Tenth day of the trial, 21 March 1947.
Presiding judge: The session will now be resumed.
(Pursuant to the provisions of Article 133 and 140 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Jan Reychman, a translator of Czech, 37 years of age, single, Roman Catholic, a civil servant with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is sworn in).
The witness stated the following with regard to his person: Dr. Jarosław Drabek, 45 years old, married, evangelical confession, prosecutor of the Supreme People’s Court in Czechoslovakia, relationship to the parties – none.
Presiding judge: Do the parties wish to put any motions concerning the procedure of interviewing the witness?
Prosecutor Cyprian: We exempt the witness from taking the oath.
Defense attorney Umbreit: So do we.
Presiding judge: With the parties’ consent, the Tribunal has decided to exempt the witness from taking the oath. I remind the witness of the obligation to tell the truth and of the criminal responsibility for making false declarations. Please describe to the Tribunal the circumstances in which you ended up at Auschwitz and tell us what you know concerning the case, especially with regard to defendant Höß.
Witness: I ask for permission to consult my notes.
Your Honor, I believe I should present my testimony in two parts. First, I will describe my personal experience, and then I will draw upon my experiences in my capacity as president of the Supreme People’s Tribunal in Czechoslovakia.
I arrived at Auschwitz on 28 January 1943 on a transport of around 700 Czechoslovakian men and women. It was a transport of prisoners from Pankrác prison and Theresienstadt Ghetto, and it comprised men, women, and Jews. I determined that everyone was marked with the letters RU, meaning Rückkehr unerwünscht [return not desirable]. In most cases these people were not under any investigation – the Gestapo only had some suspicions. A transport of brewers arrived from Pilsen; they were completely innocent, however a Gestapo man had been shot dead in front of their establishment. There was also a transport of women and children, mostly Polish, which was never unloaded at Auschwitz but instead sent straight to the gas chambers. Some of the people from our transport – unfit for work, excluded – accompanied them.
When we were being unloaded, a band was playing in the background, while the SS-men shouted “Glückliche Reise” [have a pleasant trip]. This transport was severely depleted within a few weeks. One night, we were transferred to a block which was next to the site where corpses were dumped. Someone then lit fire right in the center and we saw that their skin was red, as if they had had some disinfectant rubbed into it, because there was an epidemic raging in the camp at the time. At night, these brutes came up to us, to this horrible place where we had been placed, and took all our valuables, including our wedding rings. Soon after, we witnessed the disposal of the corpses, which were being handled as if they were objects, and some even had their limbs broken. In the morning, we received our first meal. It was a brew made from leaves of some sort. We were always given food outdoors. It was nettle soup and unpeeled potatoes. We had no cutlery and so we had to eat from bowls using our hands, even if they were dirty. We saw that prisoners were treated differently, for we would only get what was near the top of the cauldron, while the more substantial portions would be given to the kapos and guards.
Next, we were placed in block 9, I believe. We slept on three- or four-storied bunks, some 50 people per story, all of us on no more than 10 square meters. Thereafter we were taken to the barracks, where we had prison numbers tattooed. I received number 94,692. Then they drove us to another barrack, where we had our whole bodies shaved. Next, we were taken to a place filled with hot air, and then to a freezing shower, after which we received clothes: some civilian rags which had previously been worn by other inmates. They beat us ferociously in the process. We were not allowed to put these clothes on, and I received a thin jacket. Finally, the Hitlerites drove us outside, ordering us to wait in the freezing cold. In the meantime, we were divested of all the items that we had managed to salvage, that is bars of soap, toothbrushes, etc.
At first, we were not forced to work, but we were constantly summoned to roll-calls, which lasted many hours, and we also had to remove the sick and the dead from the barrack and place them on the cold mud outside.
Going to the toilet carried the greatest risk. The toilets, fenced off with wire, were not connected to a water supply (there was no water supply in the camp at all) and were unbelievably dirty, and constantly occupied by hundreds of sick prisoners. From time to time, a kapo or some similar brute would burst in and push prisoners suffering from various diseases into the hole. Due to the filth, resulting from the fact that we had not been able to wash for weeks and had to scrub the dirt directly off our bodies, contagious diseases – and especially dysentery – started to spread. We were not allowed to go to the toilet alone, and sometimes sick prisoners, who at night could not go to the toilet at all, had to relieve themselves somewhere by the barrack. If a prisoner was caught in the act, he would be roughed up terribly, and on a couple of occasions I myself saw such prisoners beaten to death on the spot.
Inmates suffered from thirst, because there was no water. We washed ourselves using dirty snow and scraped dirt off our bodies. Behind our barrack there were huge piles of corpses, and indeed dead bodies – not removed by anyone – lay scattered around the entire camp. A great many people, mostly Jews, lay strewn around the camp, dying in their hundreds. I witnessed a selection during which they asked to be taken straight to the gas chamber. Many lunatics also wandered around the camp. My most terrible experience, something that I myself witnessed and which I consider to be the height of German bestiality, concerns young boys, eight- or ten-year-olds. They were well-dressed, wearing fur coats and boots, and served on the security details of the bigwigs sent in from Germany. This was a select element, the dregs of the German camps.
Presiding judge: There will be a short break now. After the break, the witness will continue his testimony.
(After the break)
Presiding judge: The session will now resume. Please continue your testimony.
Witness: I would like to make one additional comment, very briefly. I have testified that the January 1943 transport to Birkenau, on which I arrived, also included Jews. I said this in order to emphasize that it was a political transport, different from exclusively Jewish transports. I have already mentioned the youngsters at Birkenau. I said that this experience from the camp made the strongest impression on me. These were youngsters whose parents had perished or who had been brought in from unknown locations. Sexually demoralized, coming straight from the German criminal prisons, they served as block elders and kapos. They were specifically trained to murder people. I myself once saw an eight- or ten-year- old boy kill a few people with a rubber or perhaps iron cane, and then walk off a few meters. These were people who no longer had the strength to move out of the way. The youngsters kicked them and spat at them. Any act of defiance against these boys, or indeed any critical remark meant certain death. At night, rifle and machine gun fire rang out through the camp. In the mornings we would see the bodies of those who had committed suicide dangling from the barbed wire. Going to the toilets was very dangerous because they were located next to the watchtowers, and the SS men standing atop would often amuse themselves by shooting at inmates who were making their way to the cesspool. In February 1943, I was quarantined in block 11 because the Prague Gestapo required me, or had arrested one of my friends. A typhus fever epidemic was still raging in Auschwitz. I was kept in quarantine for more than three months. Aside from serving as the quarantine block, block 11 was a place of torment and abuse, where people awaited their punishment. Inmates were tortured there, and I saw one poor man jump out of a window right onto the concrete floor. Even though he was dripping with blood, they pulled by his legs. The man who oversaw the bunker during quarantine additionally supervised the torturing and beating of prisoners, and was also put in charge of “sport”; this was a torment which he enjoyed administering – prisoners would be chased around the yard, have cold water poured on them, or be forced to wallow in the waist-high mud or wade through it, for a number of hours non-stop.
There was an execution site in this yard: a chipboard wall with sand poured in front of it. Prisoners would be killed there with a shot to the neck. Behind the building were two gallows. There, executions were very frequent and lasted many hours. After these killings the whole yard would be filled with blood, and they would force us out there for the so- called walk. We waded through the muddy, congealing blood.
Our pittance of a meal was bread soup, which was made from foodstuffs brought in on the Jewish transports (their more valuable cargo included banknotes, fragments of coins, nuggets of gold, and other valuables). The windows of block 11 gave onto the hospital,
the Krankenbau. We often saw carts drawing up by the hospital, and corpses were thrown onto these carts through the hospital windows. These corpses often had their legs snapped or cut off at the thighs so that as many as possible could be loaded onto a cart. In the hospital, we saw patients suffering from phlegmon, a disease which was widespread there. In winter, patients arrived there completely naked and had to wait like that in front of the hospital. In the hospital, they only received some threadbare clothes, their wounds were covered with paper, and I saw injured people whose bones were visible.
Next to block 11 was block 10, the windows of which had been boarded up. It was strictly prohibited to look inside this block. It was common knowledge that medical experiments on women were conducted at these blocks. We heard crying and screaming – also of children – coming from there. We saw unbelievably beautiful women exiting this block. They were mostly Greek Jews, whom German doctors used as experiment subjects. Detailed information concerning these experiments will be provided by my friend Dr. Czeszpiwa, who will be interviewed as a witness.
We were frequently subject to beating and delousing, during which we had to sleep completely naked because they took away our clothes and blankets.
I must mention my curious meeting with a Belgian Jew, who was put in quarantine right after his arrival from Antwerp. Chagrined, he told me that in Belgium Jews were involved in counter-propaganda against the hearsay that Jews in Auschwitz were being sent to the gas chambers. He was upset that such exaggerated information was being circulated on a global scale. He was dead within a week.
I would like to conclude this personal part by mentioning the transports which were dispatched in January 1945.
These transports traveled through Czechoslovakia and the local population had the opportunity to see the state they were in. People traveled in open-top wagons in the most severe cold. They froze en masse and their bodies were dumped right onto the tracks. When the photographs of these corpses were presented to Karl Herman Frank during his trial, he said it was some untold bestiality which he had wanted to prevent but was not able to.
I would like to conclude this testimony by specifically mentioning the Czechoslovakian citizens who were at the camp. I will make a reference to the testimony of the prime minister, who said that Auschwitz was supposed to be an instrument for mass extermination, and for what in legal terms is classified as genocide. Among the documents which we found in the territory of Czechoslovakia, mostly in the so-called Stechovice archive, which included important documents of Karl Herman Frank, Neurath, Henlein, and others, we came across many documents which contained detailed plans to annihilate the Czechoslovakian nation. Part of these plans was the extermination of those parts of the nation which were unwilling to assimilate. A large part of this extermination was supposed to take place at Auschwitz. The arrival of Czechoslovakian nationals to the camp was irregular, but, nevertheless, part of major extermination operations, of which the operation against the Czechoslovakian Sokols [falcons] is mainly deserving of a mention. There were arrested in October and December 1941, and in January 1942 around fifteen hundred of them were sent to Auschwitz. Only a handful of them ever returned. A more detailed account of this issue may be provided by Dr. Hrebik, president of the Czechoslovakian Sokol community, who I was told would be called on to testify.
In 1942/1943, a huge transport of political prisoners arrived at Auschwitz, and these people were completely exterminated over the course of a few weeks. Transports of Czechoslovakian Jews were mostly sent to Auschwitz. Despite my best efforts I have not been able to determine the precise number of Czechoslovakians who perished at Auschwitz. I will discuss the evidence later. 150,000 is a more or less accurate estimation. It may be a few thousand more because it is certain that there was a huge number of Czechoslovakian nationals on the transports of Hungarian Jews which arrived at Auschwitz in 1943.
As regards specifically the Jewish citizens of Czechoslovakia, I can only give approximate numbers because these were concentrated [?] while being transported to Auschwitz. 44,929 people were deported from the infamous Theresienstadt Ghetto between 26 October 1942 and 28 October 1944, of whom 2,676 returned, meaning 42,253 were missing. These statistics are not complete if we take into account that thousands of Czechoslovakian Jews brought from other camps, e.g. from Lublin or Łódź, were also murdered at Auschwitz. During that period, 3,196 children were deported from Theresienstadt, of whom 190 returned and 2,946, that is 94 percent, did not. Those who survived Auschwitz were in a sorry state, and as far as the organizations recording former political prisoners can tell, these prisoners are in ill-health and a lot of them are dying. The cream of the Czechoslovakian nation perished at Auschwitz.
I will mention the members of the Czechoslovakian Sokol, including mayor Bukowski. Family members of our government-in-exile officials died at the direct orders of Karl Herman Frank, the close relatives of President Beneš among them.
Thick volumes have been written about Auschwitz in Czech and in Slovak. It will come to be known as the place of the worst torment of the Czech nation. The very name inspires terror in my countrymen. For us, Auschwitz, just like Lidice, will be a name which stands for German brutality and bestiality.
Presiding judge: Do the parties have any questions following the witness’s testimony?
Prosecutor Cyprian: I have one question to the defendant following the witness’s testimony.
Presiding judge: Proceed.
Prosecutor Cyprian: In relation to the testimony, I would like to ask the defendant if he knows about the Czech children brought in from Lidice.
Defendant Höß: No, I have been repeatedly asked about this issue and I know nothing about it.
Witness: I have a brief remark regarding this issue. One of the documents found in the Stechovice archives contains Karl Herman Frank’s instructions concerning the Lidice children. As we know, 106 of them had been deported and only a dozen or so have been found. The aforementioned document belonging to Karl Herman Frank contains an order that only those children who displayed the features of the Germanic race be sent to German families to be Germanized, while the others should be liquidated. It is highly likely that these unfortunate children met their end either at Auschwitz or another similar extermination camp.
Defense attorney Ostaszewski: I have one question. You have discussed the issue of these ten-year-old perverted boys. What I mean is that homosexuality as such was punishable in Germany. As far as we know, such prisoners even wore special badges. What, then, is the explanation?
Witness: I can confirm from what I saw myself that these boys were sexually abused by the Germans who wore black triangles.
Defense attorney Ostaszewski: Did the camp authorities approve of these things or were these individual cases known to particular block elders or kapos?
Witness: Everybody at Auschwitz was supposed to know about this issue. Their clothes, their uniforms stood out so much – they wore fur coats and boots – that it attracted everybody’s attention. It is inconceivable that anyone at the Birkenau camp – including SS-men and the leadership – could have been unaware of what purpose these unfortunate children served and of how they murdered people.
Defense attorney Ostaszewski: Your Honor, may I have one question to the defendant so as to clarify this issue?
Presiding judge: Proceed.
Defense attorney Ostaszewski: Has the defendant heard what the prosecutor and the witness said concerning the issue? How does the defendant explain the fact that what on the one hand was punishable in Germany was on the other tolerated at the camp?
Defendant Höß: I do not know what children we are talking about or how it could have happened. It was common knowledge that prisoners favored homosexuality, but the camp authorities did not support it in any way.
Defense attorney Ostaszewski: I have no further questions.
Witness: For the record, it was only German prisoners, sent from German prisons, that favored homosexuality at the camp.
Presiding judge: Does the prosecution have any further questions following the witness’s testimony?
Prosecutor Cyprian: No.
Presiding judge: And the defense?
Defense attorney Ostaszewski: No.
Presiding judge: Then the witness is excused. The session will adjourn until 9 a.m. tomorrow.
(Session ends at 18:35).