On 9 December 1946 in Warsaw, Halina Wereńko, acting Regional Examining Judge from the Second District of the Regional Court in Warsaw, delegated to the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Warsaw, acting in accordance with the provisions of the Decree of 10 November 1945 (Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland No. 51, Item 293) on the Main [Commission] and District Commissions for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, interviewed the undermentioned under article 254, in connection with articles 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which person, having been advised of the criminal liability for making false statements, testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Narcyz Tadeusz Obrycki, former prisoner of Auschwitz concentration camp, no. 121,557, and of Mauthausen concentration camp, no. 112,480 |
| Date and place of birth | 4 September 1896 in Warsaw |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Nationality and citizenship | Polish |
| Marital status | Married |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Świętokrzyska Street 12 |
| Education | degree from the Warsaw Technical University |
| Occupation | engineer |
On 7 April 1943, I was arrested in place of a colleague who had been executed by the Germans at Pawiak prison. I was detained during mass at St. Florian’s Church in Praga. The arrest resulted from the betrayal of a double agent, who worked for the organization and the Gestapo. The Gestapo surrounded the church, and after we were taken outside it was searched. We were taken to Szucha Avenue, and then, in the evening, to Pawiak prison.
We were interned at ward VII, each of us in a different cell. Earlier, we were thoroughly frisked, being beaten and insulted in the process. There were 28 of us, including 14 members of the organization, while the rest were just the people who happened to be at the church.
The first interrogation took place at the Pawiak on 10 April 1943. I was the first person to be interrogated. Since I would not and did not talk, I was beaten unconscious and had my upper teeth knocked out. During my time at the Pawiak, I saw Gestapo men order prisoners to crawl, and they beat them, and there was also one Gestapo man who would not settle down while on duty until he had roughed up a few prisoners. The groaning of those who had been beaten could be heard in the entire ward.
The internment conditions at the Pawiak were bad: single cells, designed to accommodate two people at most, housed five, six, or even more prisoners. The Jews incarcerated at the Pawiak were typically killed. These Jews would be taken past our basement window, never to return. Our fellow prisoners kept at the cells on the other side said that the Jews were taken beyond the gate and executed on the premises located opposite the Pawiak.
After two weeks, we were transferred to ward V, where we remained until 12 May 1943. During that period, two of our comrades, Marian Przysiecki and Fryderyk Kojer, were taken to Szucha Avenue, where they were interrogated and – as we found out – had their bones broken. First, the victims were examined by Gestapo agents. One of the agents who examined us was a Polish Army sergeant from the Brześć air force unit, and the other one was a Jew. During Mr. Przysiecki’s interrogation, I was taken to Szucha Avenue and awaited my turn in the so-called tram from the morning until 6 p.m. The butchers left because something had happened in the city. The interrogations were interrupted, and, since no instructions concerning me had been issued, I was taken back to the Pawiak. After he was interrogated, Mr. Przysiecki was taken to the infirmary at the Pawiak. According to the information we received, he was executed in the gate opposite the Pawiak. Similar occurrences and executions happened all the time and the relevant details may be known to Dr. Loth, the professor’s son, who was a prisoner working at the infirmary, and Prof. Kapuściński, who was also detained at the Pawiak and worked as a doctor.
On 12 or 13 May, we were gathered at the dispatch ward, that is ward VI, and sent to Auschwitz, on 13 or 14 May 1943; it was a Thursday. We arrived at Birkenau late in the evening that day. We had been affected by the events that took place during our final days at the Pawiak, when the ghetto was on fire, and through the bars we could see a burning house, with people on the roof, whom the Germans drove into the flames with gunfire.
After arriving at Birkenau – where we had traveled crammed in cargo wagons, barefoot, because they had taken away our shoes out of fear that we might escape – we were unloaded. We were “helped” in the process, being kicked, beaten, and poked with bayonets. We were taken to a pile of shoes, told to pick a pair at random, and ordered to quickly form rows of five.
After arriving at the camp proper, we were driven to a wooden barrack, number 12, and we sat there on the ground for another two days, awaiting further instructions. On the second day, we were thoroughly frisked and stripped of everything except our clothes. Then, on Saturday, we were recorded and had prisoner numbers tattooed on our left forearms. On Sunday morning, they bathed us, took away all our clothes, and instead gave us items that used to belong to the Jews: dirty underwear with pus stains, ragged and worn-through jackets and trousers. The remaining parts of our attire were the shoes they had not taken from us and a hat: either an old cyclist cap or a military Bolshevik cap. After bathing, we were assigned to block 30. In 1943, there were only two camps at Birkenau: the male camp and the female camp, located oapposite. The camps in the so-called fields 2 and 3 were under construction.
Barrack 30 had one-and-a-half-brick walls with small supporting pillars. It was covered with roofing-tiles. Originally, the building was intended as a stable. Shelves made from old doors and planks were added to the stalls. Thus, the shakedowns were located at the bottom, on the concrete (whenever the block was overcrowded), then at a height of about 1,20 [m], and finally at a height of some 2,20 [m]. These shelves were located right next to the walls, in the middle of their lengths. Six or even seven – but sometimes only five – people would have to squeeze together on a single shelf. Some of the shelves were provided with old pallets containing a fistful of wood wool; usually, we used a few blankets as our bedding, and covered ourselves with other blankets. Only one blanket would be issued per person, oftentimes less. A block housed around a thousand people.
Auschwitz itself was malarial, with never-ending rain and constant mud, and you would get stuck in it up to your calves. A typical day at Auschwitz/Birkenau looked as follows.
Everything started with a wake-up call at 4:30 a.m. If you did not wake up, the room orderly would hit you over the head with a stick. Everybody would then dress up and rush outside. On the way out, random groups of five were given 0,75 liters of so-called coffee (not even close to the real thing), bitter. At 5:00 a.m. the prisoners were assembled in the yard and formed into work units, or kommandos. The following units operated at the time: the leveling unit (Planierungskommando), the crematorium unit, the joiners’ unit (its workers built barracks at section II, that is at the new camp). Obviously, the inmates tried to get assigned to the joiners’ or gardeners’ kommandos, where the labor was least demanding. All this was accompanied by physical abuse – we were kicked and beaten constantly, which should come as no surprise if you take into account that the kapos and room orderlies were mainly convicted criminals, sadists, and they enjoyed beating others.
At 5:00 a.m., the inmates marched out. As they were passing through the camp gate, the kapo would give the command “Links” [left], ordering that all prisoners march in a coordinated manner, putting the left and then the right foot forward. At the gate, the prisoners’ band played marches and we had to march to the tune. The “Mützen ab” command followed, and everybody took of their caps – the SS-men counted out groups of five and the kommando proper finally passed through the gate.
The labor was hard. You had to move dirt in wheelbarrows, always at a run. If you stopped for so much as a second, the kapo would beat you with his rod. We had a daily quota of 25 lashes. The most difficult labor consisted in pulling a road roller. It had to be pulled by 25 or 30 prisoners. The kapo stood on the roller’s tow bar and drove the prisoners on with a stick. Vorarbeiters (senior workers) ran alongside and also beat the prisoners. Farmers would treat their cattle better than this.
The first break was at 12:30 p.m., when caldrons with soup were brought up. A column of some 300 people would have 30 bowls to eat from. The soup that we were given, 0.75 liters in all, was made from rutabaga or grass. On Sundays, each of us received six unpeeled potatoes and 0.5 liters of watery soup.
Work resumed at 1:00 p.m. and lasted until 5:00 p.m., at which time we were ordered to fall in and marched back to the camp. After returning to camp, we immediately assembled for roll-call.
Roll-call was at 6:00 p.m. We would bring in a few corpses from the labor site. They had to be laid out in front of the rows of inmates from a given block so that the numbers would add up. In the morning, while marching out, we would pass carts filled with corpses on the exit road. These were the bodies of those who had died at the blocks and in the infirmary. There were always many. These corpses were gathered in a wooden outbuilding right next to our barrack. At night, they were taken to the crematorium.
Immediately after roll-call we all went back to our blocks. At the entrance we would be given 250 grams of bread and a piece of margarine (a block of margarine per 10, and later 12 prisoners), and also 10 dag, or a spoonful, of marmalade, whereafter we went to sleep.
You could not clean yourself because there was no place to wash. There was one operative water tap, located next to the toilet, but unfortunately it had water for only a few hours, while we were at work. We were dirty all the time. Since it rained constantly at Auschwitz, we were also permanently tired and soaked; to make matters worse, we had to dry our clothes with our own bodies, right there in the damp barracks.
Insufficient food rations and work beyond our physical limits broke prisoners fast. We lost weight all the time and our legs started to swell. Emaciated and starved people, little more than skin and bones (we called them “Muslims”), became a regular sight in the camp. Already in the first few months some were taken to the infirmary (the Krankenbau), however none returned. We believed that selections took place there, and that inmates received intracardiac phenol injections.
After some two months, I was transferred to the main camp in Auschwitz. At Birkenau, I had worked in the so-called Planierungskommando, then I transported barracks, and finally I was employed as a carpenter. While at the main camp in Auschwitz, I sometimes worked in the gang which pulled the road roller. This is what the job looked like. Some 30 prisoners pulled the roller. The kapo stood on the roller’s tow bar and drove the prisoners on, hitting them over their heads with a stick. Vorarbeiters ran alongside and beat those prisoners who were out of the kapo ’s reach. Later, I was assigned to the Auschwitz Baubüro [construction office]. This was mental work, and it was performed indoors. If I am not mistaken, in 1943 three prisoners escaped from the Baubüro. In retaliation, the Germans picked out 25 prisoners from our group – 13 were tortured in the bunker at the death bock [block 11], while the others were publicly hanged. The gallows were set up just outside the kitchen, where everyone could see them, and the convicts were brought in during roll-call and hanged right in front of our eyes. Similar executions took place twice more: once, three Czechs were hanged for having tried to escape, but I no longer remember who the victims were the third time around.
At Auschwitz, block 11 was the most notorious place by far. Its basement hid bunkers of various dimensions (brick and concrete cells). These were the so-called standing bunkers – cells so small that you could only stand up in them. Upstairs there was a regular block from where prisoners were sometimes released. Block 11 was fully under control of the Political Division of the camp command, and it was the scene of numerous executions and bloody interrogations. The Political Division was headed by Grabner and Boger. They were sadists, both of them.
As regards the treatment of prisoners, I regularly witnessed various penal exercises (these would last for hours, until the inmates fainted) and floggings of those who tried to shirk work or took a pause working. Floggings were public. At block 16, where I once found myself after roll-call in winter, we were ordered to undress in the freezing cold and, completely naked, perform exercises: on your feet!, down!, roll over!, and the like, for a few hours. Next, we were taken to a hot shower, and then put out into the freezing cold. Before bathing, while standing in the cold, we were hosed with cold water. I remember that another time we were woken up at night and ordered to run to the bathhouse. You had to run past SS man Kaduk, who selected people for gassing. He took around 1,200 prisoners at the time, mostly Jews.
Reportedly, at block 10, where the selected prisoners were taken, the Aryans were let go and the rest were sent to the gas. I saw the gas transport myself.
At block 16, I met a German who had allegedly fought for the communists in Spain. He was sent to Auschwitz, having previously been in the Krankenbau, where he personally administered 4,000 intracardiac injections. Unfortunately, I could not find out this German’s name.
At the Auschwitz main camp, there was also block 10, where they kept women – the guinea pigs. It was sealed off from other blocks, its windows were shut and covered. In 1944, it was emptied and the women were evacuated to Ravensbrück. It is the doctors who will have the most comprehensive knowledge of the goings-on at this block, so the people to interview should include Dr. Wasilewski, who is in Gdańsk, and other prisoner-doctors. The senior doctor was Prof. Dering, who later signed the Volksliste and, from what I heard, is now with Gen. Anders’ army in Italy, or possibly in London. The Polish doctors conducted themselves well, and as regards Dering, my impression is he was slowly becoming an instrument in the Germans’ hands.
Altogether, there were five crematoria at Auschwitz. Crematorium I was located next to the Political Division – it was small and did not operate in 1943 and 1944; then, it was partly dismantled and adapted to serve as a storeroom. Next, there were crematoria II and III, of one type, in Birkenau, and crematoria IV and V, of another type. Initially, people were gassed in a shed at Birkenau and burned in stacks there. Later, crematoria II and III were built. They were constructed by the Bon and Industriegesellschaft company from Gliwice and the furnaces were manufactured by the Topf & Söhne company. The construction manager was SS-man Oberscharführer Siehorn, who spoke Polish and was likely a renegade. Located in the lower part of the crematorium, that is underground, were two rooms, 7 by 30 meters each, situated perpendicularly to each other. They were joined by a corridor. The construction was entirely concrete. The walls were 40 cm thick and were insulated with tar paper on the outside. The ceiling was supported by a row of piers in the middle and covered with a layer of soil, half a meter thick.
Beautiful stairs led down to the first room. It was a changing room with benches, where towels and soap were issued. The other room was accessible through the corridor, where fake showers were installed. The victim did not suspect a thing. Once the prisoners entered this room, the gas-proof door was locked and an SS-man dropped a cartridge with the Zyklon gas from the outside. The room had upper and lower ducts. After a gassing, extractors were activated, the gas was removed from the chamber, and the air was pumped in. The crew, whose members were Jewish prisoners, the so-called Sonderkommando [special unit], entered the room and used the elevator to take the bodies upstairs, to the room where the crematorium furnaces were located. There were five furnaces and each had five openings. Two bodies were at a time were inserted through an opening. Under the supervision of SS-men, the clothes from the first room were searched, sorted, and taken to a storeroom, to the so-called Canada, that is to the Laderfabrik at Auschwitz. Gold was the most sought after, so the corpses’ teeth were inspected, gold teeth were pulled out, etc. According to our calculations, approximately 5 million Jews were incinerated in the crematoria and burned on stacks, so the Canada storerooms were always full of various items that used to be Jewish property. The crematorium crew were liquidated every three months: they were taken to Gliwice and gassed there. A new crew was then installed. Only kapos and Polish stokers remained. These people were supposed to be sent to Mauthausen with us, but the decision was changed in the eleventh hour and they were sent there at a later date, on a separate transport, and worn to death or murdered in the bunker at Mauthausen.
Let me say that for the duration of my internment – which was almost two full years – the crematoria belched smoke all the time, day and night, and we could smell the odor of burning flesh constantly. As regards SS-men, Prof. Jakubski, my fellow prisoner, told me that an SS-man guarding the labor site where he, the professor, worked, brought human flesh from the crematorium and fed it to his dog. Prof. Jakubski saw severed female breasts brought to him in paper.
The first gassing was carried out before my arrival at Auschwitz, at block 14, where Soviet soldiers were gassed. I can state that I saw the corpses of people executed at block 11 and the blood dripping from a van as they were being moved to the crematorium. The road where we assembled before marching out for labor was very often sprayed with blood, and these marks were visible. We all noticed this, and it was an indication that they had destroyed someone at block 11. Anyway, the entire Auschwitz soil is covered with human ashes: they were scattered in the fields, gardens, roads, etc.
People from the outside were also brought to the crematorium. These were Jewish transports. As a rule, 10% of able-bodied professionals were taken to the camps, and the others were taken to the crematorium: they were the elderly, women with children, unskilled workers and the sick. Children usually ended up in the crematorium. Those who were sent to the camp worked, and when they had been physically drained, when they became sick or Muselmanns, they ended up in the crematorium. In the early days of the camp, it was enough to have an ulcer or even a boil to qualify for a selection, that is for gassing. Selections were performed in the infirmary.
The operation of exterminating the Jews was called Übersiedlungsaktion [relocation action]. All the civilian workers of Auschwitz who were German or Silesian had to sign a pledge never to speak to anyone about the details of this operation and to assist in the proceedings. Gypsies were gassed, too. After a camp was constructed in section II, part of this camp was occupied by Gypsies, including women and children. Some of the Gypsies were taken out, and some were sent to the Auschwitz main camp, from where they were taken out, too.
I know about the so-called Übersiedlungsaktion and about the fact that these Gypsies were gassed from Herbert Kuhn, a Silesian who was assigned to the camp as a builder by the Arbeitsamt [employment office] in Katowice, at the camp’s request. The plans of the crematoria were also provided to me by Herbert Kuhn, and I kept them at the Baubüro for almost six months in order to check the bills issued by the companies which constructed the crematoria. These were plans of crematoria II and III. I also had the plans of crematoria IV and V, but they were incomplete and I only had them briefly because Obersturmführer Jothan, the head of the Baubüro, demanded that they be returned and locked them in his cabinet. The details of the arrangement of the crematoria were provided to me by a Slovak Jew, who took precise measurements on site. Additionally, the issue was openly discussed. Many details could be provided by Herbert Kuhn, a civilian worker of the Baubüro, who wanted to know everything and showed us whatever he could so it would be possible to testify about the bestiality of the Germans.
Additionally, the Jews told me that they received printed cards to be sent to their families and friends. On the card, it said that they had been sent for labor at the camp, that they were doing well, and that they asked their friends and relatives to volunteer for a transport to Germany (to Auschwitz). I also remember the arrival of a transport of Hungarian Jews. They were told to change into striped uniforms and then they were photographed in groups, with smiles on their faces. They were Hungarian Jews who worked for military labor organizations, were members of the Hungarian army, and, as Hungarian patriots, sympathized with the Germans. One of them, who was assigned to the Baubüro, told me that as an engineer and captain he was the commandant of a working unit, in the rank of a Hungarian captain. The German authorities demanded that the Hungarian army deliver some of the brightest engineers for the construction of a bridge. They had seconded the captain and another engineer, an Aryan. The Aryan had remained, and he ended up at Auschwitz. Other Hungarian Jews said that they did not know they were Jews and only learned it from the Germans, who had sent them to the camp because some of their ancestors were supposedly Jewish.
As regards the prisoner numbers, I remember that when all the camps were part of the Auschwitz main camp, the Rapportführer [report leader] reported that there were approximately 40,000 people at the camps. The highest prisoner number at that time was around 180 000. The difference was 140,000, so this is how many people with numbers assigned had died at Auschwitz. Other deaths were those who were brought in from the outside and sent straight to the crematorium. These people did not have numbers. According to calculations as well as those of my comrades, there were around 5 million Jews and 400,000 Aryans there. In 1944, Jews received different numbers, namely, they were assigned numbers from 1, preceded by the letters A, B, and C. Before I was transferred to Mauthausen, the numbers were already in the range of C-26000.
In 1943, there was the main Auschwitz camp, later called Auschwitz I, then there was Birkenau, later called Auschwitz II, and additionally, there were smaller camps operating at labor sites, such as NeuDachs (the Jaworzno mine), Buna-Werke (IG Farbenindustrie), or Budy. The main Auschwitz camp comprised 28 blocks, including utility blocks, canteens, and the brothel (set up for show, for kapos and unambitious people who willingly served the Germans). It was the camp for skilled workers and people there were treated better than at Birkenau.
In 1943, Birkenau consisted of two camps: male and female. Throughout 1943 and 1944, sections II and III of this camp were expanded. In 1944, section I was emptied and everything was transferred to section II. It consisted of the following camps: camp A – men’s quarantine, camp B – women’s quarantine, camp C – female camp, camp D – male camp, camp E – initially the Gypsy camp, later male camp. Camps A and B had 15 blocks each, and other camps had 30 each. In each camp, there was one toilet building, one bathhouse, and two staff buildings per 15 blocks. The whole section could accommodate around 200,000 people. Section III was supposed to be twice as large. The Germans’ plans changed, and in 1944 the expansion of section III was discontinued and the barracks raised thus far had been dismantled. In section II, almost all the barracks were of the Stallbaracke (stables) type, with single walls made from planks, with the floors and ground covered with paper tar, windowless, and with an inbuilt chimney duct running along the room. Some of the barracks in section III were assigned to the German crew; these were living quarters, while the prisoners got the stables.
Additionally, further on near the forest, there was a hospital for prisoners, which comprised 12 barracks. Next, there was a bathhouse for incoming and outgoing transports, a disinfection facility, and, further on still, there were four crematoria. With regard to those who came to the bathing and disinfection facilities, they all, regardless of their sex, had all their body hair shaved by prisoners, mostly men, while clothes and underwear were taken away, and sometimes they were returned, sometimes dirty rags were issued. In the passage, the prisoner stepped into a drain filled with some dirty liquid, and then he was wiped with some dirty cloth and sent to the shower (the liquid in the drain and on the cloth was probably a Lysol solution).
I could probably recreate the plans of crematoria II and III. They were crematoria of the same type. I do not remember the plans of crematoria IV and V very well.
As regards selections, I saw both able-bodied people and sick people from the hospital wearing only underwear being loaded onto trucks. The most complete details concerning these issues could be provided by prisoner-doctors, so I would suggest interviewing Dr. Wasilewski in connection with this case and also in connection with the surgeries performed on the women-guinea pigs. Dr. Wasilewski lives in Gdańsk. He conducted himself with decency at the camp and was interested in various spectacular activities, as were other prisoners. Details concerning selections at Birkenau may have been known to Dr. Zenkteler, the head of the hospital, a prisoner who was slowly becoming an instrument in the hands of the Germans and who tortured the prisoners.
Information concerning the early days of the camp could be provided by Stanisław Ryniak, one of the prisoners from the first Polish transport, prisoner number 31 (the previous transport was 30 German kapos), resident of Pierackiego Street 16, Sanok. Additionally, the following persons could testify: Jan Roman, Niepodległości Street 221, flat 7 or Zjednoczenie Konfekcyjne [union of clothing manufacturers], Marszałkowska Street 6, Jaszczuk shop, Niepodległości Street 227/231; Victor Hawel, resident of Łódź, Wólczańska Street 222, flat 34; Witold Antoni Nowacki, resident of Warsaw, Świętokrzyska Street 12.
At that the report was concluded.
The report was read out and signed.