Fourth day of the hearing
(Following a recess)
Presiding Judge: Please summon the next witness, Roman Szuszkiewicz. Please provide your personal details.
(The witness Roman Szuszkiewicz approaches.)
Witness: Roman Szuszkiewicz, 40 years old, a dental surgeon by profession, resident in Tarnów, religion – Roman Catholic, relationship to the accused – none.
Presiding Judge: I hereby instruct the witness, pursuant to the provisions of Article 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, that you are required to speak the truth. The provision of false testimony is punishable by a term of imprisonment of up to five years. Do the parties want to submit any motions as to the procedure according to which the witness is to be interviewed?
Prosecutors: We release the witness from the obligation to take an oath.
Defense counsel: We likewise.
Witness: I was incarcerated at Auschwitz from 1941 to January 1945. I do not intend to speak about all the happenings that have already been presented by my colleagues. I will only testify regarding the accused whom I encountered personally – Aumeier; this was in 1942, just after I had come through a bout of typhus fever. The thing is that he purportedly gave an order that a 14-year-old German boy, a thief who wore a green triangle, was to be employed at the dental clinic where I worked as a doctor. I did not hand over the keys to the clinic to this inmate, and therefore I was reported to Aumeier. I had just got through typhus two weeks earlier, and I could barely stand on my feet. When I got to the Schreibstube [office], I was immediately dragged into Aumeier’s room; without asking me anything, he grabbed me by the chest and started hitting me in the face – his blows were so strong that I would have fainted if not for the fact that I was standing by the wall. While beating me, he shouted that he would definitely hang or shoot me, expressing amazement at the fact that I had disobeyed his order. I was not allowed to respond. Since I did not know German too well, I asked for an interpreter. One arrived after a dozen or so minutes, and only when I had explained that the German boy, and not I, was to blame, did he let me leave. I am recounting this fact because I know the accused both personally and from the accounts of my colleagues, many of whom were also beaten up by him. I did not encounter any of the other accused, for I worked at the dental clinic and therefore did not have to leave the confines of the office. Without a doubt, this saved my life. I was assigned to the dental clinic after a month of quarantine, during which period all the “isolated” prisoners were assigned hard labor, driving wheelbarrows to and fro, shoveling snow or digging pits in the forest. Later, at the dental clinic, I was given a special plan [?] by the chief, whose surname I do not remember, which allowed me to extract teeth and use anesthetics in the event of toothache. As regards other procedures, aimed at preventing or treating tooth disease in the prisoner population, these were simply unheard of at the time, that is in the years 1941 – 1942. Later the Germans became a bit more lenient, and prisoners who were needed for labor would be ordered to protect their dentition so that they could work properly. Concerning the details of my work, I would like to stress that in 1942 the SS-Zahnstation [SS dental station] sent us a few large loads of false teeth. Our clinic transferred these teeth to block 10, where there was a laboratory that cleaned and sorted the prostheses, which were then sent to Berlin. As regards the gold, the false teeth made from precious materials, I would like to state that these teeth were delivered for processing solely to the dental clinic of a special unit at the SS-Zahnstation. I know this because I myself was sent a few times to this SS clinic, where I met colleagues who were employed at the Sonderraum [special room]. I learned a great many interesting details concerning their work.
The bodies of all political prisoners were marked with crosses using a red pencil and sent individually to the crematorium. There was also a separate detachment of SS men at the crematorium, who were tasked with removing teeth made from precious materials. The whole procedure was horrible (but these are things that I have only heard about) – no care was taken at all, teeth would be torn out with fragments of the jaw, while sometimes the entire jaw would be ripped out, and only then the teeth extracted and sent to the Sonderraum, where the metal was melted. I have also been told that this precious metal was melted into bars weighing more or less half a kilogram, and then dispatched to Berlin in quantities of some 15 – 20 kg per month. As a dental surgeon with considerable professional experience, I know that in order to gather 20 kg of gold you would need at least 10,000 crowns. And since it is obvious that not everyone’s dentition is complete, I feel obliged to stress that the number of gassed prisoners was countless.
This is all that I would like to testify.
Presiding Judge: The witness testified about Aumeier, and also mentioned Grabner during the investigation. What can the witness say about the latter?
Witness: I only heard about Grabner, namely that he was the terror of the camp. I always tried to avoid people like Grabner or Palitzsch, not to mention Aumeier, who would at best punish you; at worst, he would torment us prisoners like dogs.
Presiding Judge: Are there any questions to the witness?
Prosecutor Szewczyk: Does the witness know what later happened with the gold, after it was readied at the Zahnstelle [dental office]? To which branch or camp was it sent?
Witness: I only know that in some months the gold would be sent directly to the SS dental clinic or to the Verwaltungstelle [the administration] at department IV, and from there to Berlin or Oranienburg.
Prosecutor Szewczyk: Was the witness informed of this by third parties?
Witness: Yes.
Prosecutor Szewczyk: Did the witness work exclusively at the Zahnstelle, or also in other kommandos?
Witness: I worked solely at the clinic, while later I was employed as an instrumenter, or rather as a cleaner.
Prosecutor Szewczyk: And thus the witness did not know what went on at the hospitals, and cannot provide us with any information concerning the selections?
Witness: I know what went on there, but I do not want to testify on the matter, for my colleagues – who are yet to provide testimony – are more familiar with these topics.
Prosecutor: The witness cannot provide any pertinent information from his own experience?
Witness: No.