On 21 December 1946 in Zamość, the Investigating Judge at the District Court in Zamość with its seat in Zamość, Judge Czesław Godziszewski, with the participation of reporter Stefania Pastuszek [or Pastuszko] heard the person specified below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declaration and of the contents of Art. 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Karolina Mazurkiewicz |
| Age | 45 |
| Parents’ names | Franciszek and Katarzyna |
| Place of residence | Żdanów, commune of Mokre, district of Zamość |
| Occupation | farmer |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
| Relation to the parties | none |
On 11 November 1942, during the deportation of Poles from the village of Żdanów, I along with my husband Jan and children (daughter Lucyna, aged 16, son Władysław, aged 14, daughter Janina, aged 12, and son Aleksander, aged 9) was taken to the camp in Zamość. At the time, the Germans detained a number of Polish families from the village of Żdanów who had not managed to escape, and put them behind the barbed wire. After three days, some SS men transported myself and my husband, and also Lucyna and Władysław Mazurkiewicz, along with 80 [other] people to the camp in Auschwitz. Our other two children were taken from us by the Germans in the Zamość camp.
Before Christmas 1942, my children Janina and Aleksander Mazurkiewicz together with other children were transported by the Germans to Garwolin, where they were taken by local Poles. The Germans sold these children for five marks per head.
From Zamość, the Germans transferred us to Birkenau, where the men were separated from the women. I stayed together with my daughter Lucyna. The Germans proceeded to shave our heads and dress us in striped clothing, that is a skirt, or rather a dress, and a shirt. On 19 December 1942, I was immediately sent to work in the town of Oświęcim with my daughter and other Polish women from various parts of Poland. My daughter and I, like the other women, were barefoot. From that moment on, we had to go out and work hard every day. In the morning we were woken up at 4.00 a.m. We had to stand outside for 2 hours during roll-call regardless of the time of year or the weather. After roll-call, we returned to the block and got 25 grams of bread for the whole day and a glass of broth made of hay, and then they rushed us off to work. There were cases where the bread for the next day was given in the evening during roll-call. At noon there was lunch, consisting of fatless soup made of swede or nettles. Half a liter was given per person. Lunch lasted one hour, and afterwards we were rushed back to work. At. 6.00 p.m. after dinner there was a roll-call outside, which lasted two hours. After roll-call, everyone got about half a glass of the hay broth, with nothing else.
On Sundays, they drove us on foot to Babice [Babitz] or Budy, about 14 kilometers from Oświęcim, where each had to take six bricks from homes that had been destroyed, carry them to Oświęcim and throw them into the moat; we had to jump in the moat and get out quickly, otherwise the SS men and SS women beat us and set the dogs on us. Every such escapade would cause our group to lose a few hundred people. The Germans beat us for no reason, shot [at us] and set the dogs [on us], making them pounce on people and bite them, ripping off chunks of flesh. We had to take those injured or killed back to our block, where during roll-call some German man or woman would check the number of prisoners.
There were cases when Drechsel (“Dekslerka”) would walk along a row during roll-call and stop where some women were lying on the ground, beaten up or bitten by dogs, put a foot on a woman’s throat and choke her to death. She murdered many of the female prisoners this way. During our incarceration in Birkenau, my daughter and I were constantly transferred to various blocks. I was in block 13, 15, 8, and 6. I often saw people being taken to the gas chamber on trucks, from which they were dumped out like stones, because the vehicles had a device which lifted to drop people out. I also saw people in Birkenau being driven from the train in rows of five to the gas chamber. I witnessed how a Jewish woman from Poland who worked with us asked some other Jewish woman who was walking in one such row: “Where are you going?”, to which she replied: “We’re going to the bathhouse where they will bathe us and send us to America because they hand over one German for every two Jews.”
The gas chamber was a large building with a chimney. The Germans only took ash from it, which they scattered over the fields. I once saw a Jewish woman holding her two small daughters and she would not let them be taken away. An SS man strode up to her, hit her and the girls several times with a rifle butt, over their heads and the whole body, but the woman would simply not allow him to take her children. Finally, this German pushed her into the gas chamber along with her daughters. There were constant screams from that chamber. The Germans herded people of various nationalities in there.
On 17 July 1943, with my daughter and other women – 300 people in total – I got to Berlin, to an electric battery factory. Our work was very hard, and the food situation was even worse than in Birkenau. We slept in shelters on bare sand.
My husband perished in Birkenau on 5 February 1943. I saw my son Władysław when some SS men were choosing small boys from the line during roll-call. They selected 45 such boys at the time, and they took them somewhere from Birkenau. After English troops entered Germany, a number of corpses were cast up onto the German seashore. People said that among them was the body of a boy named Lucjan Koch from Warsaw, whom the Germans had taken from Birkenau together with my son. What happened to my son, I do not know. This happened around Lubeck.
Most people from the Zamość district died or were murdered in Birkenau. I saw the Germans in Birkenau burning human bodies on pyres. There were six such burning pyres. This area was called camp C.
Regarding Tadeusz Rycyk and Mieczysław Rycaj, as well as those mentioned in the letter dated 14 September 1946, no. 1486/46, which was read out to me, I do not know anything. I know, however, that Helena Rycyk returned from the camp and is currently living in Sitaniec. She lost three children and her husband in the Birkenau camp. Pasznowa from Lipsk, in my presence and under the supervision of an SS woman, had to carry her own daughter, aged 16, on her back to the gas chamber, following which she herself died of despair. Terrible things happened in the camp that I am unable to describe.
This concludes my testimony.
The report was read out.