On 30 September 1947 in Kraków, Municipal Judge Dr. Henryk Gawadzki, member of the Kraków District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, acting at the written request of the First Prosecutor of the Supreme National Tribunal, this dated 25 April 1947 (Ref. no. NTN 719/47), in accordance with the provisions of and procedure provided for under the Decree of 10 November 1945 (Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland No. 51, item 293), and in connection with art. 254, 107, and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed as a witness the person named below, a former prisoner of the Auschwitz concentration camp, who testified as follows:
Name and surname Andrzej Rablin (already identified in the case)
From May 1943 until the end of my internment at the Auschwitz camp, i.e. until the second half of October 1944, I had worked with the electricians’ kommando, and the nature of my job meant I could move between all sections of the Birkenau camp as well as around the main camp.
Around that time, I frequently saw on the premises of the Birkenau camp suspect Hermann Kirschner, commonly known as the “Frog”, whom I knew personally and whose name I was familiar with, and whom I also recognized during a witness cross-examination at the Central Prison in Kraków. I would typically see him on the premises of crematoria II and III and in the vicinity. Let me emphasize that I never came across Hermann Kirschner in the crematoria where I worked. I sometimes saw him riding his motorcycle on the roads leading to these crematoria. On that basis, I assumed that Herman Kirschner must have been fulfilling some functions related to the activities at the crematoria.
My superior in the electricians’ kommando was SS-Unterscharführer Otto Jähne (I do not know the exact spelling of his name). His treatment of the prisoners was not only decent, but even sympathetic, and a number of prisoners owed him their lives. He had served at the Auschwitz camp from 1941 – I know it from him and from other “old” prisoners. Once, when we were working with Jähne fixing the power line of a crematorium, in the vicinity of the crematorium building located to the left of the railway siding, from the perspective of the main gate facing the camp, we came across Hermann Kirschner, who was riding his motorcycle toward that crematorium. When Hermann Kirschner had passed us, Jähne spat in his direction with clear disgust and referred to his as an “animal” (Vieh). Jähne, having stayed at the Auschwitz camp for such a long time, must have known Herman Kirschner and his function well.
At this point the report was concluded and signed after it was read out.