MARIAN GOLIŃSKI

On 19 August 1947, the Municipal Court in Zabrze, in the person of Judge E. Fidyk, with the participation of reporter R. Gründler, interviewed the person specified below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Marian Goliński
Age 43
Parents’ names Antoni and Maria
Place of residence Zabrze, Opolska Street 14
Occupation bricklayer
Criminal records none
Relationship to the parties none

Having been presented with the photographs of Erich Muhsfeldt, Maximilian Grabner, and Herbert Ludwig, the witness testified:

In the photographs I was presented with I can recognize only Maximilian Grabner and Herbert Paul Ludwig. In the spring of 1943, Keler building company in Mysłowice, where I worked, sent me to build chimneys in the camp in Auschwitz. When I arrived, I went to the construction department first, then I was sent to the political department, where all the formalities were taken care of, namely, I was registered as a bricklayer working on the camp premises. There I met both suspects, that is, Paul Herbert Ludwig and Maximilian Grabner who worked in the political department office. I am not completely sure, but I think that Maximilian Grabner was the head of the political department. At the time I did not yet know the suspects’ names, and I came into contact with them just because they registered me in the political department.

In 1943, I worked for four or five months at Auschwitz as a bricklayer, building the crematorium chimneys. I worked in Auschwitz, in Birkenau. There were three crematoriums there and one located in Auschwitz itself. I did not work on that last one.

During work I was allowed to walk around freely and leave the camp. I had no direct contact with suspects Grabner and Ludwig, but I frequently saw them bringing in the groups of prisoners meant for the gas chamber. I never saw suspects Grabner and Ludwig personally shoot someone. However, several times when I walked into a room where people had been shot, the kapos and other people working there would generally say that this was Ludwig’s doing. I frequently saw suspect Ludwig with a revolver in hand, leaving a building where people had been executed.

When I worked there, almost every day I witnessed as both suspects, that is, Maximilian Grabner and Herbert Paul Ludwig were abusing prisoners who were at work by beating them with batons or simply with revolvers, for no reason, to the point that almost everyone fell to the ground bleeding. This was in the camp in Birkenau. People were being beaten every day, the whole time that I worked in the camp. I cannot tell exactly when they were beaten and as for where – I saw them being beaten outdoors, where they worked. Those whom I saw being beaten by Maximilian Grabner and Herbert Paul Ludwig were of various nationalities. There were Poles, Romanians, Jews, Greeks and others – the suspects saw no difference between them. I cannot estimate the number of people who were beaten, because the beatings occurred almost constantly.

I would like to stress that suspects Maximilian Grabner and Herbert Paul Ludwig terrorized the camp so much that whenever a prisoner was summoned to the political department to be interrogated by them, hardly anyone would go, because, fearing torture, the majority committed suicide. I cannot name the people who were killed or beaten by Grabner and Ludwig, because I did not know them. I think that more detailed information about the suspects and their conduct can be provided by Wąsowicz, the head of the Auschwitz- Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Oświęcim, his assistant Targosz, Pietrzak – a master carpenter working at this museum, and Prime Minister Cyrankiewicz. More detailed information about the suspects’ conduct can also be provided by Zygmunt Jankowski, currently residing in Katowice, Kopernika Street 13.

As for suspect Erich Muhsfeldt, I cannot remember ever encountering him in the camp, and I do not recognize him on the photograph I was presented with. Maybe the witnesses I mentioned will recognize him.

From May to September 1944 I worked in the camp in Auschwitz in Birkenau once more. At that time suspects Maximilian Grabner and Herbert Paul Ludwig treated prisoners in the same way as they had in 1943, which I described earlier.

The report was read out and signed.