Sopot, 5 June 1947
Jan Ławnicki
Former prisoner no. 115415
To the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Kraków
Due to the trials of German war criminals from Auschwitz concentration camp which have already taken place or are yet to take place, as well as those of war criminals from IG Farben whose activity was linked to Auschwitz, I would like to point out that nothing has been said or written of the Auschwitz penal camp, that is Fürstengrube, a camp set up on 1 September 1943 6 km from Mysłowice, a subcamp of Auschwitz III (Buna).
I was transported to Auschwitz (Auschwitz I) on 14 April 1943, from where after three weeks of quarantine I was sent, along with a transport of 300 prisoners, to Buna (Monowitz) – a camp located 6 km from Auschwitz, where we were put to work building IG Farben facilities. After a year, namely at the end of April 1944, [as punishment] for the escape of two Poles, I was placed in the bunker along with nine other prisoners, and after three days we were deported to Fürstengrube, where prisoners were usually placed for crimes allegedly committed in the camp.
Although the Monowitz camp was among the harshest, it seemed a paradise to us compared to Fürstengrube. We worked in an IG Farben coal mine – in terrible conditions when it came to safety. Work was paid by the piece and each of us had to extract a predetermined number of coal carts, depending on one’s work location. We worked in three shifts. After eight hours of work we were barely able to stand. Coming out of the mine always entailed being beaten and kicked by the kapo, the Vorarbeiters [foremen] and the SS escort. Very often penal exercises were ordered after we returned from work – it was enough for one of us to put the wrong foot forward while marching to precipitate this punishment.
Because the camp was being enlarged at this time, independently of the prisoners who worked permanently at the site, we were often used to perform various types of work in the camp after returning from the mine, such as carrying bricks, poles etc. Even though we were supposed to be sleeping (our shift was the first to get up, at 3.30 a.m.).
The food was very meager. The products we were entitled to were used up by the SS kitchen, and reports were falsified to conceal this. In addition to constant hunger and physical exhaustion we were always short of sleep (we slept 6 hours a day, our sleep was often interrupted by rows and beating). As a result of these conditions, after a few weeks in the camp a normal man began to look like a skeleton.
The commandant of the camp was a 23-year-old SS non-commissioned officer, whose predecessor had been Hauptscharführer Moll, known to many of the prisoners at Auschwitz and Birkenau. The SS crew consisted of around 130 SS men whose attitude towards us was very hostile. The worst were the Germans from Croatia. The German Lagerältester [camp elder] Josef Hermann was particularly cruel; to ingratiate himself with the SS authorities he would administer various types of torture. His zealous helpers included: Lagerkapo Michał (I don’t remember his last name) from Upper Silesia, Oberkapo Wilhelm (I don’t remember his last name) and Eschmann, as well as various kapos, Vorarbeiters and block elders. Of these the following deserve mention: kapo Walter – a renegade from Upper Silesia, block elders Olszewski (a German from Berlin) and August (I don’t remember the latter’s last name) and a host of others, regular German criminals, whose last names I unfortunately don’t remember.
It was normal to be beaten on the face, kicked, whipped with rubber, or even to have one’s hands broken as a result of being beaten with a metal bar. In addition to these [punishments], there were all kinds of penal exercises (so-called sports), such as frog jumps, cold showers, rolling the paths, etc. Mortality in the camp (from May to September) was relatively low because around 2–3 prisoners of ca. 1,200 died daily, yet transports of several dozen sick or completely exhausted people would be sent to Birkenau every few weeks. There were also cases of prisoners committing suicide or going mad.
After five weeks, by a lucky coincidence, I managed to leave the mine and [get] work as a male nurse at the camp hospital (the so-called Revier) for seven weeks. Those responsible for what went on in the hospital were SS-Unterscharführer Bara – a renegade from Mysłowice serving as the SDG [Sanitätsdienstgrad, auxiliary sanitary personnel] and the SS doctor (Lagerartzt) Dr. Fischer, who would come to Auschwitz periodically as the man overseeing all the so-called Nebenlagern [subcamps]. Later I worked as a bricklayer and painter until my deportation to Auschwitz, from where transports were being dispatched to Germany due to the gradual evacuation of the camp.
After arriving in Auschwitz from Fürstengrube (7 September 1944) I felt as though I had been set free. From my conversations with prisoners from the main Auschwitz camp I gathered that they had no idea about what was happening in the small Auschwitz subcamps like the penal camps of Fürstengrube and Janinagrube, which were regular places of extermination (Vernichtungslager), although they were called work camps (Arbeitslager).