On 13 December 1946 in Gliwice, the investigative judge for the District Court in Gliwice, Judge Zygmunt Świtalski, heard the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the wording of Art. 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Eugeniusz Cyba |
| Age | 25 |
| Parents’ names | Roman, Aniela |
| Place of residence | Gliwice, Jaskółcza Street 2a/5 |
| Occupation | clerk |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
| Relationship to the parties | none |
I arrived in Auschwitz on 14 June 1940, on the first transport sent from Tarnów. In Auschwitz I was marked down as prisoner no. 140, and I stayed in that camp until 24 October 1944 when I was moved to the Ravensbrück camp.
Regarding the person of Rudolf Höß, I cannot say that he single-handedly tortured the inmates, as I have never seen him even hit a prisoner. Even though he didn’t do it himself, he knew very well all of the methods of harassing the prisoners, as he was the one to issue all the orders and instructions. When in 1943 two prisoners escaped the camp, ten other prisoners were publically hanged from a beam, with Höß present at the execution and reading out the sentence given in the name of Himmler. After reading out the sentence, Höß added that if another escape should happen, he would personally ensure that not ten, but a hundred prisoners would be hanged.
In 1944, when I would go to the lavatory, I would often read old documents, which were used as toilet paper, and I found out from them that when in 1943 Dutch and Belgian Jews were brought to the camp, Höß signed the order to gas them – I saw his signature on the paper. I’d like to mention, that these Jews were transported directly to the platform from which they went directly to the gas chamber. On one of the papers I saw a written number of 2,000 people sent to death. I should stress that when it comes to the system of annihilating people using gas, it was officially called Aktion Höß. In the Auschwitz camp people were annihilated by scientific experiments (block no. 10), injections (the infirmary – rewir), gassing. Here I’d like to mention that in July 1941, in the early morning hours, I saw when about 700 soviet POWs, in the presence of Höß and his staff, were loaded off the trains – around a hundred people from each wagon – then beaten, undressed and sent to block 11 to be gassed. It was the first case of gassing.
Prisoners were also exterminated by starvation. As an example of this, I can report the fact that in late October or early Nobember 1941, the so-called Kriegsgefangenen Arbeitslager was created on the camp’s premises where about 12 thousand Soviet POWs were brought, and as a result of Höß’s orders they were starved and destroyed with heavy labor. As a consequence, after three or four months, out of 12 thousand people there were around 150 who remained alive. Once I saw Soviet prisoners eat grease used for numbering carts because of hunger. I also witnessed once, when I went to the prisoners’ camp to call upon help with bringing the tea for supper, Höß and Fritsch [Fritzsch] and Palitsch [Palitzsch] were watching hundreds of the dead – dead from starvation – being loaded onto trucks. I’d heard that there had been incidents of cannibalism around the camp. Because there was only one crematorium at the time, where only a couple hundred people a day could be burned, the Soviet POWs were buried in a huge mass grave, and since it was wintertime the graves were really shallow. When it got warmer and the odor of rotting corpses floated across, they dug out the bodies and burned a couple thousand of them on a special pile.
Drowning prisoners was taking place in the following way: at the construction site of new prison blocks, a prisoner was ordered to put his head in a puddle, and then a kapo, whose surname I don’t know (I’m describing an event I witnessed with my own eyes), put his foot on the guy’s head and kept him under water until he died. I’d also heard that such incidents happened during the construction of the bridge over the Soła river, done by SS men and kapos whose surnames I do not know.
I can also recall an incident that took place in the camp kitchen, where I was employed. On Christmas Eve in 1940 the inmates working in the kitchen were singing “Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła” [the Polish hymn], and when one of the Poles wanted to report about this to the camp authorities, kapo Bruno Brodniewicz no. 1 finished off the informer by taking him to the bath, putting a hosepipe in his mouth and running the water until he died. Brodniewicz did that with other prisoners who were absolutely innocent. So did Wierzbica, who was a blokowy [block senior].
In the summer of 1940, in the presence of Höß, during road construction work, priests and Jews had to pull a heavy roller with kapo Krenkemann sitting on top of it, killing the inmates with a stick in the process. From prisoners’ accounts I also know that Rapportführer Palitzsch was shooting the prisoners professionally, and the rumor had it that he was paid 5 marks for each executed victim. Palitzsch had a special sports rifle with a silencer and adopted a method of shooting in the back of the head. I have to mention that Palitzsch was dreaded in the camp and tortured the prisoners by beating and kicking them. I myself, for reporting in the wrong way, was beaten and kicked by him. When it comes to Arbeitsdienstführer Emerik [Emmerich], I have seen him more than once beating prisoners for no reason, kicking them and setting dogs on them.
Such incidents were known to Höß, who often witnessed them personally. When the prisoners were working in gloves due to heavy frosts at the turn of 1940 and 1941, and Höß noticed that the gloves were getting worn out, he ordered them to work barehanded, which caused numerous frostbites. In July 1940, right after the escape of prisoner Wiejowski, Höß ordered a standing punishment that lasted for about 20 hours and during which prisoners weren’t allowed to go off even to meet their bodily needs, and so everybody did so on the spot.
I recall an incident when prisoner Count Baworowski satisfied his natural needs on the spot, and Palitzsch, in the presence of Höß, Fritzsch and other SS men, ordered him to take the feces into his mouth and keep it like this for a few hours. A couple of days after that scene, somebody accused prisoner Szatkowski of plotting to escape. As a result, by orders of Höß and in his presence, Szatkowski received over one hundred strokes of caning. After that he was beaten by Palitzsch, Mayer, kapos and block seniors, but the latter beat on command.
In 1943 Höß issued an ordinance saying that prisoners who are shirking work will be subject to public flogging. I know that all punishments were to be ordered by Berlin, and that Höß was obliged to send appropriate reports. In practice, however, a prisoner would receive their caning by Höß’s command, while the warrant to punish arrived much later. I also know that the culprit was supposed to be examined by a doctor before and after the whipping, but Höß never applied this rule.
[Höß also] implemented a system of bringing a prisoner’s family to the camp in case he had escaped, and put them in public view with a label saying they were being punished for their relative’s escape, with the commandant’s signature printed beneath (Der Lagerkomendant Höß).
To conclude I shall say that Auschwitz camp was a death camp, where thousands of human lives were taken.
The report was read out.