On 18 September 1947 in Kraków, a member of the Kraków District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Municipal Judge Dr. Henryk Gawacki, acting upon written request of the first prosecutor of the Supreme National Tribunal, this dated 25 April 1947 (file no. NTN 719/47) and 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 Article 254, 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed the former inmate of the Auschwitz concentration camp, named below, as a witness, who testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Felicja Pleszowska, née Lurie |
| Age | 34 years old |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Citizenship and nationality | Polish |
| Occupation | shopkeeper |
| Place of residence | Kraków, Wita Stwosza Street 27, flat 7 |
| Testifies freely |
I was heard as a witness in the course of a criminal investigation against Rudolf Höß, and it was then that I testified about the experiments conducted in block 10 in the parent camp.
In the last two months of 1944, when I stayed in block 1 of the new women’s camp in the parent camp, I very often saw a work brigade of female prisoners who worked the night shift in the tailor’s workshop when they were leaving for work and coming back to the camp. This kommando was supervised by Luise Danz, whom I knew well by sight and by name and whom I recognize in the photograph presented to me.
Coming back from work, the prisoners were beaten and bloodied, sometimes to the utmost degree; the prisoners themselves – I don’t know their surnames as the majority of them were French and Greek Jewesses – told me that Luise Danz beat and tortured them. During work, she didn’t allow the prisoners to rest even for a moment or leave the worksite even if they wanted to get a drink of water. On the other hand, she was partial to those prisoners who rendered her various services or brought her gifts.
At a later time, I came into direct contact with Luise Danz in the camp in Malchow, where I stayed from February to 2 May 1945 and where she held the post of Lagerführerin [head of the camp]. She tormented the prisoners there, beating them – just like in Auschwitz – with her whip and kicking them in a most cruel manner for the slightest offence, or rather for what she thought an offence, especially during the roll calls.
Once during a roll call, when she was torturing one of the women in an unheard of manner, I suffered a heart attack and passed out upon seeing her do it although I had already experienced a lot as I was in the camps since December 1942.
There was hunger in Malchow, though – as it turned out after the camp was liberated – the food storerooms were filled to abundance; nevertheless, for the whole period of my stay in the camp, we received food without any salt or fat. Whenever Danz saw prisoners searching for some leftovers, she would beat and torment them. For stealing a raw potato she would sentence the prisoner to having her hair shaved, and meted out the same punishment if, during the scabies epidemic, the prisoner declined to say who gave her the ointment, Mitigal, which Danz had found among her things.
During my stay in block 10, I came across SS doctor Münch, who was conducting experiments with injections against scarlet fever in that block. He was the only one among the German doctors whom I encountered in the camps who treated the prisoners properly and dealt with them in a direct and calm manner, as a result of which the prisoners trusted him and many women turned to him for help, which he never refused. He helped the prisoners in exchanging letters. He would bring such letters with him to the block and give them to the prisoners, he would allow the prisoners to visit each other in the block, for instance, when a husband came to see his wife. Münch got a prisoner, Dr Alina Brewda, out from the SK [Strafkompanie, punitive unit] in Birkenau. We asked for his help in this matter, and he promised to try; indeed, a few days later, this prisoner returned to block 1 in the new women’s camp. I was present when Münch offered former prisoner Jadwiga Koczyńska from Kraków the chance to write a letter to her husband which Münch would then deliver to him on his way to Kraków. He did all of this selflessly. I would like to add that before he administered the injections, Münch would first inject himself with the same substance so as to reassure the prisoners, and if some prisoner was still reluctant to receive the injection, he wouldn’t insist but release her from it.
In 1943 I met another SS Aufseherin, Luise Schultz. She treated the prisoners very well, almost kindly, and didn’t prevent organizing food or articles of clothing; on the contrary, she even helped the prisoners in such activities. I myself received from her food packages and letters from the men’s camp, and she did the same for other prisoners, completely selflessly at that.
At this point the report was concluded and, after being read out, signed.