Tarnów, 6 October 1947
Witness: Dr. Roman Szuszkiewicz, Tarnów, Katedralna Street 5
From the former members of the former concentration camp in Auschwitz mentioned, I personally know the following well: Hans Aumeier, Max Grabner and Karol Tauber. I don’t recall the names of the others.
1) Hans Aumeier was the Lagerführer [camp leader]. I met him directly in 1942 when, after a heavy bout of typhus, already convalescing, I was summoned to report to him about some intrigues involving some German kapos, how I was supposed to have treated them inappropriately and not treated them better than the other prisoners, that I favored the Poles, which was then considered to be a crime. As soon as I reported to the Arbeitsdienstführer [work service leader] whose name I don’t remember but whom the prisoners referred to as "Gorilla" – right away, without any explanation, he hit me over six times in the face so that I could barely stand on my feet. After this introduction, he told me to face the wall and wait for the Lagerführer. After two hours of heavy waiting, because I predicted the outcome of the investigation in advance, I was summoned by Aumeier into his office. There, from the very outset, he began to pummel me with his fists on the face and chest. He is very short, and has a voice like (according to the prisoners) a screeching frog. When he got tired, and I could barely stand, he began to interrogate me, in-between questions calling me a Polish pig or other insults that I will not repeat here. He threatened me that for not obeying his order, he would order me to be shot and hanged at the same time. What I got between the questions I will never forget. Because I didn’t understand German well and I was afraid that I wouldn’t grasp some obscure word, I asked for an interpreter. The interpreter was a Silesian, with whom I was on friendly terms (he defended many Poles), but I don’t remember his last name. (He was later drafted into the army.) This translator managed the case in such a way that I ended up with a beating, with my dignity in ruins.
Aumeier terrorized the camp, he was a sadist with no limits. He not only signed off on the death sentences, but he conducted them himself, so they said in the camp – along with Palitzsch. Even during work, he would beat and torment the prisoners whenever he could. He was one of the main people who contributed to the mass murders, not only by issuing the relevant orders and "special" commands to his subordinates, but he himself was often the executioner of these crimes. He claimed that any prisoner living in the conditions created by him couldn’t live longer than three months. If I had the opportunity to punish this individual, I would use the same methods that he invented to destroy as many people as possible.
2) Max Grabner was similar to Aumeier. They cooperated, after all. Every day he selected (on whose orders I don’t know) prisoners to be shot. He terrorized everyone. Whomsoever he summoned to the Political Department, that person didn’t come back. He had his own methods of conducting interrogations that were not seen (dead men tell no tales) but which could be heard from afar. These were the voices of women, men and even children. I don’t remember whether I met him personally; all the prisoners, if they could, avoided him. He is one of the main deviants who are guilty of murdering hundreds of thousands of prisoners in Auschwitz.
3) Karl Teuber, a dentist, was my direct superior, because I worked as a doctor in the medical and dental clinic for prisoners. Personally, I was not harassed by him. However, as a doctor, at least guided by the international ethics of this profession, he could have helped to make life a little better for the prisoners. Unfortunately, he didn’t do so and should be punished for that. He was responsible for the Sonderraum at the SS dental station.
I worked several months as a scrub nurse and cleaner in the SS dental clinic, where I was in contact with prisoners who worked in this Sonderraum. The method of obtaining gold for the Herrenvolk [master race] looked more or less like this: those who had been murdered, tortured by work or who had died of fatigue or because of various diseases (there were 200 or even 300 corpses per day in 1942) were put in the mortuary. There, the Leichenträgers [corpse carriers] made a review of the teeth. They were to mark an X with a chemical red pencil only on the chests of those corpses that had artificial dentistry (gold bridges, platinum crowns and plates). At the same time, they compiled a list with the numbers of these marked corpses. Then they were transported to the crematorium, where in a special room some SS men pulled the teeth out of these new deliveries. Most often these were several German dentists. What a sight it must have been to behold when these butchers were overcome by an onslaught to the senses at the sight of a pile of corpses, very often already in the last stage of decay. This operation always took place with every precaution so that no one would know about it in the camp. These deliveries of pulled-out teeth were specially escorted in suitcases by SS-men to the Sonderraum, where, under the supervision of a special SS man, the gold and platinum were melted into bars weighing from 500 to 1,000 grams. From what I heard from Jewish prisoners (only Jews were employed in the Sonderraum, who were then gassed to get rid of any witnesses), I know that a courier sent about 20 kg of gold to Berlin every month. How much was additionally stolen by the SS men who had some dealings with this Sonderraum, I don’t know. However, I do know that this did actually happen, because a special committee even arrived to detect these abuses to the detriment of the Third Reich. I am even convinced that all the heads of the SS dental station, who were very often changed, contributed to the depletion of what they called the gold mine.
The gold was sent either directly by courier or by the Standortverwaltung der Waffen SS [SS garrison administration]. As I stated above, the workers in the Sonderraum were only Jews, whose fate was unenviable. There were two Sonderraums, one in KL Auschwitz SS‑Zahnstation, the other in the Birkenau crematorium. The Jewish prisoners in the latter Sonderraum were completely separated from the rest of the prisoners and I can’t provide any details from there.
As a further witness, who was in the Birkenau camp, and later in the gypsy camp, I can recommend my friend Dr. Tadeusz Śnieszka, residing in Tarnów, Starowolskiego Street 2. He will also be able to say something about a few SS men he came across.