Voices from Ravensbrück Interview no. 264 (English translation) Polish Documentary Institute, Lund Trelleborg, 7 April 1946 Bożysław Kurowski, M.L., Institute assistant taking the record RECORD OF WITNESS TESTIMONY no. 264 Witness: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Born: 23 March 1918 In: Wąsorz, Szubin district Occupation: butcher Faith: Roman Catholic Parents' names: Stanisław, Stanisława Last place of residence in Poland: Postulice Current place of residence: Wąsorz, Szubin district Having been informed of the importance of truthful testimony, the consequences of false testimony and his responsibility to tell the truth, he has made the following statement: - From 28 December 1939, to 18 April 1940, I was in the concentration camp at Stutthof as a political prisoner. I had the number 8575 and wore a - triangle with the letter - on it. Then from 20 April 1940, until 2 May 1945, I was in Sachsenhausen as a political prisoner, with the number 23 076, and red triangle with the letter "P" on it. I was arrested on 23 October 1939 in Potulice, taken to the prison in Bydgoszcz, and then to Neufahrwasser. Asked whether I have any specific information from my time or work in the concentration camp about how it was organised, the camp regimen, inmates' working conditions, treatment of prisoners, medical and pastoral care, hygienic conditions, and also specific events in all areas of camp life, I can state the following: The testimony includes twelve hand-written pages, and describes: 1. The arrest of 20 priests and monks in the Potulice Seminary. Harassment: taking down crosses, paintings, making fun of religious songs. "Hinlegen" [German, command to lie down] and beatings. 2. In the camp in the munitions warehouses at Jachcice in the Bydgoszcz district.
3. In the camp at Neufahrwasser. 4. In the "Zivilgefangenen-Lager" [German, camp for civilian prisoners] at Stutthof - 28 December 1939: moving heavy lumber - 5 blows over the sawhorse for every person who came on the Bydgoszcz transport. - There was no rewir [German, Revier: infirmary, hospital block] - No changes of underwear, eating utensils. - Diarrhoea epidemic, frostbite. - Group prayer - Catholic priests. - Beatings. 5. At Sachsenhausen: a. admittance to the camp - Quarantine, "Moslem Dance" - Rolling over and jumping on prisoners, pouring sand into their eyes, dispatching by pumping water into prisoners' stomachs and cold showers. Hanging in the kabówka [a small room between the lavatory and toilets used to store cleaning equipment and personal effects of the deceased]. b. "Klinkerwerk" in 1940 - Laufschritt - Bogdalla - Strafkompagnie: drowning of prisoners, hard labour in very hot weather, assessed by the amount done, and not by hours worked. c. The "Steinbearbeitungswerk" komando [German, quarry komando {work gang}] (Speer) during the years 1940-1945. Pawlowski, Schubert, Van Detzen - sand hill, pouring sand in eyes, burying prisoners in the ground. Throwing caps beyond the line of guardposts - The better situation of the Jews - Bribes. d. Hiding the fact I had tuberculosis for 2 years for fear of being sent on a death transport. 6. Commentary on factual matters - and on the trustworthiness of the witness. Potulice, - Bydgoscz, - Neufahrwasser, - Stutthof In 1939 I was in Potulice as a candidate at the Foreign Theological Seminary, and as such was arrested by the Gestapo in a group of 20 priests and monks. We were isolated in Potulice for four weeks. During that time, we were forced to take all the holy images and crosses off the walls, and take down the altar, and we hid everything in the Potulicki family tombs. We were also forced during that period to sing religious songs in Latin, which SS men would ridicule, and we also had to do exercises whose aim was to exhaust us, for example when on the command "hinlegen" [German, to lie down], we would have to fall to the ground, and then we were kicked and beaten. Then we were taken to the prison in Bydgoszcz, namely to the internment camp, in the powdermagazines in Jachcice. Three hundred people were already imprisoned there, including Mrs. Barciszewska, the wife of Bydgoszcz's mayor. We were kept under lock and key. We were let out once a day for an hour, during which time we also did exercises: "hüpfen - hinlegen" [German, jump - lie down], and running, while they beat us. I was not beaten particularly badly, but others received many blows.
Finally we were taken to Neufahrwasser - Nowy Port in Gdańsk. About 8000 Poles were put in the buildings used for housing railway employees and emigrants. It was an assembly point and a transit camp, even though it existed for a long time. Some of those who had been arrested went to work, but I did not. Nevertheless, there was very strict discipline - people were kicked, beaten with rubber batons, beaten while they ate, and they slept on bare cement without any hay, in rooms without windows. After a week, we were taken to Stutthof, on 28 December 1939. That camp was located 30 km from Gdańsk and was at that time called the "Zivilgefangenen-Lager" [German, camp for civilian prisoners]. After arriving by lorries, we were put in block 20, beating us again there, as well: one person's head was cut open from being struck with a revolver by SS-man Schmidt, and we were herded off to work in the first minutes of our time at Stutthof. We had to run to the forest for wood, 3 km away. On the way back, 12 people carried one tree on their shoulders. The point was to tire us out, because we had to walk fast, when it was very cold, without any gloves, so that one hand was around the tree on our shoulder, and the other we had to hold straight, not moving it, like we did when we were "at attention!". They herded us by beating us, and they had plenty of opportunities to do so, because the little forest road was curvy and slippery, and the trees were very heavy, and the people carrying it were not the same height, and were arranged senselessly so that their strength was not divided equally. After their work was finished, the transport was called to the kitchen, and, hungry, in those circumstances, we were very hopeful that we would get our meal. Meanwhile, the Lagerführer came to the group of us, 110 men, and told us that "because you are the tranport from Bydgoszcz, each of you would now receive 10 blows over the sawhorse.but because today is the fourth day of Christmas, you will receive, out of mercy, only 5 blows each. If any of you is not satisfied, he will receive three times that!" That punishment was carried out, many people were badly injured, and they were not allowed to get up from the sawhorse, the person was thrown aside by force. Later we were given cold coffee and a piece of bread. For 4 weeks, I went to the forest to do the work described above; it was very hard work, and while doing it, I fell ill with pneumonia. At that time there was no rewir [from German, Revier: camp infirmary, hospital]; I was released from work and lay ill on the hay in the block for eleven weeks with a fever. The conditions in the camp were very difficult. It was very crowded on the bunks, the roof was leaking. Inside the block there were no amenities, just hay, that turned into muck. At that time there were about seven thousand people in the camp, and about 25 died in the camp daily. Many people died of diarrhoea. We were not given any clothes, blankets or other covers. Some people had been there since September [1939], whose shoes and clothes were worn out, and they had no coats or warm undergarments. The camp commendantship did not distribute any underclothes or clothing all winter long - so people with frostbitten legs, arms and ears would sit in the block. An SS man would barge into the block every few minutes and beat people. The SS men Schmidt and Laskowski were particularly wellknown in our district. They beat and terrorised people, and threw them out into the freezing cold. The food was very insufficient. We were given swede soup with water for lunch during winter, and for breakfast we were given a piece of bread, as black as earth, which tasted like clay - along with a little
jam, and later margarine, too. The coffee was usually cold. The problems with distribution were also the result of a complete lack of utensils. Coffee was drunk from tins that we had to find for ourselves. Constant terror reigned in the camp, beatings were an everyday event. Once two blocks were punished because they "organised" firewood for themselves from the carpentry shop. Each block had about 120-150 people, and each of about 300 people received 8 blows over the sawhorse. The entire camp participated in carrying out that punishment that time, and several thousand people had to count all of the blows aloud. Religious life in the camp I know that people prayed before going to sleep in many blocks. Prisoners did this on their own initiative, and on their own. There was a block of Catholic priests, who were from the Pomeranian, Poznań-Gniezno, Włocławek and Lublin dioceses - all together, there were about one hundred. They were harassed especially. I remember that once all the priests were thrown out of the block and had to do various exercises for punishment - I saw, for example, how the Lagerführer ordered them to crawl through the mud for half an hour. While suffering like this, their civilian clothes became completely soiled. The priests also had to go to work. Work in the camp Work amounted to building barracks, transport jobs, hauling snow, clearing the forest. In addition, there were outside work gangs: Matzkau, Grenzdorf (quarries) and work in Gdańsk. Once one of the prisoners washed his shirt and hung it up on the inner barbed-wire of the fence. When the shirt was dry, and that prisoner wanted to take it off the barbed-wire, I saw the guard at the watchtower shoot and kill him. At Sachsenhausen I arrived at Sachsenhausen by rail transport on 20 April 1940. When they met us at the station, they beat us with rifle butts, and then when we were marching to the camp, we were tripped, kicked and led as if we were the worst kind of criminals. All the usual activities took place at the camp, such as: baths, haircuts and changing clothes. I was in quarantine for 8 weeks in blocks nos. 38 and 41. During that quarantine, many people were dispatched through exercises and beatings. We also had to do the "Muslim Dance", which meant holding our arms up and spinning around, sometimes until we dropped. In addition, these exercises were all done in a row: rolling, which meant rolling over on the ground, while the prisoners were doused with water and jumped on, and the SS men also kicked sand into the eyes of the prisoners as they rolled on the ground. I know that people were tortured to death by having a hose of water run into their stomach, and also with cold water sprayed on them. This took place in all the quarantine blocks and I myself heard the screams of five men from my block that were killed in the Waschraum. I remember that one of them yelled: "Let me live, what am I guilty of, I have seven children and a wife." All five of them were killed by the blokowy [German, Blockälteste: prisoner who was the head of the block] Wojna, who was known as "Pierunie".
Another time I remember that the secretary of the Regional Starostwo in Toruń, Jonas, was killed by hanging in kabówka. The SS-Blockführer Schubert gave blokowy Wojna the order on the square where the roll call took place. Handing over Jonas, he said, "you know already what you are supposed to do with him!" I heard those words, just like everyone else standing on the square did. Wojna went with him to block no. 41, and while we were all at roll call, Jonas was hung in kabówka. In the camp, Jonas had been given the task of teaching young Poles German, which he supposedly did in a way that did not satisfy the SS men. These kinds of methods were used to kill in all the blocks of the quarantine camp. As a result, very many people died. In the "Klinkerwerk" work gang I worked in the "brick factory" [Polish, "klinkernia", from German, Klinker: brick] from June to September 1940. While we were working, there was something called "Laufschritt", which meant that if it was noticed that one of us was not running while working, he would be beaten and kicked, especially if fell into the hands of SS-Oberscharführer Bogdalli. He had the habit of hitting people in the stomach with his fist, and kicking them until they collapsed. In addition, he would also make a report and the person in question would stand for several hours in front of the gate and sometimes got 25 on the sawhorse. I myself carried 50 kg bags of cement all day long; it was very hard work, and the skin of my back would be raw afterwards. We would carry the cement off the barges, at a steady pace, but on the way back we were always forced to run. In the punishment company at the "brick factory" I think it was in 1942 that the punishment company, the "Strafkompagnie", was at the "brick factory". There were Poles there, too. The prisoners from the "S.K." would unload coal from the barges, while being tortured. When I worked in the "Speer" work gang, I saw how the "S.K." Vorarbeiter Staniczek tortured prisoners, he used to throw them into the water and drown them. Once I saw how he threw a prisoner, exhausted from the akord work, into the water of the canal and pushed him into the deep water with a hook on a long pole until he drowned. SS men were present and saw this. Another time, an SS man shot a prisoner from the "S.K." who had been working unloading the barges and he fell into the water and drowned. Those prisoners, there were several dozen of them, worked in the intense July heat from early morning until the evening, the whole time in terror, with shots being fired and with spectre of death before their eyes. At least 60 died in the space of 6-8 weeks, including a teacher from Toruń, Paweł Kałamarski, who was among the Poles. These atrocities were taking place in front of other prisoners, and also in front of the civilian office workers from the "Steinbearbeitungswerk-Oranienburg" firm. SS-Hauptscharführer Bogdalla was one of the hangmen of that "S.K." during that time. After the "S.K." was liquidated, as the result of a sudden change in the camp's course, when it became less harsh, the "S.K." Vorarbeiter returned from the "brick factory" to block no. 48 in the camp, where he was forced to hang himself after he arrived. The prisoners spat on him, gave him a noose, and, under their pressure,
hanged himself on a bed in the dormitory of block 48. This was one instance of the vigilantism used in the camp, in the case cited here with full official approbation, which was the expression of the opinion shared by most camp inmates. "Speer" work gang 1940-1945 In September 1940, I began to work in the "Steinarbeitungswerk-Oranienburg" work gang, known as "Speer", where I worked until the end of the war. From that period I remember: In 1940, Pawłowski from German Silesia was that work gang's Vorarbeiter, a prisoner, who wore a red triangle. He had a whole group of criminal and asocial hangmen to help him. The Kommandoführer was SS- Oberscharführer Schubert, who was about 24 years old. The work at that time was clearing the forest and carrying wood, while they would torture people. I saw, for example, several instances when a prisoner was buried in the ground up to his neck, so that only his head was sticking out. The victims remained in the ground like that sometimes for 3 hours, and sometimes even for the entire morning. In addition, they also used to throw a prisoner's cap outside the guards' chain. I saw myself how once an SS man pushed a prisoner to go get his cap against his will, and the moment he was outside the guards' line, he was shot. I would like to point out that at that time there was not yet any fence, and that the territory being cleared was surrounded by SS posts, which was the work area, beyond which it was forbidden to go. The work gang numbered about 1200-1300 at that time. At least ten people a day collapsed from exhaustion and had to be carried out, sometimes corpses as well. In 1941, SS-Hauptscharführer Van Detzen became the Kommandoführer. Work at the sand hill was especially hard. I worked distributing this sand hill by cart. At that time, Van Detzen would get onto a cart filled completely with sand and beat the prisoners working on the cart, who had been pushing the cart all day at full speed. Every one of us was beaten that time. This happened every day, over a long period of time. There were mostly Poles there; Germans and Czechs were Vorarbeiters and Vormans - and about 500 Jews had privileged positions that they had bought with money and cigarettes. Van Detzen also frequently employed the technique of "rolling" the prisoners, especially from the sand hill, a height of about 10 metres. As they were rolling, he would kick sand into the prisoners' eyes. At that time, Poles did not usually receive any bread, and the Vorarbeiter August Röhm (who had a green triangle), originally from Magdeburg, would give portions to those who gave him money. You could also get better jobs for money. In that work gang, however, we were beaten until the end of the war, and blows to the face were a daily occurrence. Hiding tuberculosis from fear of being sent on a transport In 1943, I fell ill with tuberculosis, I lay 4 weeks in the rewir [German, Revier: infirmary, prison hospital]. Because a transport to the gas chambers at Lublin was being organised of those who ill with TB, I tried with the help of Smól, a male nurse I knew there, to be released from the hospital. Smól destroyed my rewir card, so it looked as if I had never been in the rewir at all, and that was how I avoided being sent on the death transport.
I hid my tuberculosis until the end of the war, despite having had haemorrhages and fevers, sometimes as high as 39º C. Through friends in the rewir, I received help in the form of Calcium shots, sugar and various vitamins. That help, and the help with getting food, kept me alive, and I have been in Sweden since November 1945, in a sanatorium, where I was given artificial pneumothorax treatments - and I have non-communicable tuberculosis (negative). I make the testimony above on the basis of what I have seen, according to the best of my knowledge and recollection, the day before I leave on a transport of Poles being repatriated to Poland. Read, signed, accepted (-) xxxxxxxxxxxxxx witness (-) B. Kurowski Institute assistant [Comments of the person taking the record:] The above protocol was written a few hours before the witness left by repatriation transport to Poland. I know the witness personally. I met him in February 1940, at Stutthof, and then worked with him from 1942 to 1945 in the "Speer" work gang in Oranienburg. On the basis of our relationship, I can state that the witness is trustworthy. As far as the substance of his testimony, I can state that: I a - I also began working at Stutthof in January 1940 by hauling heavy wood from the forest. I had no doubt that the point was to dispatch the prisoners by exhausting them, which was why I escaped the third day. "Jesus Christ!" shouted fellow prisoner Mielcarek, of Toruń, when he could no longer hold the wood up on his shoulder, which was being hauled by a dozen or so hungry, cold prisoners (I was one of them), along a narrow, slippery forest path for two kilometres. 'I'll give you a "Jesus Christ",shouted the kapo [guard in Nazi concentration camps, selected from the camp officials from among the prisoners], who hit the notary M. on the back with a heavy stick. b - The general conditions in the camp described by the witness and the diarrhoea epidemic are accurate. The rewir just being organised, and in March 1940, there was already a ward for the sick, that housed several dozen patients; that was in either the first or second block. In one of the other blocks, a ward for those who were ill with diarrhoea. They lay on the bunks, one next to the other, and were not treated - and they waited only for death; they were starved and beaten. That is where Father Feliks Bolt, a senator of the Republic of Poland, died, and right after his death I managed to visit that block. I remember that then the voice of one of the patients called out: "We won't survive anymore, but you young people, you tell people in Poland what they did to us here and in what conditions we are perishing." I note that we managed to place Father Bolt in that block after great efforts, otherwise that
76-year-old respected politician from Pomerania would have had to perish, like the majority of the sick people, on the bunks without even that chance to rest. c - In block 12, in the evening, when everyone had already gone to bed, Karr-Jaworski, or Antoni Czerwiński, used to recite poetry almost every day, or a story, which was supposed to comfort people. Then cadet Kazimierz Frąckowski would say a prayer on behalf of everyone; he always finished with the appeal: "And may God in his mercy grant the souls of the dead eternal peace, Amen." d - There were several dozen priests; several of them used to hear confession secretly. They were subjected to special harassment. I remember one evening, during roll call, all the priests got six blows on the sawhorse. The Jews made up an "honorary" cordon at the sawhorse, and counted the number of blows aloud, from 1-6. SS men did the beating. The priests Sochaczewski from Pomerania and Jacek Pomianowski from Upper [illegible] fainted. This punishment was supposedly in response to a speech by Cardinal Hlond from Rome about German atrocities. II a - The methods of torturing and killing prisoners during the quarantine in the spring of 1940 in Oranienburg are, I can say based on my experience and on other testimonies in the Institute, true. b - In 1940/42 it was common practice to help oneself with money or by other means. I personally received an assignment to office work from the above-mentioned Vorarbeiter August Röhmer, where I worked from 1942-1945, thanks to which I was able to survive. Until 1943, it was possible to have minimal sums in cash from home, later in camp coupons. [Comments of the person taking the record, continued:] c - I knew that the witness hid the fact that he had tuberculosis. I remember that the witness was treating himself then on his own with Calcium Gluconicum injections. The danger of being sent on a death transport in 1943 was a real one, and later as well, was serious for those in the rewir suffering from tuberculosis. Such transports did leave [the camp], and everyone knew what their destination was. - As far as the rest of the facts and events described by the witness, I do not have any reservations, and they are trustworthy, also based on the many testimonies in the Institute [whose facts] have already been confirmed. (-) Bożysław Kurowski Institute assistant [Stamp: Polish Documentary Institute, Lund]