On 15 January 1947 in Lublin, Investigating Judge from the Fourth Region of the District Court in Lublin with its seat in Lublin, this in the person of Judge A. Kowalski, heard the person named below as a witness. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations, of the provisions of Article 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and of the significance of the oath, the judge took an oath therefrom pursuant to the provisions of Article 111 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, following which the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Aglajda Brudkowska |
| Age | 32 years old |
| Parents’ names | Aleksander and Julia |
| Place of residence | Lublin, Wieniawska Street 6, flat 30 |
| Occupation | doctor |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
| Relationship to the parties | none |
I was deported to the concentration camp in Auschwitz from Majdanek in Lublin in April 1944, and I stayed in the women’s camp, so-called Birkenau, until the end of September 1944, following which I was transferred to Ravensbrück. As a doctor, in Auschwitz I was employed in the so-called Revier, i.e. the camp hospital. Apart from me, about 20 Polish female doctors worked there in the same capacity as well as women of other nationalities.
Generally, the hospital provided a vantage point for observing crimes committed by the Germans – during the period of my work there – upon unloading transports of Jews, men, women and children, who were sent en masse from the trains directly to the gas chambers. It was so thanks to the fact that the hospital was situated next to the railway ramp, and the transports arrived around the clock, up to eight per day, and numbered up to 4–5,000 people each. The Germans frequently segregated the Jews, picking young and healthy men and women from the transports and putting them aside while sending the rest directly to the gas chambers. Up to 10% of the total number were chosen for work but not from all the transports. At the time of my stay in Auschwitz the Aryans were no longer gassed. The transports that were sent to the gas chambers usually came from Hungary. In one of them there was a Jewess from Poland, politically suspect and accused of political crimes. Along with others, she was sent to a gas chamber directly from the train, but she was pulled out at the last moment before the gas was released and sent to the women’s camp. I heard from some women who had talked to her but whose surnames I do not remember that the process of placing people in a gas chamber looked as follows: all women (separately from the men) entered a large room for undressing. They were told that they were going to take a bath. In that room the women stripped naked, received a scrap of soap and a piece of paper towel, and then moved in groups of 200–250 to another room, allegedly furnished with showers; in actuality, the room contained gas fixtures and the whole apparatus, and it was from such a room that the above mentioned Jewess was pulled out by the Germans.
On the days following each transport – actually all the time – the bodies were burnt in a crematorium. We could always see the flames and smoke belching from the chimney and smell the stench of burning bodies. At night we very often heard screams and groans issuing from the direction of the crematorium, from which it could be inferred that the gassing was not carried out thoroughly – many people must have survived it, being only stupefied with gas, and were then burned alive. One night, an entire Gypsy camp – some 2,000 people – went to the gas chamber. They didn’t come in a transport but had already stayed in Auschwitz for some time.
I don’t know who ordered the burning and gassing of people. Maria Mandl would sometimes come to the Revier, but she didn’t take any interest in the sick who were lying there. Maybe she visited the SS men. Maria Mandl was talked about a lot. She was considered an “awful shrew” and was a terror to all women in the camp. She used to beat and kick the prisoners and treated them in a cruel manner for the most trifling reasons, sometimes torturing them for no reason at all. For instance, she would appoint additional evening roll calls after the day’s hard toil, during which the inmates had to kneel with their arms raised. Such roll calls would last for two–three hours. The women passed out or even died in great numbers. Such roll calls were attended by women of all nationalities, Poles included, of whom there might have been some 20,000 at the time.
When I came back to Lublin from Auschwitz – [I’m sorry] I’d like to correct my testimony: in Auschwitz, I met a friend of mine from the Lublin Castle, political prisoner Julia Wrotniak, currently residing in Lublin (I don’t know her address), who was deported to Auschwitz from Lublin in October 1942 in a transport of 70 female political prisoners. She told me that three weeks after their arrival in Auschwitz, the entire transport, apart from three women – including her – was murdered in the Revier in the following manner: the women were summoned one by one to the Revier and received lethal injections. She survived only because when the SS man called her name, she lay unconscious and didn’t respond; since they didn’t find her, she escaped death. The remaining two were Volksdeutschers but I am not sure of it. More details pertaining to the case could be provided by Janina Unkiewicz, residing in Lublin, who works as a secretary in the Zamoyski Middle School. She was incarcerated in Auschwitz from January 1943 until the very end of the camp’s operation.
The report was read out.