GENOWEFA UŁAN

On 3 June 1947 in Kraków, a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, District Investigative Judge Jan Sehn, acting at the written request 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), pursuant to article 254, 107, 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, heard the person named below as a witness, who testified as follows:


Name and surname Genowefa Ułan
Date of birth 29 June 1908
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Nationality Polish
Occupation owner of a men’s underwear factory
Place of residence Kraków, Dietla Street 79, flat 12
I was imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp on 17 August 1942 and I stayed

there as political prisoner no. 17 528 until the evacuation of the camp – i.e. until 18 January 1945. At the time of my arrival, the women’s camp was already in Birkenau in the Ia section. In this camp, I first stayed in block 10, then block 11, until 13 June 1943, when I was transferred to the Auschwitz sub-camp in Rajsko.

At that time, Maria Mandl was the senior overseer (Oberaufseherin) and Lagerführerin [camp leader]. She is the one in the photograph that I have just been shown (photo of Maria Mandl was shown). Her permanent office was in the Blockfüherstube [guardhouse] at the entrance to the Ia section in Birkenau. In the camp parlance, it was said that her office was "on the Vorne" ["on the front"]. On some days, she was seen several times in the camp, and there were days when I didn’t see her in the camp. Mandl, when walking around the camp, was dressed in a uniform, which all the SS women wore, with a revolver and always holding a whip. I was beaten by her for the first time in April 1943, when I was working in the bread warehouse (Brotkammer). At that time, it was already mandatory to wear headscarves tied around the back of the head. Since I had just had two sick teeth removed and my face was sore, in order to ease the pain, I tied my headscarf under my chin. Dressed like this, together with my other friends I dragged a cart loaded with bread. Mandl came across us on the camp street, stopped the cart and asked if I was unaware that the headscarf should be tied differently. My friend Ada Cieślikowska, who spoke German well, explained to her that I had had some broken teeth removed and my face hurt so that was why I had tied the headscarf under my chin. Mandl came up to me, she answered that the sun was shining, it was warm and I should wear the headscarf according to the regulations. While she was talking, she hit me in the face.

I was again beaten by Mandl and her friend Margot Drechsel during an inspection carried out by them in Rajsko. They arrived during the afternoon roll call and conducted an inspection. During this visit they came across some cabbage that was being boiled along with some potatoes in the dining room of a working block. This produce had been "organized" – we wanted to make an extra meal and get some extra nutrition in this way. Mandl and Drechsel summoned the room elders. I came forward together with my friend Maria Tarnowska. We were called to the dining room, where the food was being cooked. Maria Mandl and Drechsel started screaming and beat up Tarnowska first, and when she fled, they turned to me. They took it in turns to punch me in the face boxing-style. One of them beat while the other rested. I started to lose consciousness, I felt weak but despite this, I didn’t fall down. Then one of them, I don’t remember if it was Mandl or Drechsel, poured the boiling soup on the floor, and both of them threw me into boiling water, kicking. The heat helped me regain consciousness and I tried to get up. Mandl and Drechsel, holding me down by the shoulders, didn’t allow me to rise, but kept me in the boiling water. After a while, when they had got tired, the left me alone and departed. I had been so mistreated that the kapo of our kommando released me from work and let me lie down. The next morning, while yawning, I felt a terrible pain in my jaw and I fainted. As a result of the beating given by Mandl and Drechsel, I could only swallow liquids for a month and I couldn’t bite anything. I was sent to a doctor in the men’s camp in Auschwitz, where an X-ray of my jaw was taken, but what the photo showed, I don’t know. At the roll call after being beaten in Rajsko, Mandl berated us for being "damned Polish pigs" and other vulgar terms, she stressed that such a mess that she found there might have been possible in Poland, but currently we were on German soil and we had to obey German orders.

Another time, Mandl together with a group of overseers carried out a search in all the barracks of the Rajsko camp. This inspection lasted from 6.00 a.m. until almost midnight. At the time of the search, everything was turned over and everything was literally taken away from us, that is, the things that we had received in packages – soap, towels, combs and other things that we were allowed to possess. Mandl took all these things to Birkenau. In this case, Caesar the boss intervened, as a result of which some of the things appropriated by Mandl were returned to us after a few days. All items of food, however, were lost.

I don’t know Aufseherins Elfriede Kock or Erny Bodem, because I didn’t meet them in Birkenau, and they didn’t work in Rajsko. I met Luise Danz as Oberaufseherin in Ravensbrück in the side camp of Malchow, where I was deported from Auschwitz. I met her during roll calls and saw her in the Malchow camp. I heard from my friends that she could be bribed and that for some gold and diamonds she was happy to look the other way. I spent seven weeks in Malchow; there was a terrible famine there, so that once I suddenly lost consciousness from hunger.

The report was read out, thereby concluding the report.