KONRAD DUDA

Tychy, 21 June 1947

To the Board of the Provincial
Polish Union of Former Political Prisoners
in Katowice

I am sending the following report to be handed to the appropriate authorities.

Testimony of Konrad Duda, residing in Tychy at Damrota Street 61, Pszczyna district

In connection with the arrest of the former Lagerführer [head] of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Obersturmführer Aumeier, I testify: as a political prisoner, I was in the Auschwitz concentration camp from October 1940 until its liberation. In May 1942, I was imprisoned for three months in the punitive unit in the Birkenau camp for collecting food waste.

During [my] stay in the punitive unit some prisoners escaped. The remaining prisoners were sent to the courtyard of the punitive unit and after a few minutes the above-mentioned Aumeier arrived accompanied by several officers. After reading out around 220 prisoners from the list, Aumeier demanded that these prisoners should come forward to say what they knew about the escape. Since no one came forward, Aumeier threatened that if no one said anything, he would shoot us all. Since this time no one spoke either, Aumeier read 10 prisoners from the list, whom he lined up in a single row, and he then proceeded to shoot each person with a pistol in the back of the head, killing each of them on the spot. Then he addressed the rest of the prisoners with the same demand, and when no one said anything this time, [Aumeier] again read 10 prisoners, lined them up in the same way and repeated the procedure, but this time the Arbeitsdienstführer [work manager] and later Lagerführer Hössler helped him out. After this execution, we, the other prisoners, were forced to clean up our murdered comrades on the double, and we had to scrape up the remains of the innocents’ blood with our hands to the accompaniment of shouting, beating and kicking. The remaining prisoners, about 200, were bound with wire in the afternoon and were led out half-naked from the courtyard of the punitive unit. As I learned the next day from my fellow prisoners, those unfortunate 200 inmates were led out into the field and shot there. Mindful of the requests of my murdered brothers, I demand that their innocent deaths be avenged.