Report recorded in the Municipal Court in Biała Krakowska on 28 March 1947, regarding the treatment of prisoners in the concentration camp in Auschwitz.
Those present from the court’s side:
– Judge Fr. Rychlik (PhD), manager of the Court,
– reporter Mażanka, senior recorder.
The person named below appeared without a summons:
| Name and surname | Józef Wieczorek |
| Place of residence | Szczyrk 106 |
| Occupation | carpenter |
| Marital status | married |
| Age | 56 |
Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness states that he wishes to give testimony regarding the treatment of prisoners at Auschwitz and declares that he is prepared to repeat his testimony under oath. The witness testified as follows:
During the German occupation, as an employee of the construction company “Lenc i S-ka” in Katowice, I was forced to carry out carpentry work on the premises of the concentration camp in Auschwitz. I worked there from 20 October 1941 to 17 December 1943. During that time I observed the following:
In 1941, right after I started working there, a large camp for Russian prisoners of war (Kriegsgefangenelager) was located at Auschwitz (in Birkenau). The number of prisoners was very high, people said it reached about 15,000. These prisoners were harshly abused. At first they looked fine, but they were poorly fed and kapos, German criminals, murdered them at every opportunity, sometimes even for no reason. When I asked one of them why they were doing that, this kapo replied that it allowed them to have their own punishments reduced. In the spring of 1942 only about 2,000 of these prisoners were left, at least according to information that spread around the cam; all the others had died.
From May until the end of July 1942 we were fixing the blocks in the camp. In July 1942 I saw Höß, accompanied by a new, broad-shouldered SS man named Kreuzmann, walking into a barrack with the sick who did not go to work, and furiously beating and kicking these ill prisoners.
Höß at first rode a horse around the camp. When the road to Birkenau was built, he started driving a car. I saw that Höß drove a car, accompanied by SS men, behind almost every transport of prisoners convoyed to the crematorium in vehicles.
One Friday afternoon in October 1943, I saw 23 trucks filled with naked women, driving from the so-called hospital to the crematorium. 13 trucks with sick women drove to the crematorium on the following Friday.
In the autumn, builders and craftsmen couldn’t work because of the water and wet snow, so they told their manager that they refused to work. We were then assembled and an order from Höß was read out, stating that soldiers on the battlefront suffered greater hardships in silence, so we too had to work regardless of the conditions. Those who refused would get a striped uniform, and would be detained in the camp.
The report was read out and signed.