On 29 September 1947, the Municipal Court in Warsaw, Sixth Branch, with Judge B. Hoffman presiding and with the participation of a reporter, P. Chabowski, heard the person named below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the significance of the oath, the witness was sworn and testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Janusz Krzywicki |
| Age | 40 years old |
| Parents’ names | Rajmund and Czesława |
| Place of residence | Milanówek, Żymierskiego Street 21 |
| Occupation | medical doctor and a dentist, professor of the Dental Academy |
| Criminal record | none |
| Relationship to the parties | none |
Having been sworn, the witness testified as follows:
I was arrested by the Warsaw Gestapo on 22 April 1942 and taken from my flat at aleja Szucha, and on the same night I was transferred to the prison at Dzielna Street, the so-called Pawiak. I was deported to the Auschwitz camp on 13 November 1942. I spent three days in block 10, abutting on the courtyard of the infamous block 11, in which the executions were taking place. Already then, although we didn’t realize what was going on behind the boarded up windows, every day we were driven from these rooms to the other side of the block or to the courtyard, so that we wouldn’t be able to watch the executions through the cracks in the boards. After three days in the quarantine block, on the intervention of prisoner Dr. Dering, I was moved to the hospital block no. 21, where – first employed in the surgical emergency room and next in the dentist emergency room – I remained until 17 January 1945, i.e. until the evacuation of the camp. From the list of the defendants, I met: Hans Aumeier, Max Grabner, Hans Wilhelm Munch, Karl Heinz Joachim Teuber and Ludwig Plagge.
1) Hans Aumeier – SS-Hauptsturmführer, he was the camp leader, the so-called Schutzlagerführer. I know him in person, since he used to come to the dental facility, especially before some official or “casual” visit from the press of the countries which were on friendly terms with the Reich. Then he would inspect cleanliness and order in the facility. Apart from these visits, I saw him almost every day entering block 11 before executions in the company of Grabner, Palitzsch, Schappie and others, which I could observe because the windows of the facility looked out to the entrance to block 11 and its courtyard. Some time after they went in we would distinctly hear the sound of shooting from small caliber weapons. Several times I saw him at the entrance to the camp when the kommandos were coming back from work: he was beating and kicking the prisoners for attempts at smuggling various things into the camp. These objects were nails, articles of clothing, etc. He was the terror of all prisoners in the camp.
2) Max Grabner, as head of the so-called Politische Abteilung [Political Department] was the one on whose orders hundreds of people perished every day. As head of the police and intelligence service in the camp, he passed death sentences for the most trivial offenses committed in the camp, often relying on false reports from the German kapos or informers from among the prisoners. He was a frequent presence at block 11, where he attended executions. He was the fiercest Pole-hater in the whole camp. To this day, I remember the look he gave us when, having come to block 21 in search of valuables and drugs which the personnel of the Lagerkrankenbau [camp hospital] was allegedly hiding, he checked the national identities of doctors and nurses who had been driven to the corridor and raved that the majority of them were Poles. I didn’t come into direct contact with him, but I heard that on his orders the most sophisticated methods of torture were used during interrogations of the prisoners.
3) Hans Münch, already in the first days of his service, was a frequent visitor at the dental facility because he enlisted my help in conducting research into the relation between arthritic and rheumatic conditions and periapical periodontitis. When he learned that for many years I had worked at the facilities of the Dental Academy, he asked for my help in his work. His attitude towards me was correct, probably because he needed my help. The only thing I can hold against him is that he conducted his research on prisoners who were already ground down with conditions in the camp. He arrived at the camp in the rank of Oberscharführer but was promoted pretty fast, so he must have had some merit for his formation. He carried out his experiments in blocks 9 and 10.
4) Karol Heinz Teuber – at the moment of my arrival at the dentist emergency room he held the post of the chief dentist in the Auschwitz camp. He was rough towards his workers in a way characteristic of a German Junker filled with contempt for the kuecktenvolk [?]. Despite his contempt for the prisoners, he didn’t refrain from abuse of his position: he forced us to prepare breakfasts or dinners for him or put big packed lunches in his bag. In running the dental facility, he was at first assisted by the so-called kapo “Zakustativa” – a German who was a criminal and a sworn drunkard. This kapo convinced him to send me to the Gypsy camp, although the then Standortarzt [garrison doctor] intervened in the matter of my employment in the parent camp. This happened because Teuber obtained material benefits from this kapo. I know from my fellow inmates who worked in the Political Department that Teuber’s signature was to be found on the files of those who had been sentenced to death, which would indicate that he was on the committee that passed sentences on prisoners. Teuber also took an active part in the action of gassing transports arriving in Birkenau – all officers were sent to assist there. Under his command was also the so-called Sonderraum, where gold obtained from false teeth of people who were gassed in the crematorium was melted and refined. At first this room was situated next to the dental facility for SS members, but was later transferred to the camp in Birkenau – as I heard – due to the fact that large amounts of gold were appropriated by SS men employed at the facility. My friends who worked there told me that such individuals as Scharführer Simon or Mang spent whole days recasting this gold into figurines which they later sent to their families. Sonderraum was run by prisoners-Jews. As for the subsequent fate of this gold, I don’t have any precise information; I rather avoided taking too much interest in the case as it could lead to the gallows. I recall being told that initially it was sent by one SS man to Berlin, and later deposited in the Verwaltung [administration] and sent elsewhere from there. Apart from gold obtained from teeth, also foreign currencies and valuables taken from people earmarked for gassing often passed through the dental facility for SS men. I learned from my friend, presently deceased Czesław [illegible], that they were heaped on the floor in Teuber’s office, and through the night a large pile would be stacked there. According to information obtained by the said prisoner from a book in which the amount of gold obtained from gold teeth of the gassed people was stated, the figure would reach 150 kg per month. I don’t recall whether this applies to the period of mass gassings of the Jewish transports or to the period prior to these transports (valuables taken from the prisoners who died or were murdered in the camp).
To complete the characterization of Teuber, I must emphasize that despite his very soldierly appearance and behavior, in fact he was a great coward, as he did everything he could to prove himself indispensable in the eyes of the camp authorities, all because he feared that he would be sent to the front. He established several dental facilities which were preordained to stay inoperative because of the attitude of the authorities to the prisoners, and he often made us compile fictitious reports from the work of the facility only to make Berlin believe that he was capable of running this department.
5) Ludwig Plagge – I know him in person from my two-week stay in the Gypsy camp. Despite the fact that this camp was newly established and casual relations still prevailed, he tormented the Gypsies and especially the Poles who performed various functions in that camp. He would often torture the prisoners whom he met in the camp streets only because he found some fault with their appearance.