The sixteenth day of trial, 11 December 1947
The hearing starts at 9.05 a.m.
Composition of the Tribunal as of 10 December 1947, with the participation of Prosecutor Gacki.
Prosecutor Cyprian: Your Honor! I request that General Furby, the Head of the Rastatt Tribunal, be heard as an expert in connection with French prisoners’ stay in the Auschwitz camp. In addition, I request two witnesses to be heard. They have been specially delegated by the government of the Czechoslovak Republic and are present here in the courtroom. These are Filip Müller and Arnošt Rosin. Witness Müller spent three years in a Sonderkommando [special squad] and participated in the events that took place in the crematoria. Witness Rosin has a lot to say about defendant Plagge.
Presiding Judge: What is the Defense’s request?
Defense: We have no objections.
Presiding Judge: The Supreme Tribunal has decided to allow the requested witnesses to testify. Therefore, please call witness Filip Müller.
(Witness Filip Müller stands up.)
Presiding Judge: Will the witness please provide his personal data?
Witness Filip Müller, 26 years old, clerk, Jew, no relationship [to the defendants] resident in Ústí nad Labem, Czechoslovakia.
Presiding judge: I advise the witness to speak the truth in accordance with Article 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Making false declarations is punishable with a prison term of up to five years. Do the parties submit any requests regarding the mode of hearing of the witness?
Prosecutor: No.
Defense: No.
Presiding Judge: Therefore, the witness will testify without taking the oath. The witness has been summoned in connection with his stay in Auschwitz, so will the witness please tell us what he knows about the case and the defendants?
Witness: I stayed in the Auschwitz concentration camp as prisoner no. 29236. I arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp in April 1942. In May 1942, I was assigned to block 11, where I was horribly tormented.
First of all, we were not given any water to drink. Water was available, but we did not receive it. As a result, I was forced to go searching for leftover tea at 6.00 a.m. It could be found in the yard of block 11, so I had to, as we used to say in the camp, “organize” it somehow. An Oberscharführer from block 11 caught me red-handed and escorted me to a special room. After lunch, the former head of the camp, Aumeier, came to that room and, of course, asked me what I had done. He took me and six other prisoners to another room and then we were all escorted to the Auschwitz camp gate. From there, on Aumeier’s order, the guards took us to the former Auschwitz crematorium. In this way, from May 1942 to 18 January 1945, I assisted in gassing in the crematorium.
When we arrived at the crematorium, Aumeier handed us over to his subordinate Unterscharführer Stark who, beating us severely, escorted us to a gas chamber and he opened it. Inside, we saw the first Slovak transport that had been gassed there. The prisoners had been gassed in their own clothes. As a result of the fact that we were constantly beaten and had no experience in handling the crematorium tools, we caused a fire in the Auschwitz crematorium, which meant that we could not burn the gassed victims. At Aumeier’s request, two trucks arrived on the same day at midnight, and the rest of the corpses – about 800 people – were loaded onto the cars and taken near Birkenau. We came to Birkenau at about 1.00 a.m., and we were escorted by the Red Cross, whose headlight illuminated us. Defendant Aumeier and head of the Political Department Grabner were sitting in that car. While they were battering us, we had to hurriedly unload the corpses into pits that were still full of water. The work lasted about two hours. After we finished, covered in blood and dirt, we were taken to block 11 and locked in cell 13. There, a different Unterscharführer, who had the night shift, gave us clean clothes, and the six of us were locked up.
On the following day after lunch, at about 2.00 p.m., we were transported to the Auschwitz camp gate. There were fire brigade vehicles painted in green. Aumeier and Grabner were standing next to them. We got in the cars and came to the place where we had dumped the corpses the day before. Standing in mud up to our chest, we had to put the corpses on one pile, and because it was impossible to do it precisely, we were badly beaten. Head of the Political Department Grabner and Aumeier were most active at doing that. Then, we sprinkled chlorine over the corpses and we were locked up again in block 11, in cell 13. I was kept in that cell, in the bunker, for a year and a half, that is, until the liquidation of the Auschwitz crematorium. Almost until the Auschwitz crematorium’s liquidation, I met defendants Aumeier and Grabner, that is, I saw them at least once every day. That is why I wanted to give you a few examples of their behavior.
First of all, the crematorium kapos were Germans at that time. Once, a kapo had his hand tied with bandage. Unterscharführer Grabner came to him and asked, “Fritz, why is your hand in bandage?” Fritz replied, “I killed five Jews again”. “You stupid, you do not have to do it with your hand; we have iron for this. If you kill five, you’ll get 10; if you exterminate 10, you’ll get 20”.
In the Auschwitz camp, I also saw that the flesh of non-Jewish prisoners, who had been executed by shooting, was used for various purposes. Those people were often shot in the presence of Doctor Mengele and others, whose names I do not know, and in the presence of Aumeier and Grabner. Then, their calves and flesh were immediately put into boxes. On average, six to eight boxes of flesh were collected within a week. Once, German inspectors with a Hakenkreuz [swastika] on their arms visited the camp and asked, in the presence of Aumeier and Grabner, whether it was human flesh. Aumeier replied, “We could also use horse meat, but why should we waste it?”
Unterscharführer Grabner was also responsible for the sending of urns with fake ashes of the victims. Three thousand urns were filled with normal ash and were then stored in the SS hospital, in front of the crematorium. Later on, on the direct order of the Political Department, they were sent abroad.
I saw Aumeier and Grabner shoot Russian POWs and Polish political prisoners in block 11. When Aumeier and Grabner decided that it was happening too slowly, they would beat the prisoners before they died, saying, “Faster!” If Polish political prisoners were still calling “Long live free Poland!” before they died, they were separated and shot in the stomach so that it would take them two to three hours to die.
Untersturmführer Grabner was, as I have already said, the main participant and initiator of the crematorium in the concentration camp in Auschwitz – not in Birkenau. There were cases when headless corpses were brought from Katowice – these corpses were brought by Schutzpolizei from Katowice.
Grabner and Aumeier also participated in selections of sick and weak people in the hospitals, and they chose them for execution. Untersturmführer Grabner participated in all selections for the crematorium until January 1943. All the selections that took place in the crematorium were carried out in the presence of Grabner until 1943, and Aumeier as well. Hauptscharführer Palitzsch and Unterscharführer Stark would usually do the shooting. Before the execution, they always received detailed instructions from Grabner and Aumeier.
Presiding Judge: Are there any questions for the witness?
Prosecution and Defense: We have no questions.
Presiding Judge: The witness is excused. Please, call the next witness.