On 26 August 1947 in Kraków, Appellate investigating Judge Jan Sehn, a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, on the written motion of the first prosecutor of the Supreme National Tribunal, dated 25 April 1947 (file no. NTN 719/47), interviewed as a witness, 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), in relation to art. 254, 107, and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the person specified below, a former prisoner of the Auschwitz concentration camp, who testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Władysław Fejkiel |
| Age | 34 |
| Occupation | medical doctor |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Citizenship and nationality | Polish |
| Place of residence | Kraków, Smoleńsk Street 1 |
I described my time at the Auschwitz concentration camp in the course of my interview on 10 October 1946 (volume 7, pages 15 ff.). On that occasion, I stated that I was interned at that camp from 8 October 1940 to 18 January 1945. I remember that in November 1943 there was a change of camp commandant at Auschwitz, with Rudolf Höß leaving and being replaced by SS-Obersturmbannführer Arthur Liebehenschel. Similarly to his predecessor, he was not interested in matters concerning the prisoners’ hospital at the main camp, of which he was in charge. During his time as commandant, there were no changes made to improve life for sick prisoners. Food for the sick, medical supplies and sanitation equipment for the hospital were as mediocre as under Höß.
These shortfalls were tackled by those prisoners who by then had been integrated into the camp’s structure. This was despite the fact that Auschwitz had amassed a great volume of highly efficient medications and state-of-the-art, precise medical instruments looted from the victims who were brought to the camp on transports, to be exterminated. The camp authorities, also under Liebehenschel, would not issue these items to the prisoners’ hospital. We, doctors-prisoners, could be of assistance to the sick only due to our adroitness and “resourcefulness”. Also under Liebehenschel, at the main camp prisoners’ hospital (Häftlingskrankenbau Auschwitz I), SS camp doctors (Dr. Rhode) carried out selections of sick prisoners, whose condition did not augur well for their prospects of imminent return to labor. A rule even started to apply that only those prisoners were to be removed from the hospital whose recovery was expected to be between six weeks and three months. Sick prisoners thus selected were transported from the hospital to the gas chambers at Birkenau and killed there.
As far as I remember, Liebehenschel was transferred out of Auschwitz in May 1944. During his time as commandant at Auschwitz two selections, I believe, were carried out at the main camp hospital. On each occasion, a couple of hundred prisoners were picked, who were then poisoned in the gas chambers. The regulations concerning food rations issued to prisoners, in effect from 1942, did not change under Liebehenschel. As before, these rations were insufficient for any degree of sustained health, especially as regards those prisoners tasked with heavy labor, and, in prisoners relying solely on official food rations, led to marasmus. Under Liebehenschel, the camp authorities demanded increased work effort from prisoners. Prisoners’ work was constantly streamlined and increasingly enlisted for the purposes of production in the German armament industry.
Liebehenschel issued a number of orders which ostensibly slackened camp discipline. He revoked the order to remove caps on certain occasions at roll calls on rainy days. He dispersed the prisoners crammed in the bunkers of block 11, but most of them he sent away from Auschwitz on penal transports. Only those that we had managed to keep at the hospital avoided these deportations. He tried to keep the illusion of leniency e.g. by allowing prisoners to wear long hair or by ordering that those prisoners who should be released from the camp due to bad health be presented to him; however, not a single case is known to me whereby a prisoner thus presented to Liebehenschel was released. These cases were brought to Liebehenschel, in his capacity as camp commandant, by Lagerartz [camp doctor] Wirths. They were a team and in my opinion both had a knack for creating illusions but at the same time not changing a thing in reality.
Under Liebehenschel, the camp authorities intensified the frequency of sending Führungsberichts, i.e. reports on a prisoner’s conduct, to the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA). These reports had no bearing whatsoever on the number of prisoners released from the camp, and their relative number remained at a level similar to that under Liebehenschel’s predecessor.
The report was read out. At that the procedure and the report were concluded.