On 8 October 1947 in Gliwice, Investigating Judge from the District Court in Gliwice with its seat in Gliwice, Judge Zygmunt Świtalski, heard the person named below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the significance of the oath, the witness was sworn pursuant to Article 109 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and testified as follows:
| Name and surname | engineer Artur Krzetuski |
| Age | 50 years old |
| Parents’ names | Karol and Adela, née Liszniewska |
| Place of residence | Gliwice, Styczyńskiego Street 1, flat 8 |
| Occupation | white collar worker |
| Criminal record | none |
| Relationship to the parties | none |
I stayed in the Auschwitz camp from 21 May 1940 to October 1944 as Polish prisoner no. 1003, after which I was transported to the Heinkel factory near Berlin. During my incarceration I met the below listed SS men, who performed various functions in the camp, and about whom I can say the following:
1) Hauptsturmführer Fritzsch – Lagerführer [camp leader] in the years 1940–1941 and at the beginning of 1942, a half-mad man who punished the prisoners without restraint for the slightest transgressions, and often without any reason at all – with the so-called “post”, beating, and assignment to the bunker or the punitive unit. He used the “post” to punish prisoners for the most trifling offences, for instance, engineer Wojnarski from Mościce was thus punished because a prisoner from his group adjusted a bandage on his leg. The sick were not admitted to the hospital. He was especially malicious and harassed the prisoners in all ways imaginable. In summer and autumn he deprived the prisoners of shoes, as a result of which the prisoners suffered from leg wounds. A few times after some prisoners escaped from the camp, he personally chose prisoners who were to be starved to death in the bunker as a punishment. (Collective responsibility).
2) Untersturmführer Meier – deputy to Lagerführer Fritzsch – a sadistic type, who took pleasure in tormenting the prisoners. He himself tortured the first transport of people from Silesia and ordered that wounds be smeared with iodine. He ordered one prisoner, a Jew, to jump out of the window on the first floor.
3) Hauptsturmführer Aumeier – Lagerführer at the turn of 1942 and 1943. A drunkard filled with hatred for the Poles, he beat the prisoners and chose people from the bunker to be shot without any investigation into the prisoner’s fault. He also shot prisoners at the wall of death, and he often shot wildly around the camp. After a failed mutiny attempt in the punitive unit in Birkenau, together with other Blockführers [block leaders], he perpetrated a bloody massacre, torturing the prisoners in an unheard of manner and shooting at them with his revolver. Among others, the director of the municipal savings bank in Kraków, Dr. Stanisław Chodorowski, died at his hands then. During his time in office, the first gassing was carried out in the basements of the punitive unit, as well as the first public hanging in the camp. He himself prepared a beam with twelve ropes for the prisoners from the Bauleitung [construction department]. He saw to it that an average prisoner could not survive in the camp for more than two months.
4) Obersturmführer Seidler – deputy to the camp commandant Fritzsch. He was decidedly an evil man, a sadist, and a boaster; he reveled in the sight of blood, and once he kicked the head of a dying prisoner who had been shot on the run and who was lying in front of the camp gate. He would mete out the most severe punishments for the slightest offences. He was notorious for constant searches, after which he would punish abundantly. After one such search in block 24, he sentenced 18 prisoners to standing in a small cell, and 15 of them suffocated in great agony caused by the lack of fresh air, while the remaining three were restored to life with the greatest effort. The finishing off of about 12,000 Russian POWs in the winter of 1941/1942 was also his doing. He personally finished off the prisoners who were executed by shooting with a shot to the eye or the head, nailing them to the ground with his shoe so that they wouldn’t move. He required the kapo of the punitive unit to murder as many prisoners as possible during work and watched them, and upon the return of the unit to the camp, he threatened the kapo if the number of corpses brought after work was too small. He introduced long roll calls in the rain and freezing temperatures, in this way destroying hundreds of human beings.
5) Oberscharführer Palitzsch – the first Rapportführer [report leader], the terror of the camp; he beat, tortured and tormented the prisoners, he bathed in blood, suspended people from the post, and there wasn’t a crime he wouldn’t perpetrate. He tortured the people condemned to death before the execution of the sentence, punished them with flogging and tormented them maliciously. He personally carried out the executions by shooting and exceled in this job. He could shoot over 200 people in two hours and appear at the roll call, covered in blood. When you saw him smiling, you could expect the worst. This murderer carried out the first gassings of 700 people in the basement of the punitive unit and the next gassings in the first crematorium in the parent camp of Auschwitz. He has thousands of people on his conscience.
6) Oberscharführer Plagge – a drunkard and a sadist, who carried out sentences and punishments, suspended people from the posts, beat and shot them, and conducted punitive exercises called “sport” completely on his own.
7) Oberscharführer Emmerich – Arbeitseinsatzführer [work manager] – a dangerous type. An extremely malicious sadist, he beat and tortured both male and female prisoners. He took part in the brutal unloading of transports and tormenting the people who arrived in them. He often carried out searches and informed on the inmates to the camp authorities.
8) Unterscharführer Schoppe – Blockführer, and later Arbeitseinsatzführer, a malicious type who hated the Poles and tortured the prisoners; he derived great satisfaction from reporting the slightest transgressions, which were the reasons behind many grave punishments that befell the prisoners. I myself was beaten by him.
9) Unterscharführer Fries – Rapportführer, a filthy beast, he beat and tortured the prisoners, beat and kicked enfeebled and dying prisoners who were lying on the ground during roll calls, and after the morning roll calls he played doctor, in which “entertainment” consisted of him calling out the sick people who stayed in the camp and who didn’t go to work and lining them up in front of the block to apply treatment, that is, whacking them with a thick club blindly about the body. Of course, such a treatment resulted in a massacre, especially since other SS men would join in. Fries possessed great physical strength, he was of thickset build and extremely brutal. He himself took an active part in all actions against the prisoners and took great pleasure in meting out the punishment of flogging.
10) Unterscharführer Stiewitz – Arbeitseinsatzführer, and later Rapportführer, he beat the prisoners and tortured them, he shot them at the wall of death, killed Jews in the general anti-Jewish action, and he was especially zealous in beating and punishing the prisoners. He harassed the prisoners in the women’s camp.
11) Untersturmführer Sell – a feeble-minded man, he ran the so-called Arbeitseinsatz, and although he was less harmful than the others, he undoubtedly had a hand in the destruction of hundreds of human beings by demanding too strenuous work (from 12 to 16 hours per day).
12) Untersturmführer Josten – a typical Prussian non-commissioned officer, an obtuse and mindless follower of orders.
13) Oberscharführer Stark – a malicious sadist; one of his “games” included kicking the prisoners in the testicles.
14) Unterscharführer Jäger – Blockführer, who wanted to gain favor with his superiors and thus indefatigably looked for an occasion to file a report; he also beat the prisoners.
15) Unterscharführer Kaduk – a renegade (before the war, he worked in the PFZA [State Factory of Nitric Compounds] in Chorzów), a scoundrel, he betrayed the commandant of the guard in the PFZA in Chorzów, Niedziałkowski, thus sentencing him to death. He tormented the Poles, he forced the prisoners to supply him with vodka, he carried out searches completely of his own accord and in a similar way he conducted selections for the gas in the dead of the night. He was a Rapportführer.
16) Unterscharfürer Claussen – also a Rapportführer for some period of time. He beat the prisoners.
17) Untersturmführer Grabner – head of the Political Department, an extremely criminal type, a sadist; he particularly hated the Poles, especially the Polish intelligentsia. He chose people for death, and in retaliation for escapes, he carried out bloody investigations accompanied by tortures. Constantly, on his own initiative, he added new people – chosen on a whim – to the list of the convicts, and he has thousands of innocent victims on his conscience. He carried out the gassings. He was the one who came up with the idea of tattooing prisoners, and he proposed that the tattoos be made with the use of special needle stamps – he even brought such a stamp to the workshops as a prototype. He conducted selections of prisoners in the bunker, choosing people for execution by shooting. Grabner was an [extremely] bloody criminal, an evil spirit and a right-hand man of Höß. At the end of the camp’s existence, he set fire to the barracks of the Political Department in order to obliterate all traces of his criminal activity.
18) Untersturmführer Wosnitza – probably a Pole by descent. He always wore plain clothes. He carried out the arrests of the local populace. He also headed the department dealing with escapes.
19) Unterscharführer Lachmann – worked in the Political Department. He allegedly came from Bydgoszcz, and he spoke very idiomatic Polish. He was well-groomed, affable, and polite, but extremely dangerous during an investigation. He was a specialist in eliciting testimonies, during which, in cold blood, he would resort to the most sophisticated torture. He supervised the action of forcing prisoners to sign the Volksliste.
20) Oberscharführer Boger – worked in the Political Department; a rouge, scoundrel and the terror of the camp, he tortured people during the investigations, tormented them and chose people from the bunkers for death, and he also shot prisoners of his own accord. He prompted the prisoners to fraudulence.
21) Sturmbannführer Bischof – head of the Central Construction Bureaus, and later of the construction bureau in Silesia; a conceited man for whom the prisoners were less than nothing. He was very zealous in carrying out the expansion of the camp and construction of the crematorium, and took part in the burning of prisoners. For his services he was awarded the War Merit Cross with Swords. He prepared all criminal actions in the camp in terms of area and construction, forcing all SS men and civilian workers under his supervision to work as efficiently as possible at advancing the progress and making the crematoria ready to fulfill their horrible role.
22) Untersturmführer engineer Janisch – employed in the Bauleitung, a malicious type who would beat and kick the prisoners. I myself witnessed him beat the prisoner Jakub from Łącko because the latter wanted to pick up an apple from the ground. Then, Janisch took out his revolver and wanted to shoot him, but it seems that his gun jammed.
23) Obersturmführer Pollok – employee of the Bauleitung. He felt deep hatred for the Poles, whom he beat, and he also cooperated with the Political Department in the camp. He was a fink of the Political Department and informed on the prisoners employed in the Bauleitung.
24) Oberscharführer Kamann – he worked as a gardener in the construction office. Stupid and obtuse, he hated the Poles, harassed the prisoners, and beat them.
25) Hauptscharführer Wiechmann – an exceptional rogue who came in 1943 from Sachsenhausen; he was a sadist who took pleasure in beating, kicking, and torturing the prisoners, towards whom he was spiteful. He often conducted roll calls which ended in severe punishments.
26) Hauptscharführer Böttcher – a friend of Wiechmann – a similar type, but more brutal. He beat and tortured the prisoners, he reported on them and forced the prisoners to obtain various goods for him, threatening them with punishments.
27) Sturmmann Blanke – head of the carpenters’ workshop, very tall and very strong. He beat the prisoners until they bled. He was stupid, half-witted, and tortured the prisoners for the slightest offence in a most horrible manner. He carried out searches and harassed the prisoners at every opportunity.
28) Rottenführer Schinner – a cunning and sneaky fink; he didn’t beat people himself, but incited Blanke to do it. An implacable enemy of the Polish intelligentsia. Corruptible.
29) Unterscharführer Gatza [Gatzscha?] – a man from the vicinity of Pszczyna, Silesia – an informer who harassed the prisoners.
30) Oberscharführer Engelschal – first a Blockführer, and then commandant of the camp guard and the workshops. A tall and robust man. He was frequently assigned to administer the punishment by flogging, which he did habitually and with pleasure. He punished the prisoners diligently and personally chose special bull whips in the slaughterhouse.
31) Oberscharführer Gehring – a criminal type, he supervised the punitive unit and the bunkers. He organized punitive exercises completely on his own and incited the kapos to torment the prisoners. Many details pertaining to his activity could be provided by engineer Pilecki (Polish Radio in Katowice).
32) Unterscharführer Köhler – a malicious Blockführer, a sadist who beat and harassed the prisoners, an enemy of the Poles. He had a saying of his: “Ihr Sau-Polake, Speckmutze”, etc.
33) Untersturmführer Entress – a doctor. He brought an end to the typhus epidemic by gassing all the sick and even the convalescents. He repeated this procedure several times.
34) Unterscharführer Klehr – a non-commissioned sanitary officer. He killed prisoners with injections of formalin to the heart. He has thousands of people on his conscience. A prisoner by the name of Pańczyszyn was his helper.
35) Kapo Grönke – a shoemaker, a malicious type who tormented the prisoners. After release from the camp, he was appointed head of the supply workshops. He showed great zeal at that position, and became an informant of the Political Department; he harassed the prisoners and tormented them. He used to make a “show” in the courtyard of the workshops by setting his dogs on the prisoners who were then mauled to death by the beasts. He made a mint from the gold and valuables of the Jews, part of which he delivered to Höß’s wife.
36) Kapo Bonitz – a German thief, who beat and tormented the Poles. In the block in which he worked in the capacity of the block officer he made life of all prisoners a misery. He especially tortured the prisoners for putting rags or paper under the uniform in order to keep warm.
37) Kapo Schikowski – he spoke some Polish and was an exceptional sadist and murderer. The road to the camp in Birkenau stands as a monument to his activity. At the time he served as an Oberkapo of the work columns and together with other kapos, he was largely responsible for the fact that when building this road, several thousands of Polish and Russian prisoners perished.
As regards other criminals from the Auschwitz camp, I can provide many more details on request.
The report was read out.