Polish Research Institute at Lund University, Sweden

Transcription

1 Witness family & given names: Mr. XXXXXXXXXX Places of internation Born on 20 th November, 1923 Time period from / to Birth place: Skarżysko-Kamienna, Jan 6, 1943 / Poland Occupation: Student, technical Mar 31, 1944 school Citizenship: Polish Religion: Roman Catholic Apr 1, 1944 / Parents names (M/F) Maksymilian / Apr 3, 1945 Bronisława Last residence in Poland: Present residence: Placed in: BUCHENWALD DORA- NORDHAUSEN Skarżysko-Kamienna To: Apr 25, 1945 BERGEN- BELSEN The same, or Jelenia Góra, Poland Prisoner data (triangle, number, letter) Political prisoner, red triangle, 10205, P Notes Concentration camp The testimony consists of ten pages of handwritten text and covers the following main items: 1. Police Headquarters in LEIPZIG, November-December of 1942: beatings during four interrogations resulting in signing red card with destination to a concentration camp. 2. In the BUCHENWALD concentration camp: Entering the camp and 6-week quarantine Poles, Russians, criminal prisoners and German homosexuals in the quarry. Hell in the quarry: work exceeding human endurance; isolation from the rest of the world at the bottom of the quarry; yelling of the kapos and of the SS-men; daily killings of people, hanging on tree branches, pushing from cliffs, beating with sticks and shovel handles, everyday carrying from the quarry to the camp about 20 tormented prisoners. Galleys : one German herdsman and 20 prisoners pulling a lorry loaded with rocks, uphill, 12 hours daily. Running downhill the rock in wooden shoes. Examples of extermination rather than productive work being the purpose: carrying rocks along a purposely longer route just to Page 1 of 10

2 Polish Institute of Source Research Lund University Malmö, 5 th March,1946. Record of Testimony given by XXXXXXXXXX Protocol no. 212 torment the prisoners. A 3-night standing of 13,000-15,000 prisoners at a roll call, with reduced food ration, after all-day work, as collective punishment for the escape of a prisoner. Unloading gravel by the Zugänge and immediate loading it back on the rail cars, by stopwatch. Rushing sick people with fever up to 39 C to work. Parcels allowed as of December of Correspondence once every 6 weeks, according to a pre-approved template revocations of the right to send letters. Assemblage of Gustloff-Werke rifles inside the concentration camp. Sabotage by inmates and Russian POWs. Camp breakdown by nationalities. Blocks by nationalities. Surgeries and experiments conducted on prisoners. Camp brothel. Living conditions. Lengths of the roll calls depending on the Lagerführer s whim. Food rations issued twice daily that lead to death of the prisoner in 3 months. Camp store. Camp movie theater. Sanitary conditions and medical care. No lice in the camp. Causing the prisoners to cross the line guarded by sentries, to get killed. Suicides in the camp. Page 2 of 10 Translation from Polish by Kris Murawski, 6 th February, 2014

3 Institute member at the protocol: Bożysław KUROWSKI, MA (Law) (Translation from Polish by Kris Murawski 1 ) RECORD OF WITNESS TESTIMONY No. 212 Name: Mr. XXXXXXXXXX Born: 20 November, 1923 In: Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland Occupation: Student, technical school Religion: Roman Catholic Parents 1 st names: Maksymilian, Bronisława Last residence in Poland: Skarżysko-Kamienna Current residence: The same, or Jelenia Góra, Poland Instructed about the importance of truthful testimony as well as on responsibility and consequences of false testimony, the witness testifies as to the following: I was in a concentration camp: from: January 6, 1943 with number: BUCHENWALD to: March 31, 1944, as a political prisoner red triangle with letter P then I was in: DORA-NORDHAUSEN from: April 1, 1944 to: April 3, 1945 then I was in: BERGEN-BELSEN from: to: April 25, 1945 Asked if in connection with my incarceration, my work in concentration camp, I have any specific information about camp organization, the camp regimen, prisoners work conditions, treatment of prisoners, medical and pastoral care, sanitary/hygienic conditions, and also any specific events in all aspects of the camp life, I testify as follows: I was arrested for the first time on October 25, 1941 for going AWOL from work and was placed in the Arbeitslager in LEIPZIG, from where I escaped and was again arrested in Skarżysko in May of 1942, and again placed in LEIPZIG. The testimony consists of ten pages of handwritten text and covers the following main items: 1. Police Headquarters in LEIPZIG, November-December of 1942: beatings during four interrogations resulting in signing red card with destination to a concentration camp. 1 Translator s notes (if any) are in cursive, enclosed in square brackets. Page 3 of 10

4 2. In the BUCHENWALD concentration camp: Entering the camp and 6-week quarantine Poles, Russians, criminal prisoners and German homosexuals in the quarry. Hell in the quarry: work exceeding human endurance; isolation from the rest of the world at the bottom of the quarry; yelling of the kapos and of the SS-men; daily killings of people, hanging on tree branches, pushing from cliffs, beating with sticks and shovel handles, everyday carrying from the quarry to the camp about 20 tormented prisoners. Galleys : one German herdsman and 20 prisoners pulling a lorry loaded with rocks, uphill, 12 hours daily. Running downhill the rock in wooden shoes. Examples of extermination rather than productive work being the purpose: carrying rocks along a purposely longer route just to torment the prisoners. A 3-night standing of 13,000-15,000 prisoners at a roll call, with reduced food ration, after all-day work, as collective punishment for the escape of a prisoner. Unloading gravel by the Zugänge and immediate loading it back on the rail cars, by stopwatch. Rushing sick people with fever up to 39 C to work. Parcels allowed as of December of Correspondence once every 6 weeks, according to a pre-approved template revocations of the right to send letters. Assemblage of Gustloff-Werke rifles inside the concentration camp. Sabotage by inmates and Russian POWs. Camp breakdown by nationalities. Blocks by nationalities. Surgeries and experiments conducted on prisoners. Camp brothel. Living conditions. Lengths of the roll calls depending on the Lagerführer s whim. Food rations issued twice daily that lead to death of the prisoner in 3 months. Camp store. Camp movie theater. Sanitary conditions and medical care. No lice in the camp. Causing the prisoners to cross the line guarded by sentries, to get killed. Suicides in the camp. Interrogations and beatings at Police Headquarters in LEIPZIG Until the end of 1942 I was in a labor camp at a big munitions factory in LEIPZIG; on January 1, 1943 I was transferred to the BUCHENWALD camp, as a result of interrogations that lasted 6 weeks. At that time, since mid-november 1942, I was incarcerated at the Police Headquarters in Leipzig. I suffered terrible hunger there. I was interrogated four times and was beaten every time. The interrogations focused on my whereabouts after my desertion from work. They found on me tickets for travel to the other side of the San River and to Lviv and because of that, I was suspected of being associated with underground activities. I was beaten by hand at my face and also with rubber trunk. I had to confess to things that never happened to avoid beating; I knew that nothing will save me anyway and I signed a red card designating me to a concentration camp; on January 6, 1943, in a group of about 200 people, I was transferred to WEIMAR by rail, and from there by prison vans to BUCHENWALD. Quarantine in BUCHENWALD and work in the quarry On arrival in Buchenwald we were right away directed to the bath, our heads were shaved, disinfection was carried through, we were searched for money and valuables. Money was entered into my account while valuables were confiscated by the SS-men. Only German prisoners beat during those activities, bullying so called Zugänge. They simply enjoyed their power and the Page 4 of 10

5 beating. It was winter, and disregarding the frost, right after the bath we were rushed, naked, to run 200 meters to block No. 17, where after a few hours we got civilian clothing with red K.L.B oilpainted on the back, pants with stripes oil-painted as well. During that run at frosty weather our bodies steamed. Block 17 was a quarantine block and I spent there approximately 6 weeks. On that block we underwent the registration performed by the political department, were assigned numbers, triangles, got photographed and assigned to a work komando. For 6 weeks we did not work, we were being broken in into the camp discipline, trained daily how to march in order, take hats off on command: Mützen auf! and Mützen ab! Tormenting and beating were used frequently, like for improperly taking off hat, for smoking at other time than during the lunch break - here commonly used punishment was withholding of the daily bread ration. People were not able to get instantly used to the regime of their new life and committed minor infractions easily. So called Steinbruch was the toughest komando in Buchenwald. It was a quarry, to which, almost as a rule, Poles and Russians were assigned. Germans were given good tasks, except those Germans who wore green and pink triangles (homosexuals of whom there were two blocks at that time, total of 300; they, too, were routinely assigned to the Strafkommando and worked in Steinbruch). All those in Strafkommando wearing black dot below the red, pink or any other triangle, and those who because of attempted escape wore so called Fluchtpunkt (red on white background on the back) both in front and on pants, were required to wear zebra (striped) clothing and all of them worked in Steinbruch. In general, anyone who got himself into any trouble was sent to Steinbruch as a punishment. Among the Buchenwald inmates Steinbruch was called The Devil s Mountain, after a German centuries old poem and according to a name used by local Germans. We called Steinbruch a hell, because in the quarry we were deep down in the rock, isolated from the rest of the world we could only see the skies above us. Down there only constant yells could be heard, of the kapos and of the SS-man Kommandoführer, who tormented the prisoners in evidently sadistic way. Over there, daily murdering of people took place, hanging on tree branches, pushing from a cliff, beating with sticks, shovel and pickax handles so that when I think about it today, I cannot believe that I personally survived the Steinbruch hell. Every day we carried some twenty people from Steinbruch to the camp - sometimes there were fewer, sometimes more those dying from exhaustion or beating, but they needed to be carried to the camp so that the komando count was right people worked in that komando all the time. When some died, new ones came to replace them. The worst was the work in the lorry detail. It was arranged in such a way that chains were attached to a lorry, each chain had seven levers with four prisoners at each lever; in a summary then, crew of one lorry, seven levers, consisted of 28 people and one German herdsman. We pulled those big lorries filled with rock up the hill, between rocks, on narrow tracks, for 12 hours (less in winter); on the way back down the hill the lorry was pulling the crew with it and we had to restrain it. The way down was done running and our suffering was even worse because of the wooden shoes which, after all day walking on rocks, caused pain and cuts on the feet. It was work beyond human endurance and we called it galleys. In Steinbruch I worked till April 1943, about 3 months. About 170 people worked by the six lorries, Page 5 of 10

6 always one following the other. In spite that by the end of a work day in a quarry everybody was completely exhausted, on the way back to the camp they were required to carry a big stone on the shoulder. We walked around by an on purpose long road and by the camp entrance we were subjected to inspection by the SS-men. Whoever s stone was not sufficiently big, he was hit with that stone in the face and his number was noted down for hard work as a punishment, mostly on Sunday, during free time. Kommando Steinbruch was carrying those stones to build roads inside camp, every day when I was there. At the same time, when I worked at Steinbruch, it was announced that an attempt to escape from the camp will be punishable with death by hanging. Mostly Russians and Poles were those who were escaping. I remember few such escapes, when as a consequence all inmates of the camp, about 13-15,000, had to stand in the roll call area for several hours without food; often we stood there for the whole night; in one instance we stood there for three nights. On those days we worked; we received cold rations and coffee outdoors at work, but we were not getting soup on those days; soup from the first day of punishment turned sour and was not issued. Sometimes just to torment people, particularly the newcomers to the camp, special tasks were being invented. I remember, as an example, that a rail car with fine gravel arrived and an SS-man selected a couple of people from among the Zugänge to unload the gravel, giving them a deadline by which they had to complete the task as being urgent. When they finished, they had to load the gravel back on the train, again by deadline. Similar instances of harassing people with work were commonplace and it was a lot of fun for the SS-men. Work in the quarry was very tough for me, because in the prison I did not work at all and it was killing me when I was assigned to hard work upon arrival in the camp. When I entered the camp my weight was 68 kg and by the end of my work in Steinbruch it was only 52 kg. One day they carried me from the quarry to the sick room with a fever of 39 C. Food parcels from home were allowed already as of December 1942, but for myself I did not have contact with family yet. Writing to family was allowed, a postcard only, one in every 6 weeks, and only following a standard template, i.e., that I am healthy and am doing well. It was not allowed to ask family for a parcel. If what was written in the card was against rules or if there were references to life in the camp, there was beating as punishment. Such prisoner was summoned to the gate, interrogated and often his right to write letters was revoked. Writing in German only was allowed. It was permitted to receive an unlimited number of letters but it was not allowed to say so to the family. It was allowed to write to other friends, too, not only to family. Thanks to friendship with one of my compatriots, who already was an inmate of this camp for quite a long time, I got out from Steinbruch and got an assignment to work under roof, which was considered a great advantage in that situation. The work consisted of assembling rifles but it saved my life. To explain it within the camp, between the crematorium and first residential barracks, there were two barracks the same size as the residential barracks which housed a factory, or rather an assembly plant, for Gustloff-Werke rifles. There were civilian foremen from Weimar, no SSmen, only Wehrmacht officers as controllers. It was warm and quiet over there. As it was Page 6 of 10

7 customary among the inmates, when getting away from the hard work in the quarry, for the first days I tried to work earnestly to keep that job. About 200 people worked there. With time however, I felt more and more secure and a feeling of dissent grew inside of me; in consequence, we committed sabotage. Poles and about 40 Russian POWs who as specialists were assigned to work there, were committing most of the sabotage acts. Reamers (used to calibrate the diameter of the barrel), strikers, and other parts were deliberately ruined, so that 50% of the rifles were returned by the quality control done somewhere at the army headquarters. Sabotaging was possible because of the technical expertise of the inmates and lack of such expertise of the German foremen. Lack of their competence was evident. I heard that usable rifle parts, rejected as scrap by the inmates, were carried out by the same inmates and given to prisoners inside of the camp. When sabotaging became too visible and staying in that komando too dangerous, I managed to get on a transport and that way I got into DORA, which by us in Buchenwald was called a death camp. Before I move to the description of the Dora camp, I would like to say that in the Buchenwald camp the most numerous were Poles and Russians; there were also quite a lot of Germans, red triangle political inmates only (not necessary Communists), who controlled the internal administration of the camp; there were also Frenchmen; Czechs; Blacks (3); British (2); Norwegians (students) who did not work, wore their own clothing and had their own block there were about 300 of them and they could study; Jews (they had their separate block No. 22); and representatives of almost all nationalities. Every nationality had its own block and there were no mixed blocks. In block No. 46 there were prisoners who were the most suspect; they were subject to experiments. Experiments were conducted by SS physicians, many times with assistance of inmate physicians; these were experimental surgeries and tests of injections. That block was known as a place for finishing off people, as well as block No. 50. Russian POWs were separated from us by a wire; they occupied three blocks inside the camp, namely blocks Nos. 1, 7, and 13. There was not a particular difference between treating the prisoners and Russian POWs; the latter benefitted perhaps from special attitudes toward them from the German Communists. Camp brothel By the end of 1943 a brothel, so called Puff, was built in the camp, to which 20 women were brought in from Ravensbrück, including 17 German, 2 Polish and 1 Gypsy. All inmates, excluding the Russians, were allowed to use Puff. Time for visiting was evening after work on work days and afternoon after the mid-day roll call on Sundays and holidays. Cost of a visit was 2 RM collected by SS. Generally however, only Germans used the Puff. Lodging conditions in the camp As far as lodging conditions go, there were wood blocks and brick blocks. Blocks Nos were wood, Nos were two-stories brick, and Nos (so called little camp) were wood; they were stables adapted for people, with small windows, no toilets, no washrooms. They were the Page 7 of 10

8 worst blocks in the entire camp. In some of the blocks there were three-level beds, in the small camp there were three-level bunks. In German and Norwegian blocks every inmate had his own bed; in Polish blocks occupied by old inmates (old in terms of camp seniority) two inmates slept in one bed; in other blocks it varied in different times. Except of the little camp, each block had a dining room and separate washroom and toilets. Roll calls There were two roll calls daily; later, the evening call was abandoned. Roll calls lasted sometimes very long, depending upon the whim of the Lagerführer. SS-men did the counts of individual blocks assembled in the roll call area. Food The food was such that due to hard labor someone who did not have help from parcels or from friends in the camp was finished in course of three months. In the morning, for breakfast a loaf of bread for 3, 4 or 6 people, differently at different times, and ½ kg margarine for 20 people, were issued; and coffee; sometimes a slice of horsemeat sausage, 2 dag per person. On Fridays, instead of sausage a table spoon of cottage cheese or jam. At lunch time no food was distributed, only in the evening after return from work, we were given 1 liter of soup made from rutabagas, carrots, kale, spinach sometimes on Sunday there was split pea soup. Working all day with no food weakened people at the most. Rations cited above were daily food norms during my entire stay in Buchenwald. Camp store In the camp store one could purchase salad, beets, cigarettes, and toothbrushes, cosmetics and other worthless for the body items like lemonade. On certain days inmates from Stubendienst purchased collectively for the entire block and in limited amounts products ordered by the inmates from among those listed above,. From the monies sent prisoners by the families and entered by the camp administration into individual account of the prisoner, it was allowed to withdraw 30 RM monthly in coupons and use them to make purchases in the camp store. Generally, prisoners did not receive any remuneration or wages for work; as an exception from the rule, there were komandos in which some prisoners were given up to 2 RM per week, as an encouragement to do more productive work. Camp cinema In an old big warehouse a movie theater for prisoners was established which was open three times a week. Admission was 20 Pfennige and attendance was sequentially by blocks. Nature movies and German propaganda war movies were shown. Sanitary conditions Page 8 of 10

9 Until 1944, there were almost no lice in this camp. The camp was exceptionally clean and sanitary conditions were not bad. Anyway, they paid a lot attention to cleanliness. Only patients with temperature exceeding 39 C were admitted to the sickroom. All the others were required to show up for work, even if they were sick and feverish. Patients were admitted in the evening, after work; they were seen by inmate-physicians of different nationalities. The sickroom was always overfilled; there were five sickroom blocks; patients were also lying on the floor. Physicians did not have sufficient medical supplies; some of them would go out of their way for the patient, but there were also others who were subservient instruments of SS. I remember one such inmate-physician, a German, who finished off prisoners and terrified the patients. Provoking a prisoner to cross the line guarded by sentries to get killed; suicides in the camp From my stay in Buchenwald I know and I have seen it personally several times in Steinbruch, that SS-men provoked prisoners to cross the line guarded by sentries by grabbing prisoner s hat from his head and throwing it outside of the guarded border of the camp, and then shooting the prisoner. It was frequently done at the komandos, but it worked only with the Zugänge, who were not familiar with the daily ways of the camp. Camp old hand would not go to get his hat thrown beyond the line by the SS-man, because he knew it would mean running for his own death. And I personally saw many people who under the conditions of the camp gave up on their life and threw themselves on electrical high voltage wires. SS sentries were shooting at those prisoners who in that way were finding salvation from the camp torments. At one occasion when the number of suicides raised, the Lagerführer made an announcement by a public address system to all prisoners gathered for a roll call, that if someone wishes to take his life, he should do it by hanging himself in the block using his belt, because it is a waste of bullets to shoot dogs. Read, signed, accepted (Signed) XXXXXXXXXX Comments of the interviewer: This interview was recorded on March 6, 1946 in the repatriation camp in Gamla Borgar Skolan in Malmö and was completed at 6:30 PM. Unexpected disruption caused by witness departure on March 7, 1946 with a transport leaving for Poland, did not allow concluding his deposition regarding camps DORA and BERGEN-BELSEN. One can notice witness sense of obligation to tell all that he had experienced and observed and what caused his partial loss of sight at the end of his stay in concentration camps. The witness sight is very bad; he moves around with help of good Swedish people (Manne Lindholm Ljungby, Gästgivaregatan 9). He did not have enough time to tell more specifically about the circumstances of his loss of sight; he only told me that all the others, a dozen of them or so, who had lost sight as the result of the particular work conditions, were because of that eliminated by the SS, while he survived. The witness makes an impression of an honest person, sensitive to human sufferings and, besides, as I was able to observe, one who is liked Page 9 of 10

10 by people around him, both Swedish as well as Polish. He also did not have enough time to dictate to the deposition his own poetry, of which he had a whole notebook. The contents of witness deposition have to be considered as totally trustworthy. His deposition does not differ from information about the Buchenwald camp known to the undersigned, based on the overall knowledge and from stories provided by others (information about conditions in one camp were conveyed to another camp along with people transferred), and reminded the undersigned of vividly identical conditions in the quarry in Gusen and Mauthausen which he experienced personally for a year and a half in Tormenting, destroying tens of people daily with hunger, hard and exceeding human endurance work and bestial torture, carrying heavy rocks forth and back often for no purpose, was characteristic for the quarry located frequently away from human settlements (Gusen) and aimed for extermination not for production, particularly in the first years of war, which was evident to everybody and every day from his own experience and observations. There are no facts described by the witness to be not accepted as not true or doubtful. (Signed) B. Kurowski Institute member Certifying compliance with the manuscript: (Signature: B.Kurowski) Institute member Page 10 of 10