On 30 September 1947 in Kraków, a member of the Kraków District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Municipal Judge Dr. Henryk Gawacki, acting upon written request of the first prosecutor of the Supreme National Tribunal, this dated 25 April 1947 (file no. NTN 719/47) and 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 connection with Article 254, 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed the person named below as a witness, who testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Maria Emmerling |
| Age | 48 years old |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Occupation | office worker with the Polish State Railways |
| Citizenship and nationality | Polish |
| Place of residence | Kraków, Świętego Filipa Street 6, flat 34 |
| Relationship to the parties | none |
After I had been arrested on 10 May 1940 in Warsaw, I was incarcerated in the Pawiak prison until October 1941. Later, I was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück camp, where I stayed for almost a year. On 23 September 1942 I was transferred to the Auschwitz camp, where as a Polish political prisoner I was assigned no. 21 968. I remained in the camp until its evacuation, and during the evacuation march, in the vicinity of Pszczyna, I managed to escape.
In the Ravensbrück camp, I took a course in poultry farming. Having completed the course, I was transferred to Auschwitz with 18 other Polish women, my fellow inmates, and I was sent to the SS estate in Harmęże. I was employed there until September 1944, and then I was transferred to Birkenau, where I worked at first in the sewing room and later in the bedding storeroom.
I remember defendant Mandl very well from Ravensbrück, as she arrived there during my stay in that camp. At first she was an Aufseherin [overseer], and later an Oberaufseherin [senior overseer]. She gained notoriety among the prisoners for her brutal treatment of inmates. She truly mastered hitting people in the face, as she could break cheek bones with her blows. It could be inferred from her technique and the force with which she beat the prisoners that she had received relevant training.
In April, we had to attend the roll calls barefoot. Mandl would strike the prisoners across the calves with a stick or a whip, making them jump. Whenever Mandl discovered that some prisoner had put a scrap of paper or some rags under her feet, she beat and kicked that woman without mercy. One kick was enough for Mandl to fling the inmate to the ground.
Very often on Sundays, when we had received our noon soup, Mandl would summon all prisoners from a block and order them first to walk, then to run, and finally to gallop down the camp street, and during this activity the prisoners had to sing various German songs. Mandl watched whether the prisoners kept pace and forced them to run faster, shouting, "Schneller, schneller!". Enfeebled or older prisoners fell to the ground and were trampled down by others, as the rest were forbidden to come to the assistance of any lying prisoner. Such "sports", which lasted for three to four hours, always ended in death of several inmates.
At the time when Mandl worked in the camp, every now and then a few young and healthy prisoners of Polish nationality were selected for the Revier [camp hospital] to be experimented on. During my stay there, 16 women were selected. Some of them returned to the block after a while, maimed, and in the end all of them died. The block leader would have a list of numbers of chosen prisoners. With regard to that matter I accuse Mandl of knowing about such selections.
At the time when Mandl worked in the camp I often saw bottles of up to ten liters, filled with congealed blood, being taken out in cars from the Revier or the laboratory. I don’t have any detailed information pertaining to this subject.
Apart from a group of Polish prisoners, a group of Jewish prisoners, some 260 women, also arrived at the camp. Having been registered, these Jewesses were taken in cars to the interior of the Birkenau camp, in the direction of the crematoriums. These were the remaining women from the camp in Ravensbrück, where larger groups of Jewish prisoners were loaded on cars from time to time and deported somewhere, as it was said in the camp – for extermination. During my stay in Ravensbrück, according to my calculations, there were some 2,000 Jewesses in total.
In the camp in Birkenau I met defendant Brandl, who was also notorious for beating and kicking prisoners for what was, in her understanding, the slightest offence. She would also pick young and strong prisoners to work at regulation of the Soła and Vistula rivers, where the prisoners had to work while standing in water. Later on, these work brigades were at section B/II/b.
In Birkenau, I also came across defendant Danz, the mere sight of whom made the prisoners pass out. She persecuted them with kicking and beating. Once during a roll call, I saw Danz hit a prisoner in the face so hard that the woman fell to the ground, and even then Danz kicked her mercilessly with her shoes.
At this point the report was concluded and, after being read out, signed.