On 9 September 1947 in Kraków, a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Appellate Investigating Judge Jan Sehn, at the written request of the First Prosecutor of the Supreme National Tribunal dated 25 April 1947 (file no. NTN 719/47), and 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 connection with Articles 254, 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed the former prisoner of the concentration camp in Auschwitz named below as a witness. The witness testified as follows:
Name and surname | Eugeniusz Walczyk |
Age | 50 years old |
Nationality and citizenship | Polish |
Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
Occupation | worker at the Municipal Water and Sewers Company in Kraków |
Place of residence | Kraków, [...] |
I was deported to the concentration camp in Auschwitz towards the end of March 1941. Detained as political prisoner no. 11779, I stayed in the camp until October 1944. I worked in Bauleitung [building authority] in the parent camp (until Christmas of 1943) and in the installers’ kommando in Birkenau (until the end of my detention).
During my detention in the camp in Auschwitz I came across the camp’s Schutzhaftlagerführer [camp leader] Hauptsturmführer Aumeier. I installed bathroom fittings in his private apartment. Aumeier was very brutal towards prisoners. He beat them. After I installed bathroom fittings he asked me if the tub had a slope and threatened to kill me if it turned out that it hadn’t. From my colleagues Kazimierz Kumala, who lives in Katowice, and Jan Mięsok, who lives in Godula near Chrzanów, I learned that in the autumn of 1942 Aumeier took part in the shooting of prisoners from the penal company in Birkenau. Kumala and Mięsok worked in our unit and were present in the camp when the slaughter of the prisoners in question took place. Among those whom the Germans killed on that occasion was engineer Kilanowski from the Kraków Water Supply Company. Being a member of SK [Strafkompanie, penal company], Józef Sosnowski survived the massacre (he lives in Będzin, near the Square).
According to my colleagues’ account, Aumeier was personally involved in shooting prisoners from the penal company. He ordered the execution because some prisoners from the company had escaped.
From among the remaining defendants I remember Unterscharführer Buntrock. He is the man whose photo I have just been shown (the photograph of the defendant Buntrock has been shown). Buntrock served in the Czech camp in Birkenau. He always walked with a stick. He beat prisoners. He beat me twice for entering the Czech camp. I was beaten in spite of the fact that I was given permission to get into the camp to repair bathroom pipes. If I am not mistaken, he served in the Czech camp as Rapportführer [report leader]. He would get drunk and, intoxicated, beat prisoners.
While supervising the work of plumbers I was allowed to move around the whole camp. I would also walk near the railway ramp where people were unloaded from the trains that arrived in the camp and from where they were sent straight to the gas chambers. On the ramp the Germans carried out selections. Younger men and younger women without children were sent to the camp while the rest, that is, children, women with children and older people were sent to the gas chambers. Grabner, head of the Political Department, and Maria Mandl, who was in charge of the female camp, were among those whom I often saw at the selections. Once, I saw a teenage girl start running after her mother from whom she had been separated. Her mother was going in the direction of crematoria II and III. One of the SS men stopped the girl because she was to be sent to the camp but his fellow SS man told him to let the girl go after her mother. The girl followed her mother into the gas chamber where they were both killed.
Mandl, accompanied by an SS man, was also involved in carrying out selections in the camp’s third section known as “Mexico”. I saw how she selected people and how women whom she had selected were taken in cars to the gas chambers. “Mexico” remained unfurnished. There were neither beds nor blankets. Women were clad only in cotton clothes. Although they didn’t work, their physical condition was constantly deteriorating because of the hard conditions they were in. This part of the camp wasn’t supplied with sewers. Consequently, this section was deprived of water. Mandl carried out selections in “Mexico” a few days a week. She also sent healthy people to the gas chambers – those who were found to have some spots on their skin or who suffered from some minor ailments. “Mexico” existed for two-three months. At that time, several tens of thousands of women passed through it.
The report was read out. At that the report was concluded.