War Council of Brussels
ID no. 11654
Sent to the Military Auditor
Brussels, 19 May 1945
Police Commissioner
Bauvens
City of Brussels
2nd Police Division
Brussels Military Court
23 May 1945
no. 4086/IV
Witness interview report no. 1965/Q
Prosecution case connected to the identity card [carte d’identité] of Maria Jakubowicz, born in 1920, residing on rue Haute.
The events described took place in Brussels, [or] rather in Ixelles, at the end of February or [at] the beginning of March 1943.
PRO JUSTITIA
On 15 May 1945 at 1.30 p.m., the person named below appeared before me, Pierre Geyssens, police commissioner delegated to the current case by the commissioner of the 2nd Police Division:
Maria Jakubowicz, wife of Juliusz Goldbug, born 10 February 1920 in Peydboerg [?] (Poland), housewife, residing at rue Haute 231, who states:
I wish to testify in French.
I lived in hiding at 31 rue Capouillet in Ixelles and it was there that I was arrested at the beginning of March or at the end of February 1943. I was escorted to Malines [Mechelen], from where I was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp (Upper Silesia). There were 1,600 of us, and only three returned, the remainder were gassed or suffocated, and all of us were women.
Commander Mengele, Untersturmführers Hubert Schwarz, Franz Wunsch [were] in the camp for women who were to be gassed without delay and were to go on the trucks. [The women] would then be transported to buildings some 300 m from the camp and suffocated there by turning on the gas. Then they were burned and those who had not died were burned alive in the crematorium ovens.
Since the Russians were approaching, we were driven on foot to Ravensbrück, threatened with mitrailleuses [machine guns]. We remained there until the beginning of November 1944 – [this is the] date of [my] internment at Malchow (close to Hamburg). I escaped from there when the Americans and Russians drew near, since it was there that they had joined together.
Rapportführer [report leader] Taube [was] also one of the people selecting women after they had arrived at Auschwitz.
I don’t know any other people who committed crimes. I believe that 10 million men and women were burned in the crematorium ovens of Auschwitz and that nearly all the Jews of Europe ended up there. The Gestapo took away my identity card.
The report was read out and signed.
We have issued an attestation to the subject which will allow her to obtain a new identity card. During her stay in our territory she has not been the object of any negative comments as regards her civic stance and, to our knowledge, has behaved neutrally.
The investigation will be carried out in Ixelles, rue Capouillet 31, where Jakubowicz was living in hiding at the time of her arrest. We are signing the above.
Dont acte closed on 19 May 1945, Geyssens Bauvens.
Original placed in file no. 25398/45.