Polish Commission for the Prosecution of War Crimes
Polish War Crimes Commission, Brunswick Group
Braunschweig, 17 July 1946.
Present:
Judge: Major R. Zdankiewicz, Judge for the District Court
Prosecutor: Lieutenant C. Tundak, secretary
In the case against: SS-Oberführe r [Hans] Loritz
The witness, who takes the stand after being informed of the legal consequences for giving false testimony and after being sworn in a legal manner, testifies as follows:
| Name and surname | Paul Hönings |
| Age | 44 |
| Religious affiliation | Evangelist |
| Marital status | married |
| Occupation | fitter |
| Relation to the accused | none |
| Criminal record for perjury | none |
| Current place of residence | Wolfanbuttel, Kramostraße 38 |
In June 1935 I was arrested as a social democrat and a committed opponent of the Nazi regime, and put in a concentration camp in Dachau. I stayed there until August 1937, but in my last year there I met Loritz for the first time as SS-Oberführer. He was the camp commandant there. As soon as he took up this position at Dachau, the conditions in Dachau significantly deteriorated.
I didn’t stop my anti-Nazi activism after being released, as a result of which I was arrested again on 14 September 1939, and on 22 October 1939 I was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (Orantenburg [Oranienburg] near Berlin). I arrived there in a transport along with 33 Jews of Polish citizenship, and one Pole. As it turned out, I already knew the commandant of the Sachsenhausen camp—Loritz, and his deputy, a certain SS-Sturmführer Höß.
A few hours after having arrived in the camp, only I and 17 Jews from our transport remained. The rest had been brutally murdered in the following manner: Loritz, as we stood after arriving in the courtyard, literally gave SS-Sturmführer Höß the following order: ‘Laset die Schweine egserzieren’ [give the pigs some exercise]. Höß took over command, and first they singed the Jews’ beards, setting fire to them with matches. Then we were told to all roll around the courtyard, which was full of mud and rubbish, but if someone lost his strength or his breath, while continually rolling to and fro, he was immediately beaten with rifle-butts, kicked, and trampled on by the SS men so that he ended up dying after a short while. Loritz personally took part in this abuse, beating people with a whip all over their body. Höß did exactly the same.
Thanks to the fact that I was a German, after the first round of this rolling around I was allowed to stop these ‘gymnastics’, which is why I came out of this torture alive. I still remember the name of that Pole. His name was Chynek and he came from Warsaw. He was the third one to die during this abuse.
In January 1940, as a result of a serious wound to the stomach inflicted by one SS man, I ended up in the infirmary, where I spent a total of 11 and a half months. In November of the same year, I recall the following incident: One day a certain Francis Szymanek from Poland, lying next to me in the infirmary, was called to proceed immediately to the main gate. I thought he was being released from the camp. Meanwhile, Willi Esnnamenn [?]— a paramedic—explained to me that he was about to be executed and told me to watch from the window of the room on the so-called Industriehof ward. Here I should explain that I walked with this Szymanek all the way to the main gate, and there I noticed 18 other Poles waiting, who were completely undressed except for their trousers. I saw them seated in a truck (along with Szymanek) and watched their car drive off outside the camp, towards the Industriehof. I returned to the room and watched from an attic window. After a while, the truck pulled up, all the people were herded out and told to run to the big pit next to it. While they were running, the SS men shot at them like dogs, killing everyone. Loritz and Höß and a certain Forster—a Lagerführer —were present during this operation. Then Höß approached each one of them as they lay on the ground and shot them in the head with a pistol. As SS-Hauptscharführer Klein later told us—I have nothing bad to say against him—he had received an order from Berlin to kill these people because they had allegedly committed atrocities against Germans in Poland before the war. We didn’t believe that, the real reason was their wish to make room for more and more new Häftlings from Poland.
All the work done by the Häftlings had to be done on the double. Whoever had no strength left and stopped working was immediately beaten and kicked by the SS men. I recall the following incident, which occurred in the summer of 1940: a Pole, a certain Stefan Kowalski from Łódź, stopped working when his strength failed him and was beaten very badly by some SS men. Unable to endure it anymore, he tried to escape, and during this escape he was severely wounded in the stomach by a guard. On Loritz’s order, he was put by the main gate, seriously wounded (naturally without any medical procedures), and when the working column returned to the camp at noon, every Häftling had to pass by and look at him. Loritz stood next to him with a whip and made sure the order was obeyed. Next, Kowalski was taken to our ward, where he lay on the ground without any medical care, and we could only treat him with some makeshift bandages on the stomach and drinking water. At one point, Loritz came into the ward, saw the man lying down, and when it was explained to him that this was the Pole who had been wounded during the [illegible] escape, he exclaimed: ‘What— is this pig still alive?’. Then he jumped on his stomach and began to trample on him while at the same time beating him about his face with a whip. After a short while (while Kowalski was still alive) Loritz ordered two other sick Häftlings to grab the wounded man by the legs and drag him through the ward, down the stairs, across the yard and to the mortuary. The order had to be carried out, and in this way the wounded man was delivered to the mortuary, where he probably died.
At the end of 1940 and start of 1941, a dysentery epidemic broke out in our camp. In connection with this, a special barrack was set up for the Poles, with a large inscription [written on it] in chalk: Polnische Schweine mussen verrecken [Polish pigs must die]. There were only Poles crammed in there, largely without medical care or medication, and they were not allowed to go outside or open the windows. Soon 200 to 240 people died there.
There are many details that today, unfortunately, I cannot recall. The fact is that in our camp, on the orders of Loritz, an enormous number of Poles were killed in various ways. Lots of people died as a result of brutal beating at work, so that about two trucks per day were filled with corpses to be removed, which were then burnt at the crematorium near Berlin. Later a crematorium was built in our camp and the corpses were burnt there. It was commonplace to tie a Häftling’s hands behind his back and then hang him from a pole on a hook so that after a few hours the man would die in terrible pain. In winter some Häftlings would be drenched with water (via a rubber hose stuck down their collar), and they would then have to stand outside until they died.
Loritz mainly treated the Poles, Czechs and Jews in such a bestial manner. Loritz also mistreated the Germans, but straight away you could see a difference in the treatment of us Germans and of the other nationalities I mentioned. There were no Russians in our camp at all.
I would like to describe one of the atrocities committed by Loritz, which might seem simply unbelievable. In my barrack, among some other Poles, there was a Polish colonel (unfortunately I don’t remember his surname or the town he came from). A few days before Christmas in 1940, he received a food package from home. Because we had become friends, he offered me a number of items from this package. On Christmas Eve there was an inspection of the cupboards and an unwashed vessel was found, which a block senior (he is no longer alive) reported to the Blockführer, who then reported this to Loritz. Here I should explain that this colonel was a very intelligent and good man, so many Poles looked up to him and the camp authorities already had their eye on him. The next morning, during a special roll call which we had to attend, we were told that we were the ones responsible for the various diseases in the camp, because we were living in dirt, and yesterday a dirty vessel had been found in the cupboard of one Polish colonel, and for that the colonel would receive an appropriate punishment to set an example.
A table was brought out to the yard. The colonel was stripped naked and bound tightly across it. Then a five-liter bucket without a bottom was placed on his stomach and a live rat was put into the bucket. The top was covered with a board, and then the whole thing was tied tightly to the table so that the rat couldn’t get out of the bucket. The rat began to bite into the colonel’s belly and drill a second exit through his guts. It is difficult to describe what happened to this colonel. He shouted and screamed his lungs out, begging to be knocked out or shot. However, Loritz didn’t react and just stood by the whole time until the rat exited through the side of his stomach. We all had to witness this execution for its entire duration. The colonel remained tied to the table outside, where he died a few hours later.
All the atrocities that happened in our camp in my time there were carried out on Loritz’s orders and with his knowledge, so he is also first and foremost responsible for all of this.
I would like to request, if it is possible, to be called as a witness for Loritz’s trial, where I will gladly repeat everything again in his presence.
The above-mentioned testimony was translated into German, after which it was signed.
Concluded.