On 14 April 1945 in Kraków, I, Prosecutor Dr Wincenty Jarosiński, member of the Commission for the Investigation of German-Nazi Crimes in Oświęcim, with the participation of Helena Boguszewska-Kornacka, member of both the Commission and the State National Council, in accordance with Article 20 of the provisions for the implementation of the Code of Criminal Procedure, pursuant to Articles 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed Kazimierz Smoleń as a witness, former prisoner no. 96238 of the Auschwitz concentration camp, who testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Kazimierz Smoleń |
| Date and place of birth | 15 November 1917 in Łysa Góra, Brzesko District |
| Parents’ names | Michał and Aniela, née Mytnik |
| Place of residence | Kraków, Basztowa Street 4, flat 14 |
| Citizenship and nationality | Polish |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Occupation | clerk at the Społem Cooperative, first-year student at the Cooperative Institute at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków |
| Marital status | single |
| Criminal record | none |
On 14 January 1943 at 5.00 a.m., I arrived in Nowy Sącz to visit one of my friends. When
I was approaching his house, I noticed vehicles in front of the building. However, I paid no special attention to them. When I was about to cross the gateway, two men – Gestapo officers, as I found out later – got out of one of the cars and instructed me to get in, without asking a single question. Apart from those two Gestapo officers, there was also a driver in the car. They took me to the building which was the headquarters of the local Gestapo. I was taken to a room where I recognised one of the Gestapo officers who had brought me there. His surname was Górka (I do not know his first name): he was a resident of Nowy Sącz and I knew him by sight.
After they had brought me into the room, Górka took a document out of his pocket, read it and quietly said that the case had to be resolved by Hamann himself, the chief of the Gestapo. I realized then that the denunciation had to involve a serious accusation, because only such cases were handled by Hamann. After half an hour, I was brought into the chief’s office (I had been searched before that, but they had not found anything). Hamann asked me several questions, for example, if I belonged to any organization. I would like to point out that he did not ask me, but rather tried to convince me that the Gestapo had been informed that I belonged to an organization, had distributed leaflets and carried some orders from Kraków. He wanted me to confess, but when I denied all the accusations, Hamann said with irony, “Let’s see if you are telling us the truth,” and ordered one of the officers to put me in a cell.
In the afternoon, I was taken to Hamann for another interrogation. It lasted from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. At the beginning, he asked me the same question that I had heard in the morning, and when I denied everything, two men in uniforms approached me and started hitting me in the face. Those men were torturers. After a while, they put me on a bench similar to those used for chopping wood in the countryside. They put me astride the bench in such a way that I had to lift the knees, and then they placed iron bars between my arms at the elbow joints and the knees. They tied my arms with a strap, so I could not move at all. I would like to point out that I was hanging above that bench, I did not sit on it – it resembled a swing. This is where the name of such an instrument (“swing”) comes from in prison jargon. One of the officers was pushing me, while the other was beating me with thick electric cables plaited together and soaked in water. The beating lasted for about 15 minutes. I felt terrible pain and I was already slightly stunned. When they stopped beating me, but while I was still in a hanging position, they asked me if I was going to tell them the truth. When I answered that I had been telling the truth from the beginning, they took me off the “swing,” and tried to convince me – a bit more kindly – that there was no use in resisting and that I had to confess to the deeds I had been accused of. Hamann himself did this. I had heard stories about him. If people confessed to a crime, he never spared their lives, so I realized that my situation was very serious. I stated once again that I was telling the truth and I addressed Hamann directly, saying that I would not confess to anything, because I was sure that even if I admitted that I had committed the acts I was being accused of, I would not survive anyway. Then, Hamann gave an order to take me to the dark cell for the night and said ironically, “Think it over by tomorrow.”
The dark cell was a small basement without a window, with a concrete floor, covered with a 5 cm layer of water. The walls were completely damp and the airflow was seriously restricted. From the moment I was detained until 9.00 a.m., I was given nothing to eat or drink. Finally, at 9 a.m., a turnkey whom I did not know came to the dark cell and brought me a cup of dark and bitter coffee and about forty grams of dark bread. I would like to add that the dark cell was located in the prison in Nowy Sącz, about 500 meters away from the Gestapo building. I was brought there after Hamann had interrogated me. About an hour after the breakfast – it was already on 15 January – prison guard Johan, a provost and Gestapo officer, came to the dark cell, put me in American handcuffs, and took me to the Gestapo building. He brought me into a room where I saw various tools. I immediately realized they were torture instruments used for extorting confessions. In the room, there was also a “clerk” I had not seen before and the two officers that had beaten me on the “swing” in Hamann’s office. The “clerk” asked me a few unrelated questions concerning my personal life, and started repeating the questions, or rather accusations, that I had heard from Hamann the previous day. Once again, I categorically denied I was guilty. Then, the two “torturers” approached me, and the “clerk” gave them a signal to brutally tie me up with a chain and pull me up to a post that had been specially prepared for that purpose. I was hung in a position in which I could touch the ground only with the tips of my toes, and my whole body was hanging by the arms, which were bent backwards (forming the so-called post). I hung like that for about 45 minutes, while they were trying to force me to confess. When I told them that I would not tell them anything different even if they tried to kill me, because I had been telling the truth the whole time, they took me off the post and let me sit on a chair. They even offered me a cigarette. I was afraid that it might contain some narcotic substances, so I did not take it. For the same reason, I did not drink the vodka that they offered me later on. I was starving, so I ate two slices of bread with butter that the Gestapo officers gave me. In the meantime, they were trying to force me to confess, promising that they would let me go. This lasted almost until noon, and then they locked me in an unused toilet, where I stayed until 3 p.m. Then, they took me again to that room and the same men tried to make me believe again that I had committed the acts I was being accused of, while constantly hitting, kicking, and pushing me. At 5 p.m., I was put in handcuffs and taken back to the prison basement. The following day at 9 a.m., I was interrogated in the Gestapo building, in the same room as the previous day. The interrogation was performed by the same “clerk”. Then, he dictated my testimony to a typist.
Both the interrogation and the report were in German. I do not speak German, but I understand that language quite well. When the typist finished the report, she told me what it was about. According to the report, I had confessed – contrary to my testimony – that I belonged to a secret organization, distributed leaflets, and acted as a messenger between Nowy Sącz and Kraków. When I categorically refused to sign the report, the two “torturers” in uniforms burst into the room and started beating me with whips on the head, back, and other parts of my body. I fainted, so they poured cold water on me and continued the beating until I fainted again. I do not know if they asked me to do anything, or who it was that was beating me later on and how long it took. I only remember that when I regained consciousness for a moment, they were hitting me on the thighs with a small hammer. I woke up in the evening and I realized I was in the same unused toilet as the previous day. That very evening I was taken in handcuffs to a prison cell. There was no interrogation for the following two days.
In the meantime, the prison in Nowy Sącz was being filled with people detained during roundups on the streets of Nowy Sącz and nearby territories. These people were then transferred to the prison in Tarnów. On 19 January 1943, I was taken back to Hamann. He asked me how I felt and why I had not signed the report. When I told him that the report was not consistent with my testimony, and that I preferred to be killed than tortured, Hamann dictated another report, which contained specific charges and according to which I did not consider myself guilty. The last interrogation was so quick and involved no beating due to the fact that the Gestapo in Nowy Sącz were at that time busy with interrogating large numbers of arrested people and sending them to Tarnów. I guess this saved my life.
After three days, I was transported in handcuffs – like the most dangerous criminal – together with about 80 people to the prison in Tarnów, where I stayed until 28 January 1943. Then, I was sent to the Auschwitz camp with a group of 1200 men and 800 women.
The torture room was located on the first floor. There were two windows, which were always covered with thick curtains, and two doors. In the corner in front of the entrance, there was a desk next to the typist’s desk and a wardrobe. On the other side of the room, there was a table with chairs. By the wall with the entrance door, there were the “post,” the “swing,” a chair resembling a dentist’s chair, and buckets with riding whips.
On 28 January 1943 in the Tarnów prison, we were informed that we would be transferred. They gathered us all in the prison yard. We knew they would take us to the Auschwitz camp, because Polish guards from the prison had told us so. However at the station, the commander of the transport announced that we would go to Germany to work, and warned us that if we tried to escape, the transport would be decimated. We were escorted to the station in groups of 200 people. Guarded by police and SS officers, we were loaded in groups of a hundred people into cattle cars, which were closed afterwards. When we arrived at the station in Kraków, as we found out later on, 500 prisoners from the Montelupich prison were loaded into the train. We arrived at the railway station in Auschwitz at 8 p.m. The station was illuminated by floodlights. As soon as the train cars were opened, I heard loud screams, “Los, aussteigen, schnell!” and I saw a huge number of SS officers with revolvers in one hand and riding whips in the other – they used them to ruthlessly beat the prisoners getting off the train. Initially we thought that we would be taken to the camp by vehicles that were parked nearby and were empty, but we soon noticed that the vehicles were leaving, and then we were divided into groups of five and rushed – between two rows of SS officers – to the Birkenau camp, which was three kilometres away. I would like to point out that the road was covered in ice, so it was easy for us to slip. Those who fell were ruthlessly beaten and kicked to death. As I found out later, the vehicles that had left the station empty were supposed to transport Jewish prisoners straight to the gas chamber. When I arrived at the Auschwitz station, apart from the SS officers, I also saw groups of prisoners wearing striped clothes who searched the emptied cars on the SS officers’ command. They were the so- called Canada detail. 20 people from our transport had been killed already on the way, and many of us were beaten. After we walked through the so-called red gate in Birkenau, we were overwhelmed by the thousands of lights on the multiple barbed wires that surrounded the camp. Another thing I noticed right off were the wooden and brick barracks. There were about 400 of them. When we arrived at the camp proper, we saw groups of about 200 people standing outside each of the barracks. It was roll call time. The men were then separated from the women: the men were taken to the men’s camp, the women – to the women’s camp. I was taken, along with a group of 500 people, to the so-called Zugangsblock [block for the newly arrived], no. 22.
The block was completely empty and it was where prisoners’ personal data was registered. It was a stable-like barrack, divided in two by a furnace duct in the form of a long chest. We were left on one side of the barrack, while the other side was still occupied by Jews who had arrived before us from Vawkavysk. The registration was performed by prisoners. They spoke Polish. I would like to add that we were registered two days later because on that very day about 5000 people in four transports – from Tarnów, Kraków, Teresin, Vawkavysk, and Łódź – had arrived at the camp. While the Jews were being registered, right after we had been shoved into the barracks, some prisoners who dressed differently than others, in dark blue jackets with green badges, came in and asked the newly arrived prisoners to give them all the valuable items they had, because they would be deprived of everything anyway. Each of those prisoners carried a cane and had a yellow badge with the word “kapo” on their arm. They were German because they spoke only that language. Some of the newly arrived prisoners gave them their valuables.
From the morning of 27 January 1943, when we were given a cup of black coffee and a piece of dry bread, we did not receive anything until 29 January at 10 a.m. We were all extremely thirsty and were dreaming of having some water, but Polish prisoners, who had already been in the camp for a while, approached us and warned us that we should not drink the water, because it was unhealthy and caused diarrhea. Instead, they brought us a barrel of coffee, but only those who were weakest could get some, and only a bit. The coffee was not officially intended for us, but rather it was stolen or – as we used to say in the camp – “organized” by those prisoners.
On 29 January at 4 a.m., while the night was still dark, we were rushed out of the barrack to the square situated in front of it. I realized then that from my group, consisting of 500 people, two men were already dead. Their bodies had been placed in the square so that the number of prisoners was correct. At 7 a.m., an SS officer arrived and received a report from the block senior. The block senior was a Jew, he had a star on his side and a red badge with the number 22 on his arm. Before the SS officer arrived, the block senior had lined us up in ten rows and had trained us. He instructed us that we should take off our hats to every SS officer, and that we had to quickly take them off and put them on at the “Mutzen auf, mutzen ab” command.
Right after the roll call, I saw something that struck me most and which will stay in my memory for the rest of my life. I saw prisoners taking between several and several dozen dead naked bodies out of every barrack. They were placing them on trolleys or sledges, and taking them to a special shed, a morgue, the so-called Leichenhalle. It happened every day. On the first day, I counted about 200 dead bodies, and many more later on, because the mortality increased to 500 people per day. The majority of the corpses were brought to the evening roll call by work details. Then, they were taken to blocks and, after the morning roll call, to the morgue. Those were usually people killed by work supervisors, the so-called Kapos.
Another thing that attracted my attention was a building with a high chimney situated next to it, about 80 meters away from block 22, outside the wires surrounding the camp, the so-called Effektenkammer [storehouse for prisoners’ belongings]. When I asked one of the prisoners who had been in the camp longer than I what kind of building it was, he said, “It’s a factory and you’ll burn in there in a couple of weeks.” At first I did not know what he meant, but later on I learned that the facility was indeed a newly built crematorium. There were still no gas chambers at that time, so people were poisoned with gas in a house situated by the forest. The house was white, had a tile roof, and had been confiscated from some farmer. Next to the house there was also a sealed barn or shed which was also used for gas poisoning. Gassed prisoners were burnt on wood pyres drenched with kerosene or oil. In the crematorium that I have mentioned, they only burnt corpses that had been taken outside the camp. I am sure that at that time the gas chambers at crematorium I and the other three crematoria with gas chambers were already being built. I saw it with my own eyes, because later on during my stay I was employed at the construction of those buildings.
On 29 January at 10 a.m., each of us was given a piece of bread (about 350 grams), and at about noon we got some nettle soup. We stood at the square outside the block until the evening roll call, that is, until 9.00 p.m., in mud because the snow was melting. Then, we were taken to block 20, the so-called quarantine block. We did not get any supper. The block was divided into four rooms. By the walls there were pieces of furniture resembling wardrobes, the so-called buksas, whose inside was 1.8 m high, about 2 m long, and about 80 cm wide.
They looked like chests, were open at one side, had no front wall, and were situated one upon another, just like rabbit cages. Those chests were our beds. Each of them could fit from nine to twelve prisoners. It was impossible to turn around and we did not undress.
There were no mattresses or pillows, but only four or five blankets that prisoners had to share. The floor was concrete, so those who slept in the lowest bunk slept on the stone. There was no ceiling in the block, but only a wood wool roof. The windows were constructed in such a way that they could not be opened. There was no water, no toilets. There was no water at all in the whole camp, except for the kitchen and the bathhouse where it was taken from a well.
There were 960 people in that block. The following day at 4 a.m., we were rushed again to the square outside the block. At the entrance, every prisoner was given a bit of bread and about 20 grams of marmalade, and then once we were in the square some cold coffee in bowls. One bowl was used by several or a dozen people, and each person had a few sips. We all stood there in horrible conditions from the morning roll call until evening. The square was very small and steep, and its lowest situated part was covered with melted snow, so all 960 prisoners had to crowd into the remaining area. For dinner, we were given rutabaga soup, about half a liter per person. Throughout the whole day, the prisoners were being registered alphabetically. Since the formalities took a lot of time, the registration lasted for three days. Those who were registered were then taken to the bathhouse in groups of 100. The showers were cold and we were given no soap or towels, so we put our clothes on our wet bodies. Before we took the shower, we had all been shaved, deprived of personal belongings, and treated with some delousing liquid. Then we received socks, long underpants, a shirt, trousers, a striped drill blouse, a striped coat and a hat. From the bathhouse we were taken back to block 20, but those who had been registered went to a different part of the block. I was registered on the second day and I received the number 96238. When we were giving up our personal belongings in the bathhouse to be stored in a warehouse, only jewelry and valuable items were listed – underwear, clothes, and other things we had were not. Each of us had to put our number, which we had received at the registration, into a pocket.
Before we took the shower, while we were waiting in the square for our turn, we had been approached by about 15 SS men who, screaming loudly and hitting us with riding whips, sticks, and canes, rushed us outside the gate, to the forest in the direction of the white house. We all had to run in that direction and when we reached the forest, and that white house, we had to take each other’s hands in groups of five. At that time, nobody knew what was in that house and why we had been rushed there. When we got there, one of the SS men started giving us orders in German, but we did not understand him. Then, one of the prisoners who spoke German, Stanisław Kucharski, the head teacher of a secondary school in Chorzów, prisoner no. 95712, offered to interpret the orders into Polish, because the rest did not understand anything. Then the SS man he had addressed said, “How is it that Jews don’t understand German?” Kucharski explained to him that we were not Jews and that we had been transferred to the camp from prisons in Tarnów and Kraków. Then they asked Kucharski whether we had seen a group of Jews near the bathhouse. One of the inmates said that he had seen a group of prisoners kneeling near the guardhouse. An SS man, who was passing by on a motorcycle was then sent there to check it. When he returned, we were escorted to an empty barrack, which was still under construction, and we stayed there until late at night. For that reason we became even more uneasy. A few days later, we learned that the white house was a gas chamber, the group of kneeling prisoners were Jews, and that they were taken there instead of us and gassed on that very day.
About 1 a.m., we were taken to the bathhouse. We took a shower and returned to the barracks in block 20. we felt relief and received some bread. We stayed in the quarantine block for about two weeks. It was there that I witnessed for the first time a lynching at the hands of prisoners. The block senior was a Silesian named Leon Siwy, and he was one of the “better” people. Although he sometimes beat us, he never killed or injured prisoners, unlike his deputy, Józek from Częstochowa. Józek was a common prisoner: short, scrawny, with the face of a sadist. He had a burn mark under his left eye. He was a brutal and violent person, “the worst brute.” He never missed an opportunity to remind us that he would beat us for the smallest violations, that there was no God, and that if we were believers, we should just pray and see if he would help us. “In a few weeks, you’ll all be dead, because you’ve come here to die,” he used to say. Józek often abused prisoners without any serious reason, punishing us with 20 strong blows with a cane on the buttocks. He did not care where he hit us and with what tool, or whether the prisoner would survive, die as a result of the beating, or become a cripple. I saw with my own eyes that one evening he killed a prisoner by hitting him with a cane in the neck between the chin and the base. He pushed the ends of the cane down with his legs in order to choke the prisoner, who was already lying on the ground. Afterwards, while being transported to another camp, Józek was killed by prisoners who decided to lynch him. I also had a similar experience with him. When we were going to take a shower, he told us he would safeguard our belongings, because we could lose them in the bathhouse. I gave him a diamond ring, but when I asked him to give it back after the shower, he punched me in the face and said, “I’ll give you your ring.” After he behaved like that, I never asked him for the ring again. Józek had a helper – Stubendienst [room orderly] Oleszczuk, a man displaced from Zamość Voivodeship, who later died in the camp. Both Oleszczuk and other Stubendiensts, whose names I do not remember, treated prisoners in a similar manner, maybe less calculating, but ruthlessly brutal. Józek rewarded them with bigger portions of bread, soup, and additional food items.
Throughout my stay in the camp, the most difficult things to bear were hunger, thirst, and cold. As a result of such conditions and the fact that we were constantly being forced to stand in the fields, while it was wet and cold outside, those who were less immune started to fall sick and die. A week after we arrived at the quarantine block, our group was divided among different work units. I was assigned to the KGL (Kanalisation Kriegsgefangenenlager) detail. The work was hard, because we had to dig sewage ditches that were several meters deep, install concrete pipes, and remove the dirt, which was then taken elsewhere on wheelbarrows by other prisoners. We usually had to take the dirt out in our coats, because it was impossible to drive a wheelbarrow through the deep mud. Our supervisor was Kapo Lucjan, a very decent man. I never saw him hit anyone – he was more likely to give somebody a piece of bread. In general, the supervisors of that detail were good people.
I worked in that detail for a week only. Then, I was transferred to the Planierung detail. The Kapo was Paweł Gulba from Silesia. He was also a good man. Our task was to carry dirt from the pits to the barracks. The detail consisted of 1200 people, divided in groups of 100 that each had their own Kapo.
I know that apart from the above-mentioned details, there was also the Kommando Daumbau whose tasks were similar to ours (I believe that its name comes from the name of a company), and Kommando Kompostierung, which was responsible for the maintenance of guard booths, the so-called small and big Postenkette. The small Postenkette was the inner cordon of guard posts, the big Postenkette – the outer, bigger cordon, which included the Abladenkommando (building materials unit); the work units of crematoria I, II, III and IV; the Sonderkommando, consisting of about 180 people (later on about 800) whose task was to burn piles of corpses; a construction company called Wagner; and work units that employed only professionals, for example Zimmererkommando and Instalateurerkommando. I would like to add that, in addition to prisoners, private companies also employed civilians – Poles (with green badges) and Germans (with yellow badges) – who lived outside the camp and received appropriate remuneration. Work was the hardest in non-professional details because their Kapos were usually not professionals but common criminals – I remember some of their names. As a matter of fact, those people were infamous in the camp for their cruelty and brutality towards prisoners. The Kapos are responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent prisoners whom they murdered themselves or through their helpers.
I know the following men: “Bloody Alojz,” Arnold Bem, Huna Koch, Aleks Wieland no. 14, Herman, and many other “bullies,” including “the Ruffian from Düsseldorf” and others whose names I do not remember. One of the worst of them was the Kapo of the Dachdeckers detail, Heppol, who later left the camp and joined the SS. I cannot provide the address of those people or say anything more about them. I only heard that Koch was related to Koch the Gauleiter of East Prussia. All the people whom I have mentioned spread terror throughout the whole camp.
Their work consisted only in beating and killing. I would like to add that professional details were supervised by Kapos who were professionals, usually Poles, and who – as intelligent people – were friendly towards other inmates. The Kapos that I have mentioned earlier treated prisoners with bestiality, for example, they pushed prisoners from the highest level of a Kiesgrube [gravel pit], which had several levels, for no reason. The prisoners fell into the water at the lowest level and drowned. The Kapos would also trap prisoners under an empty barrel, sit on it and have a meal, while the prisoner suffocated. They also made bets on which one of them could kill a prisoner with a single blow. The Kapos beat prisoners with sticks until they lost consciousness, and when the prisoner fell on the ground, they would finish him off by kicking him. The intelligentsia was subject to particular persecution, while real criminals were considered respectable people. I saw with my own eyes that a Kapo who was segregating and selecting people for work, asked them what they were by profession. If somebody said that he was a criminal or that he knew the work he was supposed to perform, the Kapo put him aside, but when he found a man who had graduated from a university, for example a lawyer, professor, or judge, he would beat him and immediately assign him to do the worst possible jobs. Court employees, judges and prosecutors were treated the worst, so nobody would admit that this was their profession. However, policemen received even worse treatment. I know that if someone said he was a policeman, he was killed on spot.
We left for work at about 7 a.m., right after the roll call, or at dawn, depending on the season. The camp orchestra played while we marched off to work. A group of SS men stood at the gate and counted the details. Each detail had its own number. We had to step to the rhythm of the march, without hats, to our place of work. At about 5 p.m. (in winter) we went back to the camp, accompanied again by the orchestra, and gathered for a roll call. It took quite a lot of time, because the strongest prisoners were selected for the first rows. Then, there were the so-called “musulmanns,” who straggled after them. At the back, we carried the corpses of prisoners who had died or been killed at work. If a Kapo reported any transgression committed at work by his detail, the whole camp had to stand at attention during the evening roll call, kneel or remain in a half-squat position, called Kniebeugen. It lasted several hours. The same happened if the camp authorities were not able to count the prisoners. It took place regardless of whether it rained, snowed, or was windy. On such days, we were given dinner late at night, when we were often completely soaked. The corpses were brought into our blocks. If a Kapo reported a missing prisoner at the roll call, the siren sounded immediately, and the SS men with Kapos and dogs searched for the alleged escapee within the big Postenkette. I have said “alleged escapee” because prisoners often lost consciousness and were not able to show up in the appropriate detail.
If the search did not yield any results, the SS men and the Kapos, and Blockführers with the Rapportführer, would select 20–30 prisoners at random from the block of the missing prisoners. Those prisoners were executed by firing squad on the same day.
After two days of work in the Planierung detail, I was assigned to the work unit at crematorium II where I worked for two days. The building was already finished, but there were no furnaces or gas chamber – they were still under construction at that time. The crematorium was located right next to crematorium I, which I have already mentioned, and was built in exactly the same manner. Each of the crematoria could fit 2000 people at once. The gas chambers were situated underground and could be accessed by stairs, like basements. At that time, the chambers were still empty, so at first sight they looked like shower rooms. The crematorium itself was a huge hall with small rooms located next to it. Above the rooms there were flats, later on intended for the prisoners employed in the Sonderkommando who operated the crematorium. The crematorium was still under construction at that time. The Kapo of the Krematoriumkommando was the so-called “Ruffian from Düsseldorf.” He gained his nickname for allegedly having murdered a dozen or so people in that city. He also had the look of a criminal. He was a medium-height man with protruding cheekbones, bulging dark eyes, black joined eyebrows, a grim look, frowned forehead, disproportionately long, monkey-like arms, bandy legs, and an athletic body. Everyone was scared to death of him. All prisoners avoided any contact with him, because if you did not step out of his way, you could be killed. That Kapo was later transferred to another camp.
My job in the crematorium was to carry bricks. One evening, after three weeks of quarantine, we were all instructed after the roll call to form groups of five and we were taken to block 14. I remember very well that from the 960 people who began the quarantine with me, only 580 were alive after three weeks. The rest were killed at work by Stubendiensts, Kapos. A small number of them died of exhaustion.
Immediately after I moved to block 14, I fell sick and I could feel I had a high fever, but I still went to work because I knew that the prisoners who were sick and did not work were taken by the SS men to the gas chambers and poisoned.
I worked in various details. However, each day I was more ill and after a few days I could not even stand on my feet. The doctors informed me later that I had suffered from bilateral pneumonia. The situation I found myself in was disastrous because I was not able to work, but I knew I would get poisoned if I stopped working. My friends carried me for the morning roll call. Throughout the whole evening roll call I lay in the mud, because I was not able to stand. Therefore, I decided to go to the hospital. When I arrived at the infirmary, which was located in block 12, I saw a queue of about 150 prisoners waiting at the entrance. It was impossible for the doctor to see all those prisoners in one day, so it was only thanks to my wits that I managed to avoid queuing and got inside the block. I was examined by Dr Roman Zenkteler from the Poznań District, prisoner no. 20497. He took my temperature, asked what was wrong, and instructed me to come back the following day after the roll call. On the following day during the morning roll call, when I was not able to stand at all and I was lying in mud, the block Schreiber called out my number and told me to go to the hospital.
Block 12 could only fit about 70 patients, the so-called “prominents.” We knew they would not be sent to the gas chambers. The sick that were to be sent for gassing were placed in block 7, and they were taken to the gas chambers by trucks once a week. On that day, 35 prisoners were admitted to the hospital – 33 were placed in block 7, while prisoner Michał Adamczewski, a camp cook, and I were sent to block 12. However, before we were assigned there, we had been examined once again by a German doctor, Untersturmführer Rohde. I do not know why I was assigned to block 12. A year later, I asked Dr Zenkteler about it, and he said “I knew you’d survive anyway.”
Zenkteler was a 56-year-old chunky man, with thick bones, short and bandy legs, round face, and bushy eyebrows. He was distrustful, treated the sick harshly and often hit them for minor misbehavior. He was ruthless towards younger doctors and the infirmary personnel – for the smallest transgressions they were beaten, scolded, or removed from the hospital and sent to work in the camp. Together with German doctors, he selected the sick for the gas chambers. Sometimes it was impossible to understand that man because if you confronted him in a harsh manner, you could win his affection with your courage. He was a big coward and was very afraid of the SS men, while the sick and the hospital personnel were terribly afraid of him. He came from the Poznań District and later became the so-called senior hospital Lagerältester.
At the beginning, I had my own bed in the hospital, later I shared it with another man. The food was the same as in the work part of the camp. The doctors examined us, recorded our medical history, but they did not give us any medicines. Throughout my entire stay, which lasted 8 days, I was given only one aspirin pill. Then I was transferred to block 8, the block of the sick, where I also stayed for 8 days. I was placed in room 4 with prisoners suffering from typhus fever. People could not reveal that they were suffering from typhus because they would be killed by phenol injection. Doctors who were prisoners, or even Rohde, who was German, turned a blind eye and diagnosed such patients as suffering from “influenza” in their medical files. After I stayed in block 8 for four days, Dr Jerzy Reichmann, a Pole, came to my room and asked, “Who can read and write in German?” I was among those who came forward. After I wrote down the anamnesis of a patient, which I did well, I was employed as a Schreiber in the surgical room of Dr Chaim Krause, a Polish Jew from Kielce. He was more eager to treat the sick if they gave him something to eat. My task was to write down the medical history dictated by the doctor, count the number of patients, clean the room and take the corpses out. Occupying that position, I had greater freedom of movement, and since block 8 was situated next to block 7, I had a chance to see transports of prisoners destined for the gas chambers. Generally, people from block 8 were not taken to the gas chambers. However, sometimes if there were not enough people in block 7 to fill the required number sent for gassing on a given day, the sick from block 8 filled the empty places. I know that once or twice completely healthy work personnel, consisting of prisoners from block 7, were taken to the gas chambers so that the number indicated on the gassing order was reached. The decision on who should be transferred from block 8 to block 7, and consequently sent to the gas chambers, was taken by prisoner doctors. They usually chose terminally ill patients. There were two transports to the gas chambers per week, mostly in the morning, when the rest of the prisoners were outside the camp.
Prisoners selected for gassing were first gathered in block 7 or in its yard. Then, trucks arrived and the sick were hurried or thrown inside, and the whole transport headed towards the gas chambers. Sometimes prisoners destined for gassing had a tattoo with the letter “A”. At the end of February or at the beginning of March 1943, the gassing was still taking place in the temporary chamber, in the white house by the forest. The average daily mortality in block 8, when I stayed there, amounted to 20–30 people out of a total of about 250 sick. In block 7, the mortality was significantly higher. On average, the number of prisoners in that block was about 800. About 150 of them died every day, but I remember that one day that number rose to as many as 320 people. Prisoners in block 7 were treated and fed the same as other blocks, but since only seriously ill prisoners were placed there and their number was so high that there was hardly enough room for them in the block, the majority of those who died simply suffocated due to lack of air. At that time, the senior of block 7 was Wiktor Mordarski, prisoner no. 3000, former deputy prosecutor from Nowy Sącz. He helped prisoners a lot, saving them from transports. If the number of prisoners that had to be taken to the gas chambers was not clearly indicated in the order, but he was only instructed to take some prisoners from block 7, he was able to transfer several healthy prisoners to block 8. In this way, he saved the lives of many people who are still alive today. In order to do so, he had to reach an agreement with the senior of block 8. At that time, that position was held by Józef Bernacik from Poznań, prisoner no. 15517, who came to Auschwitz from Dachau. He was a very good person, so all prisoners called him “Dad” – he gave a sense of security to all Poles. Later on, he became Lagerkapo, and since he was one of the older prisoners and spoke good German, he was respected also by German Kapos.
Since I had been placed in the room for patients suffering from typhus, I contracted that disease. For the fourteen days that I was sick, I received no medication and, despite very high temperature, I had to walk barefoot on a stone floor to the toilet situated about 30 steps away. During that time, almost all the Poles in Birkenau were being sent to other concentration camps in Germany.
Those who stayed in Birkenau were only sick Poles, a part of the hospital personnel, and a few professionals. All the Poles from the transports who had previously held the position of Kapo or performed administrative functions in the camp were replaced by Czechs and Jews. I was afraid that I would lose my job as a doctor’s Schreiber, so I returned to work, although I was still very ill. While I was suffering from typhus I ate almost nothing, so I got hunger diarrhea. My life was saved only thanks to food packages I began receiving from home almost every day.
In November 1942, as my friends told me, 60 boys from Zamojszczyzna were brought to Birkenau with their families. The boys were all under 14 years old and were placed in a separate block. At the end of March, they were transferred to Auschwitz and, as I found out later from my fellow inmates, injected with phenol. Only three boys survived from that group. The senior of block 7, Mordarski, managed to hide them in his block. When I was staying in block 8, I saw through a keyhole SS man Franz Schulz, who was not a doctor, but a Röttenführer, injecting phenol into about 20 Greek Jews suffering from malaria. I saw them being escorted from block 7 to the infirmary room in block 8, and then brought one by one into the room where Schulz was waiting. Schulz instructed every prisoner to undress from the waist up, approached him, stuck the needle deep into the prisoner’s heart, and injected phenol. After such an injection, the prisoner collapsed immediately. Then, Jewish prisoners who were there with Schulz took the convict by his arms and pulled him into the carpenter’s room. After the entire group was injected, the corpses were taken away by ambulance from the carpenter’s room to an unknown location. The last transport of prisoners from block 7 to the gas chambers took place at the end of March or at the beginning of April 1943. From that moment on, Aryan patients were no longer gassed. Additionally, during that time in the camp, an official order was issued which prohibited the beating of prisoners, but it did not mean that all beatings stopped. That moment marked the beginning of a better life for the camp prisoners. We were treated slightly better and from June 1943 those who suffered from typhus could admit they were ill, without the fear of being injected. There was even a typhus fever ward created in the camp. At that time, 600 patients infected with this illness received treatment.
At the end of April and the beginning of May 1943, three transports of Poles, consisting of about 3000 people, arrived at Birkenau. Two transports were from Warsaw, and one from Łódź. These usually contained members of the intelligentsia and people who had been involved in underground activities. They brought a new life to the camp, where the Poles had felt alienated during the previous three months because there had been just a small group of us. The newcomers occupied many positions in the camp’s self-government. They cheered us up by bringing us news about the political situation, sometimes about our families, and the situation in the General Government. On 17 May, I replaced a Czech, who had been sent to a newly opened camp for Gypsy families, as a block clerk. Before I went to the bathhouse for the first time, I had hid my purse with documents in the bunk bed in which I slept, so when I became a block Schreiber, I hid it in a closet in the Schreibstube. Two days after I became a Schreiber, an SS man from the Political Department came to our room and searched it thoroughly without saying a word. He found my purse with my documents, hit me several times in the face, took the documents away, and threatened that I would be sent to the Strafkommando [penal unit] under the suspicion of attempted escape. I was very scared because I knew very well from my friends’ stories what the Strafkommando was. I had also had a chance to see it for myself when observing prisoners working in that detail.
Sometimes prisoners from the Strafkommando could get help from doctors and be placed in the hospital, but it only happened to a few of them. The number of people in the SK was usually over 200. Prisoners in the SK did not know how long they would stay there. The periods differed, but there were also people who had been sentenced for a permanent stay in the SK. You could be transferred there even for a small violation of rules. The SK was located in block 1. The yard was surrounded by a high wall topped with barbed wire. The SK prisoners were allowed to leave the block and the yard only when escorted by SS men to work. They were prohibited from communicating with prisoners from other blocks. Their job was to dig drainage ditches stretching around the camp or to do Vistula River engineering works. They had to work quickly and the only way they could move around was to run. The Kapos in the SK were only German, the biggest criminals and sadists. Although those prisoners were given the same food as prisoners in other blocks, they could hardly ever finish their meal because they were being persecuted by the SS men, block authorities, and Kapos. The SK prisoners were often woken up at night, ruthlessly beaten with sticks, kicked, and often forced to stand in rows in the block yard for an entire night. Then, they were rushed off to work, without any food.
One inmate, whose name I cannot remember right now, but it might have been Antoni Kępa from Łódź, prisoner no. 6874, a barber by profession, who worked as a barber in the SK for some time, told me that one day in winter, the whole SK was ordered to stand naked in a field all night long. At work, they were treated in a cruel manner and were brutally beaten all over their bodies and killed with anything that was lying around, not only for the smallest misconduct but also for behavior that the SS man or Kapo simply did not like. They were drowned in the ditches they dug. Therefore, it is not surprising that in such conditions it was impossible to survive, and some prisoners left the SK alive only thanks to favorable circumstances and exceptional luck. Every day, several dozen corpses arrived by a special cart from the SK workplace. The block leader and Kapos entertained themselves in the block by telling one or several prisoners that they would die in a few minutes, then they would hang them on a hook in the toilets at the sound of a gong. The prisoners died of suffocation. Another method that was used to kill people was to hang them by their legs on a hook, while putting their head into a bucket filled with water. Other common methods of harassment included Kniebeugen, physical activities, and forcing prisoners to satisfy their natural needs at a specific time and pace. Regardless of the season, the prisoners had to wash themselves naked in the morning, but they were given no towels, so they had to put the underwear on while still being wet.
Apart from the SK, there was also another way to punish prisoners for small violations, namely placing them in a bunker. The bunkers were located in block 2. I saw with my own eyes what the bunkers looked like. Some of them were 60 by 80 cm, and were 2 m high, so the prisoner was able to stand up inside, but other bunkers had a ceiling so low that it was only possible to remain in a bowed position. There were no windows or doors. The bunkers were completely empty, had a stone floor, and could be entered through a hole that was padlocked and situated under the floor. Sometimes more – up to four – prisoners were squeezed into such a bunker. Due to lack of air, the prisoners suffocated. When they left the bunker, they often had bite wounds on their fingers, which they had inflicted on themselves because of the pain they felt while suffocating in uncomfortable positions. Generally, prisoners were placed in such bunkers for a night, and they had to go to work the following morning. They did not know how long they would stay in the bunker. The period varied. I knew an inmate named Wiesław Kielar from Jarosław, prisoner no. 290, who was punished with a month in a bunker for wearing two sweaters at work in winter.
During the time when I was in Birkenau and the SK was located there, the seniors of block 1 were Arnold Bom, a German, prisoner no. 8, and two Poles from Chorzów who had signed some documents in the camp certifying their German citizenship: Franciszek Daniach, whose number was over 11000, and Emil Bednarek, with a number over 1000.
In the yard of the SK block, there was a gallows, where official death sentences were executed, and a bench used for flogging prisoners. The executions for a so-called escape attempt took place in the presence of the whole camp in the roll call square.
Women who were brought to the camp were placed in a separate women’s camp located just behind the wires of the men’s camp. It was called FKL (Frauenkonzentrationslager). The admission process was exactly the same as in the men’s camp, but women, after they had undressed, were rushed completely naked to the bathhouse which was located in the FKL. If there was not enough room in the FKL, they were rushed to the bathhouse in our camp, also completely naked.
The women had their heads, armpits, and their intimate parts shaved by men. Generally, the personnel in the bathhouse consisted of men, while groups of women were escorted by SS men and the so-called SS Aufseherinnen.
On 23 July 1943, the whole men’s camp was transferred from the so-called BIb (Bauabschnitt Ib) to the newly built BII, but healthy prisoners were placed in section BIId, while the sick went to section BIIf. Between the work area of the camp and the hospital area, there was section BIIe, which was occupied by Gypsies from April 1943. The hospital area BIIf consisted of 18 wooden Swiss-type barracks with floors and windows. Those barracks were warm, light, had a ceiling and normal stoves. Bunk beds in the rooms had two levels. There were about 44 beds in each barrack, which could fit about 90 people. Later on, sometimes about 170 people were placed in the blocks for people suffering from typhus. Living conditions improved considerably and food portions (better soup, white bread) for seriously ill prisoners increased. At that time, I was a block Schreiber in typhus blocks 10 and 11.
The Gypsy camp BIIe consisted of 32 stable-type barracks. The first transports arrived in April and within the following few months the number of people reached 18 thousand. The families were kept together, so the men resided with the women and children. They received black badges, which meant Asoziale [asocial] and Arbeitsscheue [layabout], and their numbers were preceded by letter “Z” for Zigeuner [Gypsy]. They were numbered from one to 18 thousand. At first, the Gypsies were treated and fed better than other prisoners. The camp authorities also organized a so-called Kindergarten with a merry-go-round for the children. Initially, they did not work in the camp, but their task was to keep their section clean. The majority of these Gypsies were German. Their camp resembled a normal Gypsy camp outside Auschwitz, because the Gypsies wore their own civilian clothes. Some of them were people who had served in the German army, but were taken from their homes and placed in the Gypsy camp while they were on vacation and wore civilian clothes. They were able to get food items and other things in their own canteen, which was considerably better equipped than our camp kitchen. They were allowed to have money, while we were not since we had coupons. The Gypsies begged through the barbed wires and tricked other prisoners out of food in exchange for so-called fortune telling. Only Gypsy women were fortune- tellers. Since their camp was extremely dirty, infectious diseases, such as typhus or scarlet fever, began to spread, which resulted in a relatively high mortality.
The Gypsy camp existed until July 1944. During that period, 12 thousand people died of various diseases. At the beginning of July, 2000 of the healthiest men and women were selected out of the 6000 people who were still alive, and taken to Germany to work, while the remaining 4000, which I saw with my own eyes, were loaded onto trucks and taken to the gas chambers, where they were poisoned. The Gypsies were being loaded onto the trucks from 8 p.m. until late at night by the Sonderkommando, who treated them with extreme brutality. The children were being thrown onto the trucks like packages. Before the Gypsies were transferred, the so-called blokszperas [ban to leave the block] were announced and numerous SS officers surrounded our blocks. We had to keep the windows shut, but since block 10, where I was staying, was situated about three meters away from the Gypsy camp, I could see – provided I was careful – what was going on there. SS men surrounded the Gypsy camp along the barbed wires. The Gypsies, who had probably sensed the upcoming danger, started to run away and hide, trying to save themselves. We could hear terrible screams and several shots. The SS men even climbed the roofs to prevent people from escaping through the windows located there. We had suspected that something bad would happen to the Gypsies because the healthy ones had already been transported out of the camp, and on the day of the final liquidation of the camp all non-Gypsy prisoners who worked in the Gypsy camp were instructed to move to the non-Gypsy camp. In this case, these were doctors, Pflegers [nurses], and Schreibers. On that very day in the evening, after the announcement of the blokszperas throughout the Gypsy camp, the Gypsies were also instructed to nail the doors of individual blocks with boards so that no one could enter them from the outside. On the following morning, the camp authorities looked through the files of all the Gypsies in our camp, marked with letter “Z.” These were mainly people being treated in the hospital. They were loaded onto trucks and poisoned in the gas chambers, just like the rest. The same happened to two Gypsies and one Gypsy woman who somehow managed to survive the previous day by hiding in the Gypsy camp.
On the day following the liquidation, the Gypsy camp resembled a wasteland, a devastated and silent place deprived of life. I would like to mention that when the Gypsies came to the camp, they had lots of money and gold. That money was then transferred, through the canteen and by swindles, into German pockets. In the canteen it was possible to buy only bad cigarettes, “[illegible] soups,” sometimes raw sauerkraut, beets in vinegar, snails from a barrel, and mineral water. I remember that once they also had pickles. In the canteen there were also shaving tools, toilet paper, and other similar items. Sometimes they had salad vegetables. After the Gypsy camp was liquidated, only a few Gypsies who were not marked with the letter “Z,” normal Schützhäftlings, were left in Birkenau. They came mainly from roundups.
Sometimes Gypsies, both men and women, were released from the Gypsy camp under the condition of sterilization. If they did not agree to be sterilized, they had to stay in the camp. I know this from doctors and nurses, because the procedures took place in the operating room in block 2.
In August 1943, the gassing of prisoners resumed. Only Jews were gassed – the first such transport to the gas chambers consisted of about a thousand people. Then, every month or every two months until October 1944, groups consisting of 300 to 1000 Jews were sent to the gas chambers and poisoned. Each transport of Jews to the gas chambers was preceded by the visit of a German doctor, accompanied by an SS assistant, the so-called SDG (Sanitätsdienstgehilfe). The doctor superficially examined the Jews and dictated the numbers of selected prisoners to the SS man. Based on those numbers, a list was prepared and sent to the Political Department, where some names were approved, while others – of Jews accused of specific political crimes, not coming from ghettos or roundups – were crossed off the list. After two days, such a list was sent back to the SDG and the people who were on it were transferred to the bathhouse in block 16. All these prisoners knew they would be poisoned with gas, but they deluded themselves into thinking that they would somehow avoid being killed. In block 16, before the arrival of the trucks that would transport them to the gas chambers, they behaved in a strange way. Some of them seemed half-insane, others were giving speeches, trying to lift the spirits of the rest, and still others wanted to eat and smoke. After about two hours, they were taken by truck to the gas chambers and poisoned. The doctor who made the list of prisoners selected for gassing in August was a German, Obersturmführer Helmersen, allegedly the son of the president of the Berlin police. He was a German sadist who hated Polish people, especially the intelligentsia. He was a young man, about 30 years old, and, according to the prisoners, knew nothing about medicine.
I saw with my own eyes and heard from other inmates that, at different times of day and night in the period from August 1943 to May 1944, people were being transported by trucks from the Auschwitz freight station straight to the gas chambers. At that time, all the crematoria were already operational and following the arrival of each transport, the crematoria chimneys smoked day and night. The transports were huge and often consisted of several dozen trucks. Each transport was followed by an ambulance with Zyklon B, although the passengers believed that it was there for the purpose of immediate medical assistance. Such transports often arrived every day, but sometimes they would stop for up to two weeks. People were transported by truck from the freight station until a railway siding was constructed – it took them straight to the crematorium. I had a chance to see prisoners being unloaded from the trains because the ramp was located near block 11, and there was some open space between it and the block. We were allowed to walk there and even go as far as the barbed wires that separated us from the ramp.
Mass transports of Jews from Hungary commenced in June 1944. A daily transport of such Jews consisted of a dozen or so trains. It all lasted for nearly a month. We estimated that during this period about 350 thousand Jews were brought to Birkenau. When the trains arrived, everyone was instructed to get off and leave all their belongings in the cars. Then, a German doctor performed a selection, sending only the healthiest men and women to the camp, while the rest of the men, women, and children were transported to the gas chambers and poisoned. The influx of people who were to be poisoned with gas was so huge that, although the gas chambers in crematoria I and II could fit two thousand people each at the same time, and the chambers in crematoria III and IV 750 people, the camp authorities had to poison prisoners in the temporary gas chamber located in the white house by the forest. There were not enough furnaces in crematoria III and IV to burn those who had been poisoned in the gas chambers, so a wooden pyre was built next to crematorium IV for burning the gassed corpses. Those who had been gassed in the white house were burnt on a pyre constructed nearby. Two holes were dug near the pyres to bury the remaining parts of bones. The whole camp was then filled with a horrific smell. It was dark from the smoke.
The gas chambers were sometimes so crowded that no more people could be poisoned. The men – Hungarian Jews – were then sent to the Gypsy camp, while the women who were to be gassed were placed in a special section, still under construction, the so-called section III (Bauabnschnitt III). We called that section “Mexico” because nobody registered those women or gave them numbers. There were not enough SS men, so police from the east came to guard the women. In the barracks where they lived, there was no medical assistance, water, or toilets. Immediately after their arrival, the women were shaved and deprived of all belongings. They had to take off their underwear and put on light dresses over naked bodies. The women only waited there until the gas chambers were empty, which lasted up to two months. During that period, they were escorted in groups to the gas chambers and poisoned. A small number of the healthiest Hungarian Jews, selected by the doctor at the station, were sent to the camp and marked with the letter “A” and an additional number – 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Those Jews were then sent in groups to work in coalmines and factories. Due to such work conditions, their health quickly deteriorated, as a result of which they were transferred back to the camp and poisoned in the gas chambers.
While the corpses were being burnt on the pyres, which usually took place in the evening, we often heard the cries and screams of children and the barking of dogs, so we assumed that the children were being burnt alive. Our assumption was partially confirmed by the fact that the cries and screams ceased after a while.
Sometime in September 1943, the first transports of Czech Jews, consisting of about 5000 people, were brought to Birkenau by train cars. They were men, women, and children. The families were placed in individual blocks in section BIIb. The section consisted of 32 blocks. Additionally, one or two other transports of Czech Jews arrived at Birkenau. These Jewish families were not separated, so the section was officially called the Familienlager. The Jews were treated very kindly and were allowed to take almost all their belongings with them. They were not shaved or sent to work, and they had permission to receive food packages from their families or friends. They were also allowed to write letters. A special hospital was set up for them in the camp and they were treated like non-prisoners.
These were rich Jews from Theresienstadt, where the biggest Czech ghetto, consisting of about 70 thousand Jews, was located. These were very rich people, which was noticeable at first sight. We assumed that the camp authorities were treating Czech Jews so well to spread propaganda in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The second transport of Czech Jews consisted of about 2000 people.
Within six months of their arrival, all these Jews were poisoned in the gas chambers. Before the first transport was poisoned, all Jews from that transport were transferred to section A. Only doctors and twins were excluded from the transport and left in section BIIb, but they were transferred to hospital section BIIf when the second transport was being exterminated. A day before the gassing of the first transport, the people who were to be gassed were instructed to write letters to their families, but to mark them as written a month later than it really happened.
After the transports of Hungarian and Czech Jews, a few transports from the Łódź Ghetto were brought to Birkenau. There were tens of thousands of these Jews. They were treated in a similar way to the Hungarian Jews, namely a small percentage of the healthiest people were sent to work in mines and factories, while the rest was taken to the gas chambers and poisoned. Those who were healthy were marked with the letter “B” and a number.
Due to the mass gassing of prisoners, a special detail, the so-called Sonderkommando, was formed. It consisted of about a thousand Jewish prisoners, of different nationalities, and several Russians who had been brought there from the Majdanek camp. Initially, the Sonderkommando was located in a normal camp, section D, block 12, but as it grew bigger it occupied blocks 9 and 11. I would like to explain that during this period the Strafkommando was transferred to block 13. The Sonderkommando block was surrounded by a wall, and its members were not allowed to contact other prisoners in the camp. Prisoners were assigned to the Sonderkommando by the Lagerführer, and such a transfer amounted to a death sentence. The youngest and healthiest prisoners from the entire camp were selected to join that work unit. I remember very well that, during my time in the camp, three details – one every three weeks – were exterminated by poisoning in the gas chambers. The members of the Sonderkommando were usually killed with phenol.
When the transports of Hungarian Jews arrived, and then the Czech and Łódź Jews, the Sonderkommando was transferred to the rooms located above crematoria I and II. After the extermination (gassing) of those Jews, a part of the Sonderkommando was placed in the gas chambers of crematoria III and IV.
After spending some time in the Sonderkommando, the prisoners seemed half-insane and stopped reacting to the monstrosity of their actions. They were primitive criminals. My inmates told me that one prisoner employed in the Sonderkommando met his own mother in the camp. He himself escorted her to the gas chamber and fulfilled his duties, although he knew that she was going to be gassed.
In September 1944 – I do not remember the exact day – at about 4 p.m., the SS men became unusually active and started rushing details from work back to the camp. Then, we saw that crematorium III was on fire. Some prisoners were escaping from the building through section G towards crematorium I.
We assumed that a rebellion had broken out in the Sonderkommando. Later on it turned out that we were right. Some prisoners from the Sonderkommando who worked in crematorium I, had joined the group of escapees from crematorium III. Then both groups cut the high- voltage wires and barbed wires surrounding the crematorium and tried to escape. SS men ran after them, shooting. I do not know how many prisoners tried to escape, how many managed to do so, or how many were killed. Anyway, no prisoner was brought back to the camp alive and 92 prisoners were missing at the evening roll call. There was no other repression or persecution implemented as a result of that rebellion. Later on, a Kapo from crematorium III – I don’t know how he had managed to survive and why he had not escaped, but he had gunshot wounds and was taken to the hospital – told us that, as a result of the rebellion, the Sonderkommando employed in crematorium III was persecuted in a particular manner. The prisoners were instructed to strip naked, so they assumed they were going to be gassed. The rebels killed an SS man and a German Kapo from crematorium III, set their own beds on fire and escaped.
I have already mentioned that, apart from doctors, twins were singled out from the transports of Czech Jews during the liquidation of the family camp. I would also like to add that from among all the transports of Jews which had been brought to the camp after June 1944, also midgets and physically impaired people, regardless of their sex, were singled out. In the men’s camp, where only the selected prisoners were placed, there were about 120 people, from three-year-old children to elderly prisoners. They were allowed to have hair because they did not go to work and they were favorites of Dr Mengele, a Hauptsturmführer, who was the chief doctor in Birkenau. A special anthropological infirmary was then set up. It employed professionals, prisoners who were doctors. They performed various experiments on the twins and midgets, measured their skulls, height, etc., tested their eyes, hearing, and other senses, made plaster casts of their jaws and teeth, analyzed their blood, took pictures, but I do not know what was the purpose of those examinations.
Several times in summer 1944, I saw with my own eyes the executions of prisoners in crematorium II that took place in the evening. They were killed with a short bolt gun that is usually used for slaughtering cattle. Since there was light inside the crematorium, I saw it through a window. The procedure was the following: every minute two prisoners from the Sonderkommando escorted the convicts one by one to a place where an SS officer killed them with the bolt gun aimed at the back of their head. In this way, they killed a dozen or so prisoners.
I stayed in the Auschwitz camp from 28 January 1943 to 20 January 1945. From August to November 1943, apart from working as a block Schreiber, I also worked as a painter, because I was afraid that the German doctor Helmersen would remove me from the block for the sick.
Therefore, all day long I wore a painter’s suit stained with paint and I painted blocks 10 and 11. At that time, the senior of the two blocks was Hans Bock, prisoner no. 5, a German who had come there from Auschwitz-Buna. He was a very good man, nicknamed “Dad,” who tried to help the prisoners in any possible way. Bock was formerly the hospital Lagerältester in Auschwitz I, but for helping the prisoners too much, he was degraded and sent to Birkenau, where he held the position of head block senior.
Bock liked me as well and he helped me. When Bock was transferred to the Lagischa camp, somewhere in Silesia, he asked doctor Helmersen to appoint me his successor to the position of the senior of blocks 10 and 11. This was my job until November 1944.
At the beginning of December 1944, doctor Helmersen was sent to the front and his position was assumed by doctor Thilo. He was a martinet, but he cared about the patients’ health. However, it did not prevent him from sending a cured patient to a gas chamber. On 24 November 1944, I was selected, together with other Poles, to be transported to a different camp located in the Reich. As a result, I was transferred to section D. I was placed in block 11, which at that time – after the Sonderkommando was transferred to the crematoria – served as a transport block, and then in block 32. We waited there for about ten days for the train cars that would take us away. In the meantime, I managed to contact two prisoners: Klewin and Fajkosz, who prepared transport lists and were employed in the so-called Arbeitseinsatz [labour deployment]. Since I had helped prisoner Klewin in block 10 when he was sick, he owed me a favor and took my file out of the files of prisoners who were to be transported to the Reich. He also advised me to simulate an illness and try to get to the hospital. Therefore, I “organized” some propidon and a syringe, and asked a friend to give me an intramuscular injection. As a result, I got a high fever. In order to make my way through the gate from section D to hospital section F even easier, I also simulated that I had a yeast infection on the chin – I put some iodine on my chin and face and on top of it I made “spots,” using zinc ointment. Due to the high fever, I was admitted to the hospital and I avoided being transported to Germany with about 1500 people who left the camp on that day, namely on 4 December 1944. I was admitted to the hospital by Dr Epstein. The chief doctor diagnosed me and sent me to block 8. I stayed there for two weeks thanks to the fact that during that period doctor Mengele was transferred to the SS hospital. Dr Horstmann, who assumed Mengele’s position, knew nothing about the camp regulations. After two weeks, when I left the bed, I was transferred to block 18, where I worked as the block Schreiber. I stayed there until 20 January 1945.
On 18 January 1945, the last transports of healthy prisoners marched off to the east, escorted by SS officers.
On 20 January 1945 at 3 p.m., the last SS men left the camp, leaving us without supervision. About 8 p.m., two SS men came to the Canada detail in section BIIg and set the warehouses on fire. The warehouses were full, although the most valuable items were constantly being transported out of the camp, because new people were coming. The Canada warehouses consisted of about 30 blocks. Since I knew that there were no SS men in the camp anymore, when I heard artillery shots, I knew the front line was very close. I was afraid that the SS men would return and take the remaining prisoners to the Reich, so I talked to a few friends of mine: Stanisław Zawadzki from Końskie, Władysław Rodowicz from Warsaw, Jerzy Borodzicz from Grodno, and Alfons Budrowski from Łuków. We escaped from the camp at 11.55 p.m. and headed to the south. Two Polish prisoners, Władysława Kamińska and Janina Grzybowska, both from Warsaw, joined our group. The weather conditions were very unpleasant – the fog was thick and the day was freezing cold. We went through snow that reached our knees. While we were still in the camp, we put on civilian clothes, took backpacks from the open warehouses and filled them with food. We could hear the artillery shots coming from the north, so we went in the opposite direction and we knew we were going to the south. Driven by fear of falling back into the hands of the Germans, we went quickly almost without stopping, not feeling tired until 6 a.m. Then, we reached a village called Brzeszcze. We saw a house with lights on. First, we sent our two female companions to make a reconnaissance, and then we were invited by the host to come in. It was the house of a man called Jurczyk who worked in the Brzeszcze mine. As Auschwitz prisoners, we received an extremely warm welcome – we were given food and allowed to have some sleep in the house. Generally, the local people were very kindly towards Auschwitz prisoners. It was not possible to cross the front lines, so we stayed in different houses in Brzeszcze for over a week.
On 28 January, the Soviet troops entered Brzeszcze. We asked them if we could return to Kraków and they let us go. We set off for Kraków on the same day via Chrzanów. I arrived in Kraków on 29 January 1945 and I have stayed here until today, working in the Społem Cooperative.
I would like to add to my testimony that in the camp hospital I often met Jewish prisoners who had been sterilized by the Germans with the use of X-rays. They lay in block 10, which was for people suffering from skin diseases, with terrible genitals wounds. I was told that these experimental operations were performed by doctor Schumann, called “professor”. He wore a German aviation lieutenant uniform.
I would also like to list a number of names of “the biggest German camp villains”. These were: Lagerkomendant Höß, his deputy Kraus, Lagerführer Aufmeyer [Aumeier], Lagerführer Schwarzhuber and Rapportführers: Palitzsch, Schillinger, Polocze, and Kurpanik. In the women’s camp: Lagerführerins Mandel [Mandl] and Drexler [Drechsel]. From the Political Department: its chief Grabner and officers Brochut [Broch?], Hoffman, and Lachmann; Blockführers: Buldog, Wolf, Grapatin, and Baretzki, as well as Mohl [Moll], the head of the crematorium.
The report was read out. At this point on 19 April 1945, the hearing and the present report were concluded.