Kraków, 10 December 1947
To the Supreme National Tribunal,
Kraków
| Name and surname | Aleksandra Sadowska |
| Date and place of birth | 1915, Klenik, Nowogrodzki District |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Occupation | seamstress |
| Place of residence | Zwierzyniecka Street 16, flat 4, Kraków |
I was brought to Auschwitz on 12 September 1942 and I stayed there until 1944. I was assigned to Birkenau to block 7A, from which I was sent to an Au[ßen]commando [external work detail] to work in the field. Soon I realized that both my inmates and myself would be constantly tormented by the SS men. After I stayed there for a month, one of the female prisoners escaped. She dressed into civilian clothes in the attic of a private house adjacent to the field. For her escape, Mandl punished us by forcing us to kneel in block 25 (“the block of death”) for a whole night.
When possible, I tried to work in all the kommandos to find out what it was like to work there. A single method was applied everywhere: beating, kicking, stomping a prisoner’s chest, choking and tearing to pieces by dogs. Each kommando had to be even. There were no more healthy people in the camp, so to fill in the missing places, Mandl would get the “Muslims” lying around the blocks in the mud. Those who tried to resist were killed on spot. Sometimes a dozen or so people died at the same time. Mandl would intentionally draft “Muslims”, because she knew the guards would finish them off at work in the field. Many times an inmate and I carried exhausted dying people to block 25.
In 1943, I met Mandl at the Lagerstraße [camp street]. She was staring at me through eyeglasses with her sinister eyes, and she noticed that my number on the jacket was dirty and partly torn off. She beat me hard and called Lagerälteste [camp senior] Stenia over, saying that those with a torn off number would be sent to block 25, that is “the block of death”.
With the help of Ms. Piątkowska, our “camp mother”, I was admitted to the “Sauna”, because after one and a half year of work in the Außenkommando I was completely exhausted and I resembled a “Muslim” more and more . I worked there in the Läusekommando that dealt with delousing. At the reine Seite [clean side], I saw Kremer select “Muslims”, who were destined for death, to be gassed. Those who were chosen would stay for two or three days in the gas chamber without food and drink, waiting for their turn to be killed. In the morning after the roll call, a car drove up to the “Sauna” and they were picked up, assisted by Drechsler, Mandl, Brandl, Taube, who pushed the prisoners. Almost every week, Doctor Kremer ordered selections of “Muslims”. I also saw them carry out experiments on rats out of boredom or for other reasons. We filled a bathtub with water, while the Germans poured a different liquid, unknown to me, and they threw the rats inside. The rats immediately stiffened and died.
I would also like to mention the Schuhkammer [shoe chamber] in block 11, where I worked for two weeks. The task of my colleagues and myself was to collect shoes of “Muslims” who had left them lying around in the mud in camps A and B, because they were already too exhausted to carry them on their feet. It was possible to find anything in those shoes: potatoes, bread, stolen goods, paper bandages covered in blood, or even frostbitten toes and whole feet. We cleaned those shoes from the mud and they were given for use to the next transport.
In December 1942, my friend Michalina Jędrusiak and I were sent to “the block of death” (25), where we were supposed to take shoes off of people who had died from hunger. I saw with my own eyes piles of frozen people, taken out of the block and lying around by block 25. I think there were over 60 of them. They were so frozen that it was absolutely impossible to normally take off their shoes.
Szczurek the Strangler
When I was in the hospital in block 17, suffering from scurvy and throat ulcers, I saw with my own eyes how Szczurek and two guards tortured a 40-year-old woman, who was hallucinating from fever, but was considered mentally ill by the Germans, until she choked to death. It happened in the following way. In the evening after the Lagerruhe [curfew], when it was quite everywhere, that sick woman was screaming and singing. A hospital orderly, a German woman, reported her and Szczurek together with two guards were sent to calm her down. She was signing prayers and they were choking her. I heard the poor woman wheezing for a long time, but finally she died. Everyone talked about that crime in block 17, whispering, “Szczurek, Szczurek, Szczurek…”
Szczurek would ride his motorcycle around camps A and B like a devil until he sprained his leg and was placed in the hospital.
I also saw Szczurek tormenting women who were working in the peeling kitchen. For “organizing” potatoes and other food items, he punished them with “sports activities” – they were ordered to walk on their knees around the Lagerstraße with their hands in the air, holding bricks. They exercised like that from 10.00 to 11.30 a.m. Those were usually elderly women, so after such exercises they were sent with swollen knees to the hospital, where many of them died. Szczurek excused one 70-year-old woman from the exercises.
I saw it all with my own eyes, because I worked in the “Sauna” and the events took place in front of it.
If necessary, I can testify in person. My testimony has been delayed only because I was ill and I stayed in the hospital, and I was not sure which of the Germans I know were among the defendants. And this is not everything I saw.