ended up on a plantation of rubber plants (Gummiplantage).
During my stay in the Auschwitz camp, I met with the overseers (Aufseherins) and with the senior overseer (Oberaufseherin) Maria Mandl, the reportedly deceased [Margot] Drechsel, Theresa Brandl, Luise Danz, Elfriede Kock and Luisa Schulz. Moreover, I encountered other overseers whose names I don’t remember, who in any case don’t appear in the list of former members of the armed SS crew of the Auschwitz camp.
As for the conduct and approach of the senior overseer Maria Mandl, who in relation to the men and women prisoners showed brutality every step of the way beyond any measure, consisting in beating them either with her hands or a stick or some other object, and above all by kicking them all over, the following events imprinted on my mind: once in September or October 1942, when I was working in the Birkenau camp in the so-called Schmutzkommando, while passing by, I didn’t notice Maria Mandl nearby and I didn’t call out, according to the rules imposed in this regard, “Achtung!”, because of my work which involved taking out and transporting excrement and rubbish. I walked past Mandl, and without a word, she booted me twice in the buttocks as hard as she could, and for the next two weeks I was forced to lie in the hospital. While I was in the Birkenau camp, I stayed in block 27. One Sunday in the autumn of 1942 – today I can’t remember the date – just before the roll call, Maria Mandl herself appeared unexpectedly and began to herd all the prisoners from the block to the courtyard to roll call. At that time some 5 or 6 trucks arrived along with some SS men, some of whom had dogs on a leash. Mandl also came, leading a dog with her. Some of the prisoners sensed something wrong and one of them, my good friend from the same town of Kežmarok, Gisela Holzer, today residing there, stopped me as I was going out to the courtyard, and both of us hid in the last bunk under the lower bed and from there, we first heard the shouting of the women prisoners, Maria Mandl and the SS men escorts as well as the dogs barking. Then, we watched surreptitiously through the window, as Maria Mandl, not carrying out a roll call as usual or counting the female prisoners, and the SS escort threw the poor prisoners who were unable to move by themselves into the nearby cars. The prisoners shouted, refused to enter the wagons, and then Maria Mandl and SS men, the latter with rifle butts, beat the prisoners and forced them into the cars, with the help of the dogs around. I could see the dogs jumping on the prisoners, and some of them tore chunks off their bodies. About 800 female prisoners lived in this block, almost all of them young girls aged 16–22 and 25 years old, and among them were many healthy, strong and able-bodied girls. Maria Mandl loaded all the girls apart from me and the other prisoner, onto the cars and drove them off to the gas. This I ascertained when the cars transporting the prisoners drove off along the road leading to the crematoria, located next to the railway ramp and when none of these prisoners ever came back and I didn’t meet them in the camp any more.
While working in the Arbeitseinsatz, I lived with other prisoners in the so-called Stabsgebäude, where the supervisor was Aufseherin Brandl. She displayed a similar level of brutality and ferocity towards the female prisoners as her superior Oberaufseherin, Maria Mandl. This brutality consisted in similar conduct – beating and kicking the female prisoners. She didn’t allow the prisoners to grow their hair back after it had been completely shaved off or to comb their hair and she would beat the women for such things. Also when the female prisoners working in the offices surreptitiously made and then sewed collars and cuffs onto their prison clothes, she beat and punished them in various ways, such as making them work in the laundry at night or locking them in the basement in a standing position all night long. I was punished in the laundry for ten nights in a row, and worked alone for four nights, while some of my friends worked for me the other nights.
I met the overseer Danz in the camp in Malchow. In this camp there was a great famine, and the food that was allocated to the prisoners was insufficient, so the prisoners looked through the rubbish for peels from potatoes and other vegetables, and cooked them. I did the same. Danz, when she saw through the window one of the prisoners in the rubbish bin, ran out and furiously whipped her on the face with something like a cat-‘o-nine-tails. I got whipped on my face by her. Some prisoners suffered slashes and cuts to the skin as well as scars.
Kock and Schulz, unlike the other overseers, behaved calmly, allowed the prisoners to get away with some things and looked the other way as well as frequently shared their slim rations of bread with the prisoners.
In addition, as for the other former crew members, I noticed that Lagerführer [camp leader] Aumeier was an impulsive man, out of control, and used to beat the prisoners for the slightest, in his opinion, misdemeanor, or at the very least he shouted at them.
In the Arbeitseinsatz I also met SS-Unterscharführer August Bogusch. For some months in the spring of 1944 he worked in the same room as I and 10–12 other female prisoners. Bogusch watched myself and all the prisoners all the time, checking if they were working and constantly pushing us to work harder. He didn’t allow any of us to go to the toilet, nor did he allow any consumption of even a scant allocation of bread during work time, stating that we could do so after finishing work. After a month, Bogusch moved to another, smaller room.
The report was read out, thus concluding the hearing and the report.