On 20 September 1947 in Łódź, Investigating Judge of the Third Region of the District Court in Łódź, Judge S. Krzyżanowska, heard the person named below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Henryk Bartosiewicz |
| Age | 38 |
| Parents’ names | Maria and Wiktor |
| Place of residence | Łódź, Piotrkowska Street 112 |
| Occupation | metal technician [?] |
| Criminal record | none |
| Relationship to the parties | none |
From among the names read out to me (the witness was shown a list of former members of the SS crew of the concentration camp in Auschwitz), I know the following names and persons:
1) I came across Aumeier directly in 1942 – i.e. when he arrived in Auschwitz to replace Fritzsch as the commandant of the men’s camp. Aumeier was a violent and brutal man. Not only did he dish out flogging punishments, but also went as far as to beat, kick or shove the prisoners. He did so during both the roll call and at the camp gate, etc. In order to further demoralize and intimidate the prisoners, Aumeier ordered the corpses of those killed during work or on other occasions to be left by the gate. He also directly supervised the technical aspects of preparing executions: he chose the place for the gallows, accepted the plans for its construction. Initially, the practice was followed that in the event of a prisoner escaping, the block to which the prisoner belonged was held responsible, and Aumeier also ordered that the other members of the work detail be held responsible. And so in 1942, when two engineers escaped from the Alessgruppe group, Aumeier ordered the hanging of 11 people from this group, and I think this was around three fourths of the group. They were hanged in front of the kitchen, on one gallows. Aumeier had prepared a long metal rail for this execution.
Also in 1942, from the tannery kommando, as a result of a tip-off from a prisoner, four men were accused of planning to escape. They were summoned to Aumeier and, on the same day, they were shot at block 11. At that time, among others, Cpt. Gawlikowski died. Aumeier himself also often assisted in the executions at block 11 carried out by Palitzsch. I also saw Aumeier personally kill a prisoner employed in a gravel-digging kommando. He killed
| him just because the prisoner started a | fire to heat up some soup. The place where this |
| kommando | was working was near Aumeier’s house and he noticed the fire, came out of his |
| apartment, drove over to the fire on a | motorcycle and killed the prisoner. In 1943, Aumeier |
along with other SS men carried out the execution of an entire kommando, the so-called Strafkommando [penal kommando]. The whole kommando was accused of trying to escape. Without any investigation or interrogations, they were shot. The execution took place in the field in Birkenau, at their place of work. The prisoners were kneeling, and Aumeier and some others shot them in the back of their heads.
Colonel Karcz, who worked as a writer in the Strafkommando, reported to Aumeier asking to be transferred to another kommando. After this conversation the next day he was summoned again and sent to block 11, where he was shot. The order was not issued by the Political Department, so it must have been Aumeier’s personal directive.
Aumeier also ordered, and even personally performed, a flogging penalty of 50 lashes on myself and my two fellow prisoners. This punishment was meted out in public, in the presence of the entire tannery kommando, and was for some alleged sabotage, which was supposed to have been carried out in order to damage the shredder.
4) Johann Becker was my direct boss in the sewage department for a long time. He was a man who responsible for many arrests in the women’s section of the camp, from the Rajsko kommando, who were then sent to the bunker in block 11. Becker also helped to liquidate some communist operation in Rajsko. There were some demonstrations there in connection with the communist holiday. At that time, a Yugoslavian woman named Aniczka from block 17 was killed. At that time, over 20 people were taken, who never returned from block 11. Becker was a brutal man; he beat and kicked the prisoners, and often just for the purposes of extortion. In front of me, he almost kicked a young Russian – Grisha – to death and then threw him into the bunker. Becker also contributed to me being sent to the penal company to Buchenwald. This was because I had been maintaining contact with a communist named Gerta, a block elder from Rajsko.
23) Wilhelm Gerhard Gehring was my boss in the tannery. He was an older SS man. I can’t say anything about him in particular. He was brutal, like the others, and he kicked and beat prisoners for trivial reasons, for example for cooking potatoes. He was the one who meted out all the disciplinary punishments in the kommando.
28) [Max] Grabner – the head of the [Political] Department – I came across him in connection with a mass military execution on 11 October 1943. In connection with the discovery of a secret letter, and as a result of the subsequent investigation, a large group of military prisoners, about one hundred people, were arrested and placed in the bunkers of the block. Of them, more than 40 were executed immediately: Grabner carried out the execution along with Lachmann, Boger, and Broad. Those that died at that time included Stamirowski, Col. Gilewicz, Dziama, Col. Bończa-Bohdanowski, Col. Dobczański, Major Keller, Cpt. Julian Karczewski, Kazimierz Gilewicz, Lt. Rola-Lissowski, Cor. Karol Karp-Szmalewicz, Tadeusz Patczałek. Grabner personally conducted this entire operation during the investigation as well as the final execution.
Grabner, as the head of the Political Department, made the decisions regarding all executions – e.g. the liquidation of the crematorium crew from Birkenau, who were gassed in Auschwitz, [or] the liquidation of Lublin transport (around 200 people or more were selected from the camp and gassed; that was in 1943). Grabner even acted without the approval of the camp commander Höß.
34) Hans Hoffmann was Grabner’s subordinate and terrorized the Political Department. He was a big man, and it was he who meted out more minor ad hoc flogging punishments or beat anyone offering resistance during interrogation. Hoffmann also beat prisoners even outside his scope of duty in the Department, and he rarely let go an opportunity to beat a prisoner he chanced upon.
45) Dr. Johann Kremer – I saw him on a siding in Birkenau in 1944 conducting selections of Hungarian transports headed straight to the gas. Only 10 percent of such transports remained, while the rest went straight to the gas.
83) Paul Szczurek was a block leader in blocks 22 and 25, where I lived. He was distinguished by his zeal for beating prisoners and mistreating them during the long roll calls that took place in 1941. Szczurek would use his stick to thrash prisoners who staggered and fell to the ground due to the fatigue caused by prolonged standing. The beaten prisoners died without any assistance in the square, and there was no possibility at all to rescue them. After the roll call, the corpses were most often carried off to the hospital. Szczurek was responsible for many of these murders. In the block – for minor misdemeanors like having a window closed or, vice versa, open or for sitting on a bunk, etc. – he used to beat and kick or order us to practice frog-jumps, kneel for hours, etc.
I should add that on 11 October 1943, Jan Mosdorf, Henryk Kalinowski and two lawyers – Szumański and Woźniakowski – were executed.
The report was read out.