Eighth day of the hearing, 19 March 1947
The witness has provided information about himself as follows: Stefan Wolny, 44 years old, office worker with the Polish State Railways, married, has three children, Roman Catholic, no relationship to the parties.
Presiding Judge: What motions do the parties submit regarding the questioning procedure?
Prosecutor Cyprian: We release the witness from the obligation to take an oath.
Defense attorney Umbreit: So do we.
Presiding Judge: By mutual agreement of the parties, the Tribunal has decided to question the witness without an oath. I hereby instruct the witness that he is required to speak the truth and that false testimony is subject to criminal liability.
I ask that the witness tell us all he knows about the accused Höß.
Witness: I was arrested for underground resistance activity in the Zawiercie district on 19 November 1941 and transported to Auschwitz on 6 December 1941. After a day spent working at the Bauhof [building materials depot], we were assigned to work on unloading cement. Each prisoner had to take a bag of cement and carry it to the depot. The kapos and Vorarbeiters [foremen] stood in a row along the way, beat the prisoners with batons to make them go faster and shouted: “Run!” Of course not all prisoners could carry a 50-kilogram bag of cement while running, so quite a few died right then and there. I noticed that the accused Höß was coming towards us in the company of two other SS-men with dogs. From this, I concluded that we were being rushed to work faster specifically because he was there. Later also some of the Vorarbeiters told me: “Remember: if any officer is around, and especially Höß, you absolutely can’t work slowly.” Many prisoners died because of that particular visit paid by Höß, since he told one of the SS-men that the prisoners were working too slowly.
In light of this, I understood that I wouldn’t live a single week if I kept working at the Bauhof. So at the first opportunity I got I claimed I was an upholsterer and got moved
to the Bekleidungswerkstatt [textile workshop] Kommando, as an upholsterer’s helper. I frequently saw Höß there – when he visited, the kapos would order us to work on the double and, if he came closer, they would often beat prisoners with sticks or punch them to make a better impression on Höß. At that time we were making – or, more properly speaking, upholsterer Stefan Kurzynoga from Warszawa was making – a couch for the accused. Höß came over to us and the kapo explained that was the couch being made for him. Later, one particular morning, I went to Höß’s house with Stefan Kurzynoga to hang some window curtains. Since we were both generally exhausted – Kurzynoga was in very bad shape and I was always hungry, because there was never enough food – we treated every visit to a private house as a great chance to “organize something.” After we got to Höß’s house, Kurzynoga started hanging up the curtains and I looked around for an opportunity to get food. A servant came by with some leftovers from the butcher’s; we chased the dogs away and ate the leftovers. We did the same thing the next day, but this time the servant caught us and told Höß’s wife, who told her to give each of us a plate of soup but explicitly warned that Höß absolutely mustn’t see that.
After about a month, I was one of the last upholsterers left in the Bekleidungswerkstatt, so I had to do upholstery work even though I didn’t really know how to do that. One day Höß came over, accompanied by SS-men and the Kapo, and asked me how many pillow mattresses I’d made that day. I said I had made three. He replied: “That’s too few, you should’ve made more” and accused me of sabotaging the workshop’s output. I told him I was doing the most I could and that I was also sick. I did, in fact, have huge ulcers in my right armpit and frostbitten fingers. After Höß left, I was called to the camp administration office, given 25 lashes and told that, if I didn’t make four mattresses the next day, I would be given twice as many. Of course on the next day I failed to reach that quota; I was given 50 lashes and – obviously – thrown out of that Kommando.
I was then too exhausted to actually work in any of the Kommandos, especially in the harsh winter weather, so I decided to go to the hospital. When I was there – in Block 21, recuperating after an operation – Höß visited the hospital with some other officers, on 10 or 11 March 194[?]. When I asked one of the doctors I personally knew how things were going, he told me: “Get out of here.” I was surprised. Why should I get out, considering I still had open wounds? He just repeated: “Get out.” At that time an SS officer-physician came to the hospital and segregated the patients. I wasn’t included in that segregation process, because I had already been discharged, but many of my friends were – some had frostbite, others lacked noses, ears, or fingers. I left on 13 March 194[?] and, if I recall correctly, the next day all the sick prisoners were transported to Birkenau. Afterwards, when I was trying to figure out what had become of them – since most of the people I knew from my transport were in that group – I found out that around 4,000 sick prisoners had been sent to Birkenau that day. Furthermore, the SS-men and Kapos just bludgeoned them to death because the gas chamber wasn’t available.
In the autumn of 1942, I joined the Häftlingsmagazin [prisoners’ warehouse] Kommando. I sought to get a job there because I knew that if I didn’t get a job at a kitchen or warehouse, I would certainly not leave Auschwitz alive, especially since only a few people were still left from my transport and I felt death hanging over me.
So I went to work there and after two weeks my boss – Schebek – assigned me to work in a closed, secret room previously known as “Canada”. Our job was to sort food that had been taken from all the Polish and Jewish transports arriving at the camp. There was flour and sugar there – we’d sort the food and put it into new sacks, while carefully searching for jewellery and valuables. The Unterscharrführer ordered us to do this.
We gave all the gold and jewellery to Unterscharrführer Schebek. Höß would often come to our warehouse room and wanted to know how our work was going. After each visit, our boss would come over and say: “We’ll have to give something to that glutton or he won’t leave us in peace.” Our boss was on very friendly terms with us because we gave him all the gold we found and only kept some of the food for ourselves.
In 1942, 1943, and 1944, I frequently observed Höß through the window: after the Kommandos left for work, he’d review all the prisoners that were left sick in the camp. They were, of course, being assessed in terms of their fitness for work. In most cases, sick prisoners were then segregated into a separate group that was loaded onto cars and transported to Birkenau to be gassed.
I had the opportunity to observe both Höß and other SS-men often – nearly every day – through the warehouse window because the warehouse was located near the Auschwitz entrance, next to the main gate. I tried to read the faces of Höß and the other SS-men, to ascertain their feelings, when Kommandos were leaving for work or when a returning Kommando was carrying many dead, sick, or incapacitated fellow workers.
Höß would often notice a Kommando that looked particularly healthy, call the Rapportführer [reporting officer] or some other SS-man over and point at that Kommando. Naturally, I had no idea why. Later it became clear, considering that when Höß visited our warehouse, our boss would often run over to us and tell us: “I’ve told you many times – when Höß comes over, you should hide because he can’t stand the sight of you. If he keeps seeing you, he’ll send you to Mauthausen, to the quarry or somewhere else.” So over time we developed a system: if Höß was coming over to the warehouse or the kitchen, we would all hide behind sacks to not provoke him with our relatively good condition.
Because I was part of the Häftlingsmagazin Kommando, I was also sent to work on handling transports of prisoners from all over Europe, especially the Jewish ones.
There, I could observe the behavior of SS-men. Our job was to take the food that came on the transports into the camp. The transports came from the Netherlands, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Poland, and Hungary. I saw shocking things often, when a transport from the Netherlands or Belgium came. At first, I was quite surprised – I had never before seen Höß personally insult or beat anyone. The Jews in these transports were unaware; they didn’t understand where they were or why they came here. They thought they were being sent to work and had no idea that in half an hour they would end up in a gas chamber and then in a crematorium. The ladies were smiling as they climbed into cars that would take them to the Birkenau crematorium. The officers would often help them get in, with smirks on their faces. They forbade the women from taking luggage with them, telling them that prisoners would deliver their things to the barracks and that they could leave their belongings behind without worry – they would get them back later.
Things went less smoothly when a transport of Polish-Jews arrived: they knew they were in Auschwitz, understood why, and resisted. When a transport was being unloaded, all the officers took part, led by Höß; they all carried canes. Once the transport got to the ramp, there would be shouting, dogs would be barking, and the SS-men would be ordering people to leave the train quickly. If that wasn’t enough, they would use the canes. I once saw that when a Jewish woman didn’t want to separate from her husband and the SS-men probably wanted that transport to be done with quickly, Höß angrily hit her, shouted at her to walk quicker, and berated the SS-men, telling them to deal with these transports faster.
The people on the transport would usually be divided as follows: if future demand for prisoners was expected, young Jewish men would go to one side and young women to the other, while all those destined for the gas chambers were immediately loaded into cars. Among those were the old, the children, and those who declared ill health. Then we would have to collect all the food and take it to the camp. In 1943, when Jews from Sosnowiec and Będzin came, the transport was full of mutilated people because they had already been shot at on the way. Since the Jewish Sonderkommando hadn’t arrived, Höß told our Kommando to clear out all the corpses and the children left behind on the train. Women, who were forced to leave quickly, left their little children behind. We collected all these people onto a dolly and transported them to the car. Höß stood nearby, with a group of officers. We all wanted to be gentle when loading the sick Jews and the children onto the dolly and putting them down on the ground. Höß ran up to us all angry and shouted that we were to stop playing around and just dump the trash. We had to obey the order immediately: dump everyone from the dolly onto the ground all at once – the dead, the living, and the children – all in a pile.
Very often, nearly every Saturday, my boss would send me with a food basket to Höß’s house. It was said that the food was a ration for the Bible Student who worked there as a maid, but it wasn’t a normal Häftling [prisoner’s] ration. The basket was mostly filled with goods from our “Canada”, such as real tea, coffee, sardines, wines, and all manner of canned goods. Frequently, as we packed these goods into the basket, our boss would say: “We have to give this to Höß – I need days off sometimes, so I have to give him something.” Not infrequently, he would come to our secret room and explicitly ask us for valuables. He would say: “Have you found something – some earnings or diamond jewellery? I need to give something to the commandant’s wife to get my days off quicker.” I would carry all these things to Höß’s house, accompanied by another prisoner.
Presiding Judge: You mentioned that when Jewish women from outside of Poland came on these transports they would leave the train smiling and happy. What did you think of that? Were they misled about their future? Did they say something? Were they not aware they had arrived a death camp?
Witness: They were completely unaware of the situation – they hoped things would go well and believed they had been sent to work here. Besides, when they saw the cars transporting the women and children, they got the impression that things were very well organized and life would be quite good, so they trusted whatever they were told.
Presiding Judge: Did they come with substantial amounts of luggage?
Witness: Yes – very much luggage.
Presiding Judge: Tools and equipment?
Presiding Judge: Doctors came with all of their medical tools, musicians brought instruments.
Presiding Judge: So it looked like they thought they were moving to a new place?
Witness: Later, when Jews from Hungary were coming to the camp, I had a chance to speak to one Jew who spoke Czechoslovak [sic!]. He asked me, if he would be able to see his wife and children on Sunday. They were told they would be allowed to see their families on Sundays. I replied: “See this chimney? If you fly through it, you’ll see your family.” He retorted that was English and American propaganda; they’d been informed by the Germans that they were being sent to work in the fields in Poland and would be allowed to see their families on Sundays.
Presiding Judge: He thought they would be resettled there?
Witness: He claimed he was supposed to be a laborer in the camp.
Presiding Judge: Thinking of it as a temporary stay? Have you ever heard anyone talk about staying permanently?
Witness: No.
Presiding Judge: I have no more questions.
Prosecutor Siewierski: I have a question for the witness. What is the story behind the conversation with some SS-man where it was claimed that Höß threw a child into a fire?
Witness: I had just finished work. It happened in July 1944, or maybe a little earlier, when they started sending over Hungarian-Jews. Our boss was always in contact with the Political Department and with Höß himself, so he would be warned a few days in advance that our Kommando should be at the ready because a transport was coming in and the food would have to be picked up. At that time, our boss told us that there would be many transports and ordered us to clean out the basements because we would need to store large luggage. In two weeks the camp processed over half a million Jews – I was told so by an SS-man I knew, named Melkner; we were on good terms. One day I asked him how things were going and he said: “I’m so exhausted. And after what I saw yesterday, when we were handling a transport, I have to say: I hate the Jews, I’d kill them all, but I wouldn’t do what Höß had done.” Supposedly, Höß became furious because the men were tired and could barely work anymore, grabbed a Jewish child and threw it into a burning pit – the crematoriums couldn’t burn all the corpses of the Hungarian Jews that were being gassed, so additional pits were dug to burn many of the bodies. The SS-man claimed that he had been there, seen it with his own eyes and heard Höß say, as he threw the child in: “You have qualms about the Jews. This is how you should treat them – there’s no mercy for them because they’re our enemies.” I was told this by a trusted SS-man from the warehouse.
Prosecutor Siewierski: There was a transport of 600 blue [Polish] policemen from the Lublin region. Why were they brought to Auschwitz and what happened to them?
Witness: They came at night. We were called to the unloading ramp to handle a transport. We suspected it would be Jews. Instead, all of them were men – some in uniforms of the former Polish police, some in other clothes. From the few words we exchanged, we got to know that they were from the Lublin region and were transported to Auschwitz because they’d refused to fight the Polish resistance fighters hiding in the woods. Sometime later my friends from the Kommando that sorted clothing told me that the clothes of the gassed Polish policemen had come back from Birkenau. These clothes were searched in the Bekleidungskammer [clothing storeroom].
When I worked in “Canada,” I often found letters. In the end of 1943 or in the beginning of 1944 we had Polish transports from Hrubieszów and the Zamość region. There were parcels and sacks with Polish addresses in the Hrubieszów district, village so and so. In the flour, I would find letters written by children – mostly girls – who wrote that because the men had fled to the woods, whole villages had been arrested and then transported from one place to another. They were kept somewhere behind a fence, in a barn, then still elsewhere and finally sent to Auschwitz. That whole transport was gassed.
Prosecutor Siewierski: Do you know what happened to packages from Portugal and Switzerland addressed to the Jews who were long dead?
Witness: All the packages that came addressed to the deceased Jews from Portugal, Switzerland and elsewhere were first brought to our room. Our boss would sign the receipts, sort them, place them in boxes and then the boxes would all be sent to the SS kitchen, the Führerheim [SS canteen] or — sometimes — be issued as Zulags [bonuses] to the SS men who worked in the Jew extermination detail and who went to Porąbka for a mental health rest. The best food was sent to Porąbka or to the Führerheim, including sardines, French wines, etc. Of course many of the SS men — including those highest in rank, who could visit our room — tried to get on our good side, hoping we would issue some of the goods to them. When Himmler came to the camp, our “Canada” was masked; the door was hidden behind chests so the inspecting committee wouldn’t be able to tell there was some additional “Canada” detail. Everything we kept there was meant to “arrange” good relations with the SS to improve prisoner conditions.
Presiding Judge: I call a ten minute recess.
(After the recess)
Presiding Judge: I resume the session.
Defense attorney Ostaszewski: Do you know German?
Witness: Somewhat.
Defense attorney Ostaszewski: Did you ever witness anyone being ordered to, say, hit prisoners?
Witness: No.
Defense attorney Ostaszewski: From what distance did you see Höß hit that Jewish woman you mentioned?
Witness: About 15 to 20 paces.
Defense attorney Ostaszewski: Were other SS men present?
Witness: Nearly all the Rapportführers and some Arbeitsdienstführers [labor coordinators] were there.
Defense attorney Ostaszewski: Was hitting this Jewish woman just a beating, the usual abuse typical of Auschwitz, or was it a punishment?
Witness: I’d say it was mostly a punishment for her not wanting to leave.
Defense attorney Ostaszewski: So it was mostly a punishment.
Witness: I would say so.
Defense attorney Ostaszewski: I have no more questions.
Presiding Judge: The witness is dismissed.