On 10 September 1946 in Katowice, the District Investigative Judge Jan Sehn, a member of the Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, at the spoken request and in the presence of a member of the aforementioned Commission, Deputy Prime Minister Edward Pechchalski, heard, pursuant to and in relation to art. 4 of the decree of 10 November 1945 (Journal of Laws No. 51, item 293), in connection with art. 254, 107, 115 of the Criminal Code, the below mentioned former prisoner of the Auschwitz concentration camp, who testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Roman Taul |
| Date and place of birth | 28 February 1917 in Bytom |
| Nationality and national affiliation | Polish |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Occupation | Clerk |
| Place of residence | Radzionków, Mariacka Street 4 |
I was sent to the concentration camp in Auschwitz on the first Silesian transport, courtesy of the Gestapo in Bytom. I arrived in Auschwitz on 24 June 1940 and stayed there until 30 September 1944 as prisoner No. 1108. Initially I worked for a short time in various kommandos, and then I was transferred to the political office. In this office I worked first in the Aufnahme, then in the Registrar, and at the end of August 1942 in the Standesamt undKrematoriumverwaltung.
The head of the Political Department of the Auschwitz camp was SS-Untersturmführer, Kriminalsekretär Ernst [Max] Grabner. Among Grabner’s subordinates, I recall Kirschner, Lachmann, Klaumann [?], Dylewski, Woźnica [Wosnitz], Broch, Quakernack, Gisgen [?] and Neumann. They were all non-commissioned officers, ranking SS men, with the exception of Wosnitz, who was an Untersturmführer. In the Political Department, accurate records were kept of prisoners who arrived at the camp and were registered for the first time in the Aufnahme office, as well as changes in the number of prisoners caused by death, deportation, or relatively rare incidents of escape or release. This wasn’t just for the sake of registering changes in prisoner statistics caused by these events, but generally directed the overall human resource policy of the camp. There, in close cooperation with the camp commandant SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höß, all the plans for mass extermination were laid out, both in relation to the numbered prisoners and later in relation to the hoards murdered in the Auschwitz gas chambers without being included in the records. These mass operations were carried out on orders from the top command of the Reich Security Office of the Reich (Reichssicherheitshauptamt), from Berlin. The plans for mass extermination were conceived during meetings at the residence of camp commandant Höß, with Höß’s involvement and in the presence of the following: the garrison doctor (Standortarzt), initially Schwel, then Wirths [and] Entress, the head of the Political Department Grabner and the Schutzhaftlagerführer; Grabner would then communicate these plans to his subordinate SS men and discuss how to carry out and implement them.
I recall that in the late summer of 1941—in August, I think—Grabner, having returned from a meeting with Höß, told his subordinates that a transport of Soviet commissars would come to Auschwitz, who were to be gassed. This was the first act of its kind in Auschwitz. According to the announcement, it was carried out in the basement of block 11. At that time, besides this group of Russians, several hundred patients were selected for this purpose from the camp hospital (Krankenbau). Dr Schwel headed this operation as Standortarzt. From the conversations conducted on this subject by the officers of the Political Department it appeared that this was a trial run for using poisonous gas, which would then be used later, in light of the good results, during further mass gassing operations.
In the same way—that is, during a meeting between Grabner and Höß—several hundred prisoners were sent to some facilities in Dresden to try out the effectiveness of the poisonous gas there and of the equipment in block 10, the experimental institute, where various experiments were carried out on live subjects which under normal circumstances would be carried out on rabbits. According to my information, the experiments involved sterilization and artificial insemination.
Grabner and the SS men from the Political Department executed the plans that had been established by Höß during his meetings with Grabner. Decisions were made about the reprisals that would ensue in the event of an escape. They devised methods to destroy the Poles’ morale, which included, among others, mass executions on Polish national days. Höß personally chose prisoners to be shot for the escape of a fellow prisoner from their kommando. Accompanied by Grabner, he also selected prisoners from block of 11 to supplement the dozen or so to be shot. Because, despite these reprisals, the escapes kept happening, Höß ordered the families of escapees to be brought to the camp and placed there under the same conditions in which the other prisoners in the camp lived. All these sorts of harassments were used at the discretion and on the order of Höß. If as a result a lot of prisoners died, these losses were presented in reports submitted to Berlin, [not all on one day, but] in installments, spread over several, and sometimes more than a dozen days. After such operations, it might happen that for a number of days, in the reports submitted to the Berlin authorities by Höß as commandant, [those] who had been shot or otherwise murdered a few days ago were recorded as being alive.
In January 1943, Höß, along with Grabner and Rapportführer Palitzsch, made a selection among the prisoners employed in the Effektenkammer and Bekleidunskammer. At that time, it was suspected that the prisoners employed in these kommandos belonged to the organization. Everyone was asked to appear and Höß personally asked about the profession and education of each prisoner. Then he chose about 120 from among the intelligentsia, who were herded into block 11 and shot there. Before Himmler’s arrival, all the sick in the camp were gassed, and during Himmler’s stay in the camp, all the convalescents from the Schonung block were herded outside the camp. In all cases— except when prisoners were shot in Auschwitz on the basis of a German or police court judgment—an exact medical history of the murdered person was fabricated and a fictitious cause of death was given, so that on the basis of the prisoner’s personal files kept at the Political Department, it wasn’t possible to tell if he had actually died of the disease stated in the files, or whether he had been shot or murdered in some other way. In the personal files of prisoners sentenced to be shot, execution reports were included in which the cause of death was initially given as ‘Tot durch Erschiessung’ [death by shooting], and later ‘Herzschuss’ [shot to the heart] and other terms which I don’t remember were given as the cause of death. Höß also signed such reports. After the introduction of the public hanging of prisoners as a death penalty, the prisoners murdered in this way were also entered in the files as having died of a fictitious disease.
Irrespective of the executions ordered by Höß and his Political Department, as well as executions sentenced by courts outside of camp, courts (Sondergericht) had been set up in the camp itself. The judges were SS men from various police stations outside the camp. I recall one such court session that was held in the barracks of the Political Department. The members of the court were sitting at a table set in front of a window inside the barracks, and the defendant passed before that window from the outside. The members of the court asked for their name and surname and dismissed them. Approximately 120 workers from the ‘Paris’ mine were judged at that time. There were both men and women among them. I don’t know this court’s verdicts, but in any case, all the defendants were murdered in the building of crematorium I in Auschwitz. Some were shot and the rest was gassed. The execution of the sentence took place on the same day. Someone from the group that had been shot was only wounded, and escaped from the crematorium window at night. Naked, caked in blood, he wandered around the Bauleitung area. There he was captured in the morning by SS men about to go on duty, escorted to the crematorium, and shot. I don’t remember the dates, but in any case it was in autumn during Höß’s command. While I was working at the Standesamt and Krematoriumverwaltung, families were informed about the deaths of the Reichsdeutsche and volskdeutsch prisoners in the camp.
I recall that at that time, the wife and parents of a half Jew (Mischling) from Gliwice, who had died in the camp, arrived as the result of such a notification. The corpses of the dead Reichsdeutsch and volksdeutsche were dressed up in civilian clothes and made available for family viewing in a separate chamber of the Crematorium I building in Auschwitz. The wife of that prisoner from Gliwice, who was a pure Aryan German woman, examined the corpse of her deceased husband and remarked that he had paper in his mouth to fill out his cheeks. She opened his mouth, took out the paper and, in a raised voice, berated the Political Office workers present at this viewing for being bandits and murderers. For this offense she was placed in the camp without being given official prisoner status and died.
Initially, the families of any deceased Aryans were sent an urn with the ashes of the deceased, regardless of their nationality. One day Grabner, after a meeting with Höß, citing his order, declared that the Auschwitz propaganda with the urns was over and that from now on urns with ashes would only be sent to the families of Reichsdeutsche and volksdeutsche. He also issued the same decree regarding the property of the deceased prisoners, which had previously been returned [to the families] of all deceased Aryans.
Because I was sent to the camp with the notification ‘Rückkehr unerwünsch’ [return unwanted], I was afraid that during the liquidation of the camp I would be shot, and that is why on 30 September 1944 I escaped.
The report was read out, thus concluding the hearing of the witness and this report.