Seventh day of the proceedings.
Presiding Judge: Next witness: Władysław Rżewski.
Witness: Władysław Rżewski, 53 years old; religion: Roman Catholic; city district chairman of the PPS [Polish Socialist Party]; no relation to the defendants; residing in Łódź.
Presiding Judge: I advise the witness as per Art. 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure that he is obliged to speak the truth. False testimony is punishable by incarceration for up to five years. Do the parties offer any motions regarding the manner of questioning of the witness?
Prosecution: We do not require the witness to swear an oath.
Defense: Nor do we.
Presiding Judge: The witness will testify without an oath. Maybe the witness would tell us about the case, particularly as regards the defendants.
Witness: May I request some clarification? I mean regarding Gustav the Eiserne [Iron], who was in the Sachsenhausen camp, and who would presumably be defendant Gehring. Was he in the Sachsenhausen camp, and in what year?
Defendant Gehring: Between 1939 and 1941. But I am not “The Iron Gustav”, as that man’s last name was Sorge. Therefore there is some confusion regarding persons here.
Witness: I shall testify against the former camp commandant, Aumeier.
I was in the camps between 1939 and 1945. At first, that is, in 1939, I was in the Sachsenhausen camp. The prisoners were dying of starvation, would go swollen with hunger, even though the warehouses were full at the time. It was not unusual to see a man weighing 40 kg. These men were gathered in the so-called “Muslim” block. When a request for a thousand prisoners came from Flossenbürg, they were selected from the “Muslims”, people who had been physically and morally exhausted. They were a thousand skeletons, including more than 800 Poles, the rest were Austrian intelligentsia: doctors, lawyers, etc. We arrived in Flossenbürg hoping it would be better there, as we had thought there was no greater hell in the world than Sachsenhausen. We were very wrong. It was a “cave” in the mountains, more or less at the same altitude as our Zakopane. The prisoners were sent there so they would not come back. Beatings with shovel handles, kicking, displacing bones were daily occurrences, and commandant Aumeier was aware of it. We had no peace in the block either. The block and room elders would badger us on their own in a way that drove people to despair and suicide. We were not allowed to write anything negative in letters to home, just good things. Every prisoner had to start his letter with the words: “bin gesund, geht’s mir gut” meaning: “I am healthy and doing well”. The starving families oppressed in Poland would write back to those bruised prisoners, crippled from the beatings: “Why do you not care for us and will not send us anything, if you are doing well?” When a man received a letter like that from people he missed, he would break down morally and perish sooner.
The Flossenbürg camp was designed for repeat offenders, the worst criminals in Germany. There were around a thousand prisoners there, all German criminals, who did 10 or 15 years each, and were then sent to Flossenbürg so that they would not come back. We were put under the protection of villains like those.
Jews also arrived, in smaller transports. But they were not allowed to stay around for more than a week or two. The Jew had to die a quick and hard death. The kapo would work him hard all day at carrying rocks. It went on for a day or two, or three, then the victim went towards the wires of his own volition and got shot by the watch commander. The kapos would drag starving prisoners suffering from diarrhea from the blocks, drive them to the quarries and beat them up for laziness. Aumeier did not do that, but he was aware of it. More than once we had to lead our comrades, almost on their last legs, and carry them onto pallets, piled up to the ceiling. They would not get up in the morning, as they died as soon as they were laid down on the pallets.
In 1941, after a thousand prisoners were transported from Auschwitz, the real hell began. The escape of one prisoner, who was later caught and hanged or shot, angered Aumeier so much that he started exacting cruel revenge on the Poles. A second escape only made it worse. Not a day went by without people being taken from the quarries straight to the firing squad. We would think at the time that if a given number of prisoners did not die during the day, then others would be chosen to be shot. The procedure was that an SS man would come and state names. Anyone who was read out put away his pick or his working tool and went. Every day 8, 10, or 16 people were shot. There was no doubt that it was a shooting, as right after the men who were called out went away, someone gave the command “ Hinlegen!” [“Lie down!”]. When everyone was already on the ground, volleys rang out one after another. It went on like this for almost a year. When leaving for work, in utter exhaustion, beaten up by a block elder and an SS man, none of us were certain we would come back. Everyone fared as well as I did: I had two ribs broken, a damaged lung, I broke my tailbone twice. Out of a hundred men in that transport, five survived. The rest died, murdered in a cruel fashion.
Every little vein of health was meticulously pulled to carry rocks, carry down entire mountains, so that new barracks for new prisoners would be built in that place. Prisoners made foundations for barracks, bridges etc. of granite. That is all I wanted to say, for I cannot recall the rest.
All that is not that scary yet. We went through an even worse hell. A third prisoner escaped, taking advantage of the night and an SS man sleeping in his booth, crawling under the electrified wires. An alarm was instantly raised at 3.00 a.m. It was August, if I am not mistaken. We were woken up by the sirens of Flossenbürg, as there had been a camp for criminals there until 1939. A horde of SS men with dogs scattered. Aumeier and Schmatz came back and ordered everyone gathered in the roll call square. No exceptions – Germans, Czechs and Poles. There was a group of Czechs from Domarzyce [Domažlice] there as hostages, 160 of them. When dawn approached, the Germans and the Czechs were dismissed to their barracks, and 800 of us, alongside the seriously ill dragged out of the Revier [hospital], were put in ranks. Furious, Aumeier stood before us and said that he would now teach the Poles not to escape once and for all, that they would remember it for the rest of their lives, and he had Schutz announce this to us. He ordered us to stand there until the prisoner was found. We were not given food or drink, we were also banned from attending to our natural needs. Dawn began to break. He had a Silesian get on a barrel and loudly pray: “Our Father,” “Hail Mary”. We were beaten with sticks. Before that, I must note, he called 60 kapos, split them into groups of 20, eight hours of service for each, and had them guard us at all times. Whoever wavered would get hit with a stick. After a while we felt that the prayer was a complaint, that the oppressors would face justice sooner or later. By noon our lips were dry and no voice would come out. We were forced to pray with floggings. This lasted from sunrise to sunset. When night fell, it started to rain. We were ordered to hit the dirt. Those who could not rise were finished off with sticks. One of the young boys fell next to me, he had a broken leg. When he could not get up, kapo Rachel kicked him in the heart with an iron-banded boot. He jumped on his chest, breaking the boy’s ribs. The half-dead boy woke up, then the kapo kicked him again and again and then hauled him away to the wall. There were very many such victims. When night came, orders came to pour water on us to stop us from falling asleep while standing.
The sun rose for the second time, and we looked like phantasms. Whoever shook would be beaten. I saw another young boy collapse with exhaustion. That boy also died from flogging. We were standing for a second day and again more than a dozen did not rise, they stayed there forever. Third day – more than a hundred prisoners were clubbed to death. Is it possible, one may ask, for a man to survive, starving and thirsty, for so long? Many of us died that way. By the evening, news came that the runaway had been caught. He was finally brought in. He was all bloody and naked. He made it a hundred kilometers before being caught. He was flogged fifty times, beaten by Rapportführer [report leader] Schmatz, and later hanged to intimidate the others. But it was not over yet. Aumeier and Blockführer [block leader] Schmatz brought files from the archive and started reading out names. Several dozen were read out. 40 were chosen the first day, 40 the next day, the rest were dismissed. We all decided that we would not beg for mercy. We stood as if at roll call, and when Aumeier asked us through an interpreter if we knew we would be dead in an hour, we all shouted back Jawohl [Yes, sir]. He was angry at us and ordered us marched back to the block. Going back to the block was very hard, because everyone’s legs were swollen. In the block [Aumeier] ordered things like handkerchiefs, cigarettes, or pieces of bread to be confiscated, he also did not give us any food. The Czechs, who wanted to give us some, could not get to us. He also banned us from working indoors, using the canteen, he increased the working pace, he cut our food rations in half. Death started reaping new victims again. When I asked Germans who were friendly towards us how many of our people had died, they said 180 died during the standing punishment, 80 were shot. So around 30% of the overall number of 800 people involved in the standing punishment died. Through these actions, [Aumeier] caught the attention of Pohl and Himmler, proving to them he was a valiant German citizen and that he could do a good job sweeping away Polish trash. So he was made commandant of Auschwitz, so that he could continue doing that.
Presiding Judge: Are there any questions from the prosecutors or the defense?
Prosecutors: No.
Defense: No.
Presiding Judge: Does the defendant have a question?
Defendant Aumeier: Regarding witness Rżewski I want to state that witness Dudek has testified something completely different with regards to that roll call. Witness Rżewski has stated that it supposedly lasted thrice 24 hours until the runaway prisoner arrived at the camp. Furthermore, the witness says the man was subsequently hanged. Meanwhile, witness Dudek states that the Pole was hanged after 14 days. That is also how I remember that. It is untrue that the roll call lasted three days, as I was occupied with the team looking for the runaway during the first day. I also know nothing of anyone being shot or dying during the roll call. I also want to add that I was not the camp commandant at Flossenbürg, but rather camp leader. Any order I received was dependent on the commandant.
Witness Rżewski: I said he was the commandant of the square, the roll call commandant.
Presiding Judge: Does the witness stand by his testimony?
Witness: Yes, because I remember well that we stood for exactly 66 hours nonstop. People were not shot, but murdered. I also did not say that he [the runaway] was immediately hanged, but that he was hanged. The difference of day is meaningless here, this is just about the facts.
Presiding Judge: Are there any more questions for the witness?
Prosecutors: No.
Defense: No.
Presiding Judge: The witness is excused. I call a recess until 4.00 p.m.