On 9 May 1945 in Oświęcim, Regional Investigative Judge Jan Sehn, member of the Commission for the Investigation of German-Nazi Crimes in Oświęcim, at the request, in the presence and with the participation of Deputy Prosecutor of the Regional Court Dr Wincenty Jarosiński, pursuant to Articles 254 and 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed Maria Matlak as a witness, former prisoner no. 50161 of the Auschwitz concentration camp, who testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Maria Matlak |
| Date and place of birth | 8 September 1912 in Włosienica, Biała District |
| Parents’ names | Franciszek Lofek and Aniela, née Warmuzek |
| Marital status | wife of Jan, a PKP [Polish State Railways] train dispatcher |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Citizenship | Polish |
| Place of residence | Oświęcim, Polna Street 5 |
On 24 May 1943 in Oświęcim, the Gestapo arrested me for no reason. Immediately after the arrest, I was brought to Bielsko, where I stayed in a Gestapo prison for four weeks. Nobody interrogated me during that period. After four weeks, I was transported by truck to the Auschwitz concentration camp, in handcuffs and in a group of 180 people. In the camp, I was placed in block 11, where the Strafkommando [penal unit] was located at that time. In the room where I stayed for four days, there were 94 female prisoners. Stubedienst [room orderly] Maks, a Pole, told us that theoretically we should be given food every three days, but, in fact, he gave us soup and bread every day. We were treated just like other female prisoners in the camp. After four days, four other prisoners and I were placed in the bunker. It was a dark room with one small barred window, stone floor and a single bunk. The bunker was 3 by 3.5 metres, and its height was 2.5 metres.
After a three-week stay in that block, I was assigned to the camp and told there had been a mistake.
Right after I was released from block 11, together with eight other prisoners, I was escorted to the Birkenau camp. There, we were first taken to the bathhouse. We were shaved, dressed in striped clothes, registered, tattooed and sent to block 3. At that time, a Polish woman, Stefania Starostka from Tarnów, was the Lagerälteste [camp senior]. She was a horrible woman. She bullied the prisoners, kicked and beat them mercilessly with her hands and a stick for no reason at all. I saw with my own eyes that she knocked a 76-year-old woman over and kicked her, and when the woman protested she had granddaughters Starostka’s age, Starostka said: „You’re still alive, you old b**ch?” I stayed in block 3, the quarantine block, for four weeks. In that block, there were also 1200 other female prisoners. Our job was to carry stones in our aprons and repair potholes on the roads. The Kapos who guarded us at work were German female prisoners. They would harass us for the slightest mistake and carefully watch if our aprons were full of stones. After the quarantine, I was assigned to work in the kitchen. I worked there for seven months, that is, until the end of March 1944. We cooked soups for dinner and herbs for breakfast or supper.
For dinner, there was usually nettle and goosefoot soup. First, we had to chop the nettle, then scald them with hot water and boil them. We also had to add a pack of Bratlingspulver [soy based filler] to a cauldron with a capacity of 300 litres. We knew that the powder was used to prevent women from menstruating. Before I ate that soup, I menstruated regularly. After a few days of eating it, I completely stopped menstruating. The same happened to other women. All female prisoners started menstruating again when we [ate what we received] in parcels from home. The kitchen Kapo was a Polish woman, Zofia Hubert from Katowice. She helped prisoners a lot.
The powder in the bag with the inscription Bratlingspulver that I have been shown is the same powder that I, and other people employed in the kitchen, added to soups. I also know – I and other female prisoners did so on the SS women’s orders – that ground raw potatoes were added to soups and meals (beets, rutabaga). I do not know why they made us to do it.
The kitchen’s Oberkapo was a German woman, Betti, whose surname I do not remember. She punished us severely for the smallest violations, ordering physical activities and beatings.
As a result of the hard work I had to do in the kitchen, I fell sick and was sent to the hospital. After two weeks, I became a nurse at the infectious diseases ward in block 24. Hygienic conditions in the block were horrible: women suffering from various diseases, such as typhoid fever, Durchfall [diarrhea] and dysentery, were lying together, five in each normal bed. There were plenty of lice, as if “someone had released them there from a bag,” so the naked women would shake them off with their hands.
The food was typical for the camp. Although the doctors were trying to help the patients, there were no medications at all. The mortality was very high, and the corpses often had to remain in bed with the sick for several hours until a doctor came and declared them dead. At that time, people in the block were subject to selections for gassing. Only Jewish women were gassed. It was not only the weakest ones that were taken to the gas chambers. They also took those who had been completely cured and were soon to be released from the hospital and return to the camp. The selections were performed by the camp physician, Dr König, a German, who was accompanied by a Jewish female doctor. He would point his finger at a woman he had chosen for gassing, and then, after she was added to the list, her bed was marked with a cross. In the evening, trucks would arrive and we had to pull the sick out of their beds and load them in. It happened many times that, after completing such a task, we were all covered in blood. There was no difference whether a Jewish woman was pregnant or not – on the contrary – all Jewish women who were pregnant, and especially those heavily pregnant, were taken to gas chambers. Sometimes Jewish women managed to hide their pregnancy, and when they gave birth, they tried to kill the child, assuming that in this way they would be able to avoid the gassing. All Jewish women with children were taken to the gas chambers.
I stayed in Auschwitz until the Soviet army entered the camp, that is, until 28 January 1945. Now, I permanently reside in Oświęcim.
At this point, the report was concluded, read out and signed by witness Maria Matlak as fully consistent with her testimony.