On 29 August 1947 in Oświęcim, a member of the Kraków District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, Magistrate Dr Henryk Gawacki, on the written application of the First Prosecutor of the Supreme National Tribunal dated 25 April 1947 (file no. NTN 719/47), in accordance with the provisions of and procedure provided for under the Decree of 10 November 1945 (Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland No. 51, item 293), in conjunction with article 254, 107, 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, heard as a witness the below mentioned prisoner of the Auschwitz concentration camp who testified as follows:
Name and surname Marian Kopta (previously testified)
I described my experiences in the Auschwitz camp exhaustively in my testimonies submitted during the criminal investigation of Rudolf Höß. During my stay in the parent camp, where I worked the whole time, I met the following former members of the armed SS staff:
1. Lagerführer [head of the camp] Aumeier was known to all prisoners as a ferocious individual, very easily angered and who would then beat the prisoners not only with his hand, but also with a stick or other object, as well as kicking them with his boots. I recall the arrival of the first major transport of women to the parent camp, not only Jewish women but also other nationalities, the latter from other camps. [This was] in April or May 1942. Many of these women were holding small children by the hand or in their arms, and one or two children were even in prams. At that time I worked in the headquarters and from there through the window I could see exactly Aumeier forcing the children from the women standing in line, simply throwing them aside. The SS men surrounding this transport shouted and beat the women who were crying; it was a hair-raising scene. Then I saw the children, standing at the side, loaded onto carts and taken away somewhere.
I often saw Aumeier coming out of the notorious block 11, and I had the opportunity to do so because for a time, about five months in 1944, I was a cleaner in the custody for the SS men and therefore went to block 11. Knowing exactly what was going on in the camp, I would say that most of the “shoot-outs” at block 11 (mass shootings) took place in Aumeier’s time.
2. For a long time I was assigned to clean the premises of the Political Department. That is why I had the opportunity to [watch them] and saw that the rooms in which the head of the Political Department, Grabner, carried out the interrogations were spattered with blood (walls and floor). I never saw Grabner beating anyone, but I know from the accounts of other prisoners that Grabner was present at all interrogations not only in the Political Department, but also during interrogations carried out in the camp by the Gestapo. The prisoners were also beaten and tortured there. In the presence of Grabner, the SS men beat and tortured the prisoners.
I remember the following event well. While passing through the corridor of the Political Department, I came across a German prisoner who, after being interrogated and tortured in the Political Department, was lying on a stretcher in the corridor guarded by an SS man. At the request of this prisoner, I brought him some drinking water in a bottle. And without realizing the consequences, I left this bottle of water with him. It was noticed by the SS men employed in the Political Department, who then searched for the prisoner who had brought this tortured man some water and I, unaware of the possible consequences of this, confessed. Grabner called me in, pointed out that I was not allowed to interfere with anything that was happening in the Political Department, and that only because of my impeccable work there would he spare my life.
I also often met Grabner leaving or entering block 11. I also saw him with a rifle, used especially for “shoot-outs”, entering the crematorium in the parent camp.
3. Going through the so-called quarantine at the very beginning of my stay in the camp, I also came across the infamous Plagge, called “Little Pipe” by the prisoners. Plagge conducted “gymnastic” and sporting exercises as well as “singing lessons”, and in the course of these he beat the prisoners with a stick, and regardless of that, the kapos – recruited from the famous German thirty prisoners – also beat the prisoners with sticks.
4. Unterscharführer August Bogusch, who worked in the headquarters and in the Political Department, who knew Polish well, insulted the Polish prisoners with various vulgarisms in German. And he once even berated me, adding that I wouldn’t live for daring to refuse to clean his boots, because at that time I was busy cleaning the belt of Baer, the adjutant of the camp commandant.
5. SS-Hauptscharführer Detlef Nebbe, also assigned to the headquarters of the camp as so-called Stabsscharführer, used to insult prisoners and once kicked a prisoner named Radwański, who along with me was assigned to clean the camp’s headquarters, for the fact that some carpet wasn’t clean –he’d found a stain on it. Other prisoners from the blocks where the SS men lived, as well as Nebbe, told me that Nebbe had beaten and kicked those prisoners.
The report was read out. At this the hearing and the report were concluded.