On 24 April 1945 in Kraków, Jan Sehn, regional investigating judge, member of the Commission for the Investigation of German-Nazi Crimes in Oświęcim, on the motion, in the presence, and with the participation of Dr. Wincenty Jarosiński, deputy prosecutor of the Regional Court and member of said commission, in accordance with art. 254 and 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed as a witness a former prisoner of the Auschwitz concentration camp, prisoner number B-1388, who testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Roman Goldman |
| Date and place of birth | 4 May 1931 in Tomaszów Mazowiecki |
| Names of parents | Jakub and Fela, shop owners |
| Place of residence before the arrest | with parents in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Kościuszki Square 8 |
| Religious affiliation | Jewish |
| Nationality | Jewish |
| Citizenship | Polish |
After the Germans entered Tomaszów Mazowiecki, all local Jews were sent to the ghetto. This was September 1939. Initially there were about 18,000 Jews in the ghetto, with this number being reduced to just 1,400 skilled workers in April 1940, the others having been transferred to Treblinka. From the remaining group of 1,800, the 700 fittest individuals were sent to the arms factory in Pionki, near Warsaw. Only 600 Jews remained in the camp: men, women, and children. This group included myself, my parents, and my sister Estera. My mother and my sister were tailors, my father was an electrical engineer, and I assisted him. In July 1942, the Tomaszów Mazowiecki ghetto was liquidated and we were moved to the labor camp in Bilżyn, where we remained for seven months.
At Bilżyn, everybody had to work. Some worked making clothes and underwear, some sewed up and made socks, others worked in the joinery, and still others made munitions crates. The labor was hard, since everybody had a daily quota to meet by the evening. We were supervised by invalid SS men, who beat us with whips for the slightest infractions, while at night the Jewish block militia, responsible for the block’s population, took over. We were not allowed to have any money, and if any was found on someone, they were executed. We woke up at 4 a.m. and went to work after the roll call. At noon, we got a soup for lunch, and at 1 p.m. we rejoined our working units. We finished work at 6 p.m. After the evening roll call, we returned to our respective blocks, where we received some bread and coffee.
One day (I don’t remember the exact date), all mothers with children aged 7 and younger were ordered to report in the roll call yard and then were moved toward the gate. At the gate, there was a van escorted by around 20 Ukrainians. They snatched the children from their mothers, despite their resistance and cries, and put them in the vans. Then, they drove off in the direction of the forest, located some 10 kilometers away. Before this, a dozen or so Jews from the camp had been sent there to dig pits. After a while, only the children’s clothes returned, but the children never came back, and we concluded that all of them had been murdered in the forest.
After seven months in Bilżyn, around 7,000 Jews were transferred to the Treblinka camp. More Jews were already there, and on the same day that we arrived, other transports, including from Radom and Częstochowa, also arrived. At Treblinka we were assigned to blocks, which were very tightly packed. We did not work. The food was slightly better than at Bilżyn, because we got coffee for breakfast, a soup for lunch, and also for supper, this last meal also including some bread, in a slightly larger quantity than at Bilżyn. We were guarded by Ukrainian SS men, who beat us with whips, hit us with their hands in the face, and kicked us for no reason at all or for slight infractions.
One day (I don’t remember the exact date), some SS man came, who, as I later learned, worked at the crematorium, and selected around 70 people from the group which had come to Treblinka with me. These people were marched toward an unknown destination. They were the fittest Jews. One of them managed to escape from the ramp and returned to our barrack. He told us that these 70 people were forced into the crematorium, locked in a toilet [illegible] from which the air was pumped out, and they died. Their corpses, as well as others [illegible], were incinerated at the crematorium. The crematorium crew, who were prisoners, were also killed off and incinerated after a while (after two to three weeks of work). I do not know where the crematorium was and what it looked like. Out of the group of around 2,000 Jews who had arrived at Treblinka, 260 individuals were sent off on a railway transport to Auschwitz. The others died or were “needled”, that is, received lethal injections at Treblinka.
At Treblinka, men and women were kept in separate blocks, so I had remained with my father, and my sister was with my mother. In the morning of the day we were loaded onto a wagon, the Lagerführer [camp leader], whose name I don’t know, ordered the Bilżyn transport to report at the roll call yard. We were issued a loaf of bread and a quarter kilo of margarine each, and then we were told to form rows and marched to the station, where a cargo train was waiting. We noticed that the women were loaded into the wagons in the front part of the train, while we were in the rear. Since the sign on the wagons read “Auschwitz”, we knew that our conditions would inevitably become harsher, because we had previously heard numerous stories about gas chambers and crematories, as well as about the treatment of prisoners at Auschwitz. The train on which we were to be transferred to Auschwitz comprised cattle cars. Around 50 Jews were thrust into each car. They were stood by the wagons’ walls; the central area was covered with straw and you had to keep away from it, because it was occupied by three SS men.
We arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau in the evening of the same day. I don’t remember the exact date; in any case, it was July 1943. We had been left in the wagons for the entire night. It was only in the morning that SS men and prisoners in striped uniforms came to receive the train. Later, I learned that these prisoners were with the Canada commando; they proceeded to inspect and clean the wagons. We were all stood in the field in front of the train and, having formed rows, we marched toward buildings with chimneys, which we presumed were crematories. Having heard so much about crematories before, we suspected we were walking to meet our death. An SS man stood in front of the building and frisked everybody, and then the newcomers were taken to the bathroom in groups. After shaving and bathing, we moved to another room, where we were issued underwear, striped uniforms, and caps. Then, we were taken to section A. As I later found out, this section comprised 18 blocks. My father and I were in block 8. The entire section was fenced off from the rest of the camp with wires. The block senior of our block was a Pole, who could be described as rather decent, because he did not beat us. Let me add that the SS man standing in front of the bathhouse took any valuables he found on us, such as watches, bracelets, rings, or money, and threw them in a chest.
I spent four months in block 8, working with two other boys cleaning a dirty [illegible]. Other prisoners did not do anything. I was very satisfied with this job, because in return I would get four or five additional bowls of soup and double rations of bread. I could share it with my father. Other prisoners would get coffee in the morning, a soup for lunch, and coffee and a quarter loaf of bread in the evening. Additionally, once a week, we got a loaf to share between the three of us. On that day, we only had one roll call, and this was only to count us. Roll calls were in the evening.
One day, while I was in section A, which was adjacent to section B, I approached the wires separating these two sections and spotted my mom. She told me that my sister was also in section B. This was the first time my father and I had learned anything concerning my mother and sister since we were separated at Treblinka.
After four months in section A, one day, the block senior of block 8 ordered us to gather, because we were going to be moved to another section of the camp, to the Gypsy camp in section II. Already before we departed section A, a prisoner, also a Jew, came to our block with other prisoners, and after each prisoner stated for record his personal information, I was given number B-1388. In the evening, we were taken to section 8. This section comprised 28 blocks. My father and I were in block 19. In the area of former section E, there were around 20,000 Jews at that time, and there were 450 in our block. The food we were given was the same as in section A, only we would no longer get our weekly additional ration of bread. We did not work.
After three weeks in block 15, a so-called selection was performed of people who were to be poisoned with gas and then incinerated. We found out what a selection was from other prisoners already in section A. Selections were carried out by Mengele, a German medical doctor. On that day, Dr. Mengele selected 180 people from our block for gas poisoning. These were mostly feeble people and unable to work, myself among them. Those selected to be gassed were then driven to an empty block – 10 – and locked up. The entrance to the block was guarded by a Jew, a block clerk. Knowing I was about to be poisoned with gas, I decided to escape from the block. So I climbed the furnace, and then further up a beam supporting the roof, next to which there was a window. After smashing the windowpane, I got onto the roof, then jumped off it and went to the block where my father was staying. A few other boys followed suit, but others were prevented from escaping by the clerk guarding the block entrance, who spotted the escapees.
After another five days, our entire transport was moved to section D – the working section comprising 56 blocks. I, my father, and another 280 people were in block 4 [?]. The block senior was a German, a very malevolent man, who beat prisoners and tortured them with physical exercises for the slightest infractions, or even for no reason at all. In section D, our additional ration of bread was restored, but we had to work hard at the quarries. I was there with my father for two days only, because the camp authorities issued an order that all persons aged 17 and less be put in block 29. There were around 360 of us. We worked operating so-called Rollwagens [rolling carts]. Our job was cleaning the streets, disposing of garbage and ash, moving bricks and sand, and ferrying corpses to the crematory. This last responsibility allowed us to “rustle up” food, because prisoners tasked with incinerating corpses got plenty from people who were sent to be poisoned in gas chambers directly from transports. The block senior was a German, but he was a good man who tried to make it easier for us to get food. I remained in this block until 28 January 1945.
Working with the rolling carts, I frequently saw transports arriving at the camp. Immediately after a wagon was unloaded, the camp doctor carried out a selection, sending a very small number of the healthiest individuals to the camp, while the others were sent straight to the gas chambers. I could watch this unfolding very closely, since loading a rolling cart took quite a while. The Sonderkommando [special commando] prisoners told me that those designated for gassing were thrust into a room resembling a bathroom. Each of them received some soap, a piece of string for hanging underwear and clothes, and a number. On the walls, there were hangers, which also had numbers, where the prisoner with the corresponding number was to leave his clothes. Prisoners were taken from this room to another, which was fitted with showers, and once the SS man leading the group had left, the door was closed. It was an iron door. Aside from the showers, there was a water container on the floor, running across the room [illegible]. Running all the way from the floor to the ceiling were perforated iron walls, which created something like a box open from the direction of [illegible]. Through this hole, which was subsequently tightly sealed with glass windows, the zyklon was thrown, which produced poisonous gas after interacting with water. This gas killed the people in the chamber. I know it was zyklon because I saw iron containers labeled “Zyklon”, plus it was the Sonderkommando prisoners who did this, anyway. The people poisoned with gas were then transported in carts running along rail tracks to the crematory furnaces.
I also know from the Sonderkommando prisoners that when a new transport arrived at Birkenau which was earmarked for wholesale execution, these prisoners were not poisoned in gas chambers, but instead they were killed by SS men using a special gun. The blood after such executions was cleaned with [illegible], which I saw myself, and I also saw [illegible] what the furnaces and gas chambers looked like. I already described a gas chamber. There were four crematories. I don’t remember how many furnaces there were in each. Other prisoners told me that aside from poisoning people in these four crematories, which had gas chambers, it was also done in a makeshift chamber in a white chalet near the forest, and their corpses were burned in stacks next to that house and next to crematorium four.
As the frontline was approaching, my father was sent off from Auschwitz on a transport to the Reich. My mother, whom I accidentally met during work, told me that my sister was sent off in December 1944 for factory labor, but I don’t know where. I only learned what had happened to my mum after the Soviet troops arrived, from a female prisoner, who told me she had seen my mum on a transport departing for the Reich. Let me explain that I was in block 19 up to two days before the Germans liquidated the camp. I don’t remember the exact date on which it happened; in any case, it was some 18 or 19 days before the Soviet troops arrived, that is between 13-16 January 1945.
Around that time, I contracted measles and I was taken to section F, the hospital section. After I regained consciousness, on 24 or 25 January 1945, I learned that the Germans had taken all the prisoners who were fit and could walk, and that only the sick had remained in the camp.
Also around that time, several SS men came to the camp and they ordered all the Jews out of the block. I did not go out and I hid. After a few days, I learned that they had driven the entire transport of Jews (I don’t know how many) toward Auschwitz I and reportedly executed them on the way. Fearing that the SS men could return to collect the remaining prisoners, I and two comrades of mine knocked a hole in the floor, under which there was [illegible], and we hid there with food as well as clothes we had taken from the clothes storeroom. We spent around three days in this hideout, only coming out at night, in turns.
On 18 January 1945, Soviet troops entered Auschwitz and everybody could go home. I and my two comrades, one of whom was a Russian and the other a Jew, and whose names I do not remember, headed for Kraków. On our way, we came across some people in a forest, who turned out to be Soviet guerillas; they took us to Kraków and took care of us there for two months. Presently, I am in the orphanage at Długa Street 38.
At this the report was concluded, at 6 p.m.
The report was then read out and signed as a faithful copy of witness Roman Goldman’s testimony.