On 1 August 1947 in Kraków, Deputy Prosecutor of the Court of Appeal in Kraków, Edward Pęchalski, a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, acting pursuant to the Decree of 10 November 1945 (Journal of Laws No. 51, item 293), with the participation of a reporter, articled clerk Krystyna Turowicz, interviewed the person mentioned hereunder as witness in accordance with Article 20 of the provisions introducing the Code of Criminal Procedure, in relation to Articles 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Władysław Siwek |
| Date and place of birth | 14 April 1907, Niepołomice |
| Parents’ names | Antoni and Maria, née Zięba |
| Citizenship and nationality | Polish |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Occupation | railway clerk |
| Marital status | married |
| Criminal record | none |
| Place of residence | Niepołomice 802 |
On 8 October 1940 I was brought to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where I was sent by the Tarnów Gestapo under the suspicion of being affiliated with a secret Polish organization. In Auschwitz, I was assigned number 5826 and given a red triangle badge that meant I was a political prisoner. I stayed there until 25 October 1944 when I was transferred, together with a substantial transport of prisoners, to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Initially, after undergoing quarantine in the Auschwitz camp, I worked in various kommandos, while from April 1941 until the end of my stay in that camp I worked in the paint room in the Bauleitung [building authority]. During that period I got acquainted with various methods of torture and abuse used against the prisoners. I also remember which members of the camp SS personnel committed such deeds. When examining the photographs of members of the former Auschwitz camp personnel, which were publicly displayed in the Main Square in Kraków, I recognized two SS men, namely Kurt Müller and Erich Dinges. Initially, Kurt Müller was a Blockführer of several blocks, and then, roughly from the autumn of 1943, he worked in the Arbeitseinsatz [labor deployment office]. It was then that I got to know him better, because he would often come to the Bauleitung and secretly observe the prisoners at work. He would report prisoners for any violation of the rules, such as straightening up during work or smoking a cigarette, which led to them being put in a bunker. Moreover, he very often ordered personal searches of prisoners in the Bauleitung and searches of workshops for tobacco or food. If any forbidden items were found, he reported it to the camp command. At that time, he was known among the prisoners as one of the most dangerous SS men, who would simply wait for any excuse to report somebody. His disposition and attitude towards the prisoners can be illustrated by an event that took place in the summer of 1944 during an evening roll call, when one of the prisoners, a Jew, was being publicly hanged. When the rope above the prisoner broke, Müller immediately went for a new thick rope and ran to give it to the executioner. However on his way back outside block 24, he was unexpectedly stopped by another SS man, who told him he should not interfere with the execution, because he was not participating in it. As a result, Müller refrained from handing the rope to the executioner.
I met Erich Dinges also during my stay in the Bauleitung. He often came there and was always hostile towards the prisoners. Several times, he ordered me to paint paintings for him, after he found out that I was an amateur painter. Once, when I had too much work and did not finish a painting he had ordered on time, he shouted at me, calling me a “Polish pig”. He would watch the misery and mistreatment of prisoners with sadistic pleasure. One day in the Bauleitung painting room, he singled out two Jews and ordered them to box. They were not professional boxers and were too physically exhausted to satisfy Dinges’ expectations. He started beating both of them really hard, as he said, in order to teach them boxing, until they fell unconscious on the ground. He was just as dangerous as Kurt Müller, and when he entered the Bauleitung painting room, all prisoners tried to get out of his way, because he would beat them without any reason. I don’t know what position Dinges occupied in the camp.
At that the report was concluded, read out and signed.