Second day of the trial, 12 March 1947.
(After a break.)
The witness has provided the following data: Oskar Tadeusz Stuhr, 65 years old, attorney, married, Roman Catholic, no relationship to the defendant.
Presiding judge: What are the parties’ motions regarding the mode of hearing the witness?
Prosecutor Siewierski: The prosecution asks for the witness to be exempted from taking the oath.
Attorney Umbreit: The defense as well.
Presiding judge: The Tribunal has decided to hear the witness without an oath.
Presiding judge: Will the witness please tell us in what circumstances he was sent to the camp, and what he experienced there?
Witness: When the German administrative authorities were set up in October 1939, the Gestapo, that is, the secret political police, began their bloody activities and mass arrests, mainly among the intelligentsia. It all began with the famous lecture at the Jagiellonian University, when several dozen professors, lecturers, and associate professors from that institution were sent to Auschwitz. On 9 October 1939, there was a great roundup of professors, priests, and teachers in Kraków. On that day, while I was working as the commander of a vigilante group in the Podgórze 2 district, two Gestapo officers and an interpreter showed up at the office. They asked me a short question, “Sind Sie Dr Stuhr –president of Sokół?” I said yes and invited them to the office, where they began a search, moved all the files, and demanded all the files of Sokół. I told them that I did not have any files, that my secretary had them, but he had gone off to the war. Nevertheless, they said, “Wir schreiten zum Amtsuntersuchung,” and began to search through all the papers. They found nothing, apart from a list of voters in the elections to the City Council (because I had run in 1938) and some chair buttons, which they carefully packed, apparently assuming that the buttons were some kind of military badge, and the people on the list were probably members of some organization. They discussed it quickly and searched all the closets. I was lucky because in a folding sofa I had a revolver that I had not given up: if they had found it then, my family and I would definitely not be here now. They told me to report and I was arrested as a result. After six weeks in the Montelupich prison, I was transported to the camp in Nowy Wiśnicz, where I spent six months. I was sent there on 23 December 1939 and I stayed until 20 June 1940. In that camp we received training, which was later continued in Auschwitz. On 20 June, we were transported by truck to the station, loaded into train cars and transferred to Auschwitz. At that time, Auschwitz was completely neglected. There were artillery buildings that were devastated. My friends were already there because the first transport to Auschwitz had arrived on 14 June 1940 from Tarnów and Kraków. It consisted of about 700 people. I was given the number 947.
As an elderly and sick person, I was assigned to the so-called invalids’ unit – the Inwalidenabteilung. The block leader of that unit was the infamous Wieczorek – later on I learned that he died of typhus. He had a Polish name, but it was spelled in German, and he was a criminal type – we were told he had served several years in prison. He was an absolute sadist who would beat, torture, and kick us with pleasure at any occasion. The SS men, in turn, amused themselves, for example, in the following way: they would order us to undress down to our underwear and roll in the mud, and then we had to wash the underwear within 15 or 20 minutes. Try to imagine that we had to wash our underwear in cold water, and afterwards we would run naked in the sun, holding the underwear. People traveling from Bielsko who saw us must have thought we were out of our minds as we ran around with pieces of underwear in our hands.
There was an escape on 7 June. What was the punishment? We were ordered to stand at attention, with our arms bent backwards, from 8.00 p.m. to 1.00 a.m. the following day. Floodlights illuminated our bodies and we were not allowed to lower our arms. There were 256 men in my block and, as a result of the punishment, almost every one of them fainted. Only 50 or 60 people remained conscious. When someone fainted, an SS man would approach him and beat him, or pour water over him. At 2.00 or 3.00, I myself experienced hallucinations. I was so terrified and overwhelmed that it seemed to me that wild animals were coming out from under the ground.
The SS men were particularly hostile towards two groups, that is, Jews and Catholic priests. They simply could not stand them. I remember when an SS man asked Rev. Prof. Morawski, a well-known and serious scholar, “Hast du Dein Gott gesehen?” I will never forget the look that noble priest gave the SS man, and he did not answer. What was the result? They beat and kicked him until he bled. Another time, an SS man asked the Jesuit priest, “Hast du eine Geliebte?” – do you have a mistress? The priest naturally did not answer, so he was beaten and kicked again.
Jews and priests were harnessed to a heavy tool used for compacting roads, and they were driven with whips.
The SS amused themselves, organizing the following spectacle. All Jews were gathered and they formed a circle, while a priest – if I remember correctly, he was a parish priest from Nisko or Leżajsk – had to conduct this choir which was ordered to sing
“O du mein Jerusalem.” That horde of savages – because I cannot find other words to describe them – listened to those songs. They were a real torment for people, because those who did not speak German had to learn stupid songs like “Oh du mein Bubikopf” by night. On the following day, there was an exam. It was not that bad if you performed with the choir because you could pretend to sing, but the SS men often ordered people to sing individually and if they could not do it, they were beaten, kicked, and battered.
The SS also had another pastime: the endurance test. I remember that one day we were all driven – in the presence of a doctor – into the yard for a roll call, and we were told to run from 2.00 to 5.30 without a break around the yard. Those who got exhausted were taken to the so-called rescue station, where they were beaten and drenched with water, so everyone was afraid to collapse from exhaustion, because they knew they would be battered or even killed. I got exhausted myself and I eventually collapsed. An SS man approached me, but somehow he took pity on me and said, “Eh, der Alte.” They gave me some valerian, poured water on me and let me return to the block. When we were returning in the evening, we were walking on sand, and an SS man would approach us and inspected our shoes. He took out a needle and looked for grains of sand on the soles. If he found a single grain, he would beat and torture the prisoner. There was nothing to do other than rinse one’s shoes in a bucket of water and not let him find any grains of sand. In this way, we could avoid being beaten.
As I have mentioned, Wieczorek treated us the worst. I often wondered how it was possible, how the Germans could do something like that, how we could explain it.
Before the war, I read Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. I found there a lot of things I did not know about before, but in Auschwitz I experienced first-hand how they would put it all into practice. I realized that Hitler was really trying to implement what he had described in his book. He claimed that Germany lost World War I only because they had not killed 12–15 thousand Jews, because the police had not tried hard enough when chasing political enemies, and finally because he was not their leader during that war. I realized that Hitler – in my opinion, the greatest charlatan that the world has ever seen, the most cruel man ever and, at the same time, the greatest magician – got this strange idea into his head that he would be able to win the war by exterminating 12–15 thousand Jews.
But it was not only Jews that were to be eliminated. I saw in Wiśnicz and Auschwitz that if there were no Jews, Poles were executed. When there were no more Jews, they started dealing with Poles and other Slavs. For them, it was no different. Jews were just a feeble excuse.
When I thought about it more deeply, I could not understand those “tigers,” as we called them. They must have been people with no religion. There are a thousand religions in the world and I don’t think that a member of any of them could treat others like they did. I am deeply convinced that Hitler deprived his people, and especially the youth, of religious values. He turned them into wild beasts, although he claimed the Soviets and other soldiers were beasts. It was he who turned his nation into wild beasts and fed them first with Jews and then with other Slavic peoples, starting with Poles and Yugoslavians who stood in his way.
Of course, his plans went up in smoke, and they had to, because the idea to commit such a crime, unprecedented in the history of the world, could take form only in a mind like Hitler’s.
At first, his actions were more tolerable and gentler because Hitler hoped it would be a lightning war, the so-called Blitzkrieg. He thought that in a short time he would defeat everyone and seize all the territories, and that he would not need gas chambers or to destroy all the nations. He would have destroyed them later on. However, his military efforts failed, yet despite the fact that already at Stalingrad, where they fought back, the case was decided against him, he continued the war and started twisting the screw, building concentration camps and turning them into death and extermination camps. I am convinced that if his learned chemists and physicists had suggested to him using an atomic bomb, the nuclear terror would have undoubtedly spread over the whole of Europe...
Presiding judge: Perhaps the witness could describe his experiences in Auschwitz.
Witness: I’m sorry I got carried away, but it is difficult to stay calm when you see all the destruction in Warsaw, and when you see that man there who was to become a missionary. The German people indeed needed missionaries, but not missionaries like the defendant, whose mission was to murder millions of people.
Presiding judge: Please speak more specifically.
Witness: I would like to say a few words about my release and the decision of the authorities.
My family submitted two or three petitions to the German authorities, confirming that I was not politically involved and that there had been no investigation – I had never really been interrogated. As a result, one day an SS man came and called out number 947, that is, my number. I went out to the square, where I saw Oberblockmann Heinke. He turned to me and said, “You scoundrel, you’ll be shot dead.” I was terribly surprised. I said, “Why? There was no interrogation.” “Wait until you get 25 lashes on your noble posterior,” he said vulgarly, “you will remind yourself about the organization in Kraków that you know of.” I said, “Sir, I don’t know anything about it.” “When you get 25 lashes, you will tell me,” he replied. An SS platoon was standing there, and, at some point, a grimace of a smile ran over my face. He snapped at me, “You are laughing!” I said, “Sir, I do not know if I should laugh or cry.” As a matter of fact, I would have preferred if he had just shot me because my legs were swollen up to the knees. When a doctor examined me later on, he said that I would have been gone within three or four weeks. I had push heavy wheelbarrows, with 25 bricks inside. I would have had a lot of trouble if I had lost a single brick. It was impossible to work that hard at the age of 60, without proper nutrition because at first I did not receive packages. I was only given some poor soup and tea with diuretic properties in the evening, so I could barely stand on my feet. After a while, he hit me in the face, saying, “We can’t let you go unshaven.” They were generally very sensitive about shaving and they shaved three times a day. They wanted us to do the same, but I do not know how and with what we were supposed to shave. I approached a friend of mine, Judge Stankiewicz, who was a self-taught barber, and he shaved me. I went to collect my things; they looked at their watch. It was Saturday, 3.00 p.m. They said, “It’s 3:00 p.m., English Saturday [a working Saturday],” – it was only then that they were reminded of England – “You’ll get out on Monday.” I had to stay there through Sunday and I was extremely nervous because I could not believe I was being released. Then it was Monday – 6.00, 7.00, 8.00, 9.00 a.m., but he did not show up. Finally, he came. I took my things and went to see a doctor. He told me to undress and while examining me, he saw that I had a broken rib. While I was rolling on the ground, an SS man had kicked me in the side. I was in pain and applied a wet rag, but I did not realize that I had a broken rib. “Dear God,” I said, “nobody has ever broken my ribs.” I was afraid to admit I had a broken rib because they would have kept me there for treatment and I would probably never have left the camp. He continued examining me, “The liver is not right.” “I’ve suffered from gallstones and gallbladder issues, but somehow it stopped, probably because I wasn’t given any fat,” I replied. “Yes, you didn’t get fat,” he said. And he added, “It’s not a sanatorium.” “It’s a crematorium,” I said to myself. In the end, he said, “Sign here that your health hasn’t changed.” And I signed it.
From there, I was taken to the Political Department. I entered the room and they said, “We will release you, but you must sign four declarations: the first one is that you will never fight national socialism again; the second is that you will never join any organization and you will report any members of such organizations in Kraków; the third one is that you won’t seek compensation for lost property, health, etc.; and the fourth – that you will keep it all secret. Violating even one of those conditions will result in rearrest and wirst du erschossen [you’ll be shot dead] within 24 hours. He repeated it three times. Naturally, I quickly signed the declarations. An SS man walked me out through the gate and pointed out that there was a nice inscription on it: “Arbeit macht frei” – work sets you free. When we were working hard, I often thought that maybe we really could get back our freedom by working. Actually, the inscription should have read “Tod macht frei,” not “Arbeit” [death sets you free, not work]. When I was standing in front of that gate, another SS man arrived and took me for a new prisoner – a Zugang. He hit me, and I told him, “I am not a Zugang; I’ve been released.” He said, “So,” as if he wanted to apologize, and he left. As I have mentioned, my legs were swollen so much that I had been assigned to sitting work – the Sitzarbeit. My task had been to clean bricks of lime. And when I was sitting on those bricks, cleaning them, an SS man approached me and asked, “Why are you sitting?” I started looking for the document, but before I even found it, he hit me. Then when I showed him the certificate, he just waved his hand and left. When I stood up, another one came to inspect me and asked, “Why aren’t you sitting?” And I got hit again. I did not know what I should do: I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.
When I walked out through the gate, an SS man followed me on a bicycle. I had a sack on my back and I looked like a complete beggar. “I can find my way to the station, don’t bother yourself, sir,” I told him. “I’ve been instructed to put you in a train car because you might Rache ausüben – exact revenge,” he replied.
I said, “What revenge could I exact? I don’t suppose my lice could help me do it,” but then I told him, “Maybe you’re right, sir, something might happen and they would say it was my fault.” When we entered the station, he approached the till and said, “One ticket to Katowice, please.” He scared me horribly because I wanted to go to Kraków, so I said, “Sir, I need to go to Kraków via Katowice.” He asked the cashier and talked to her for a moment. We entered the platform, I was ready to go, but nothing happened. Finally at 3.00, the train arrived and the door opened. I entered a compartment; he pulled out a notebook, wrote down the car number, and looked at his watch to check time. I watched him with horror, afraid that he was going with me, but finally he closed the door, and the train started to move.
Presiding judge: Were there a lot of Russian prisoners of war at that time?
Witness: Over 700 people were brought to the camp with the first transport on 14 June, and we came from Wiśnicz. I had number 947.
Presiding judge: Could anyone get released from the camp at that time?
Witness: First, a colleague of mine, who had also been in Wiśnicz, headmaster Szeremeta, was released, then I was let go, then others, and everyone from that group, the so-called Politische Häftlinge.
Presiding judge: The witness was brought to the camp as a political prisoner?
Witness: Yes.
Presiding judge: Was the witness investigated by the Political Department in Auschwitz?
Witness: No. Before they released me, they asked me what organization I belonged to, but they did not ask why I had been arrested. I would like to point out that when I was released, I was suddenly summoned by the Gestapo after six weeks, and only then did they interrogate me: “Were you the president of Sokół, what was the nature of the organization?” etc.
Presiding judge: How long did the witness stay in the camp?
Witness: I was arrested on 10 November. Until 23 November, I was in the Montelupich prison. Until 20 June 1940, I was in the labor camp in Wiśnicz, and until 12 August – in Auschwitz.
Presiding judge: The parties have no more questions. The witness is excused. Please bring in the next witness.