Witness: Vera Foltyn, 38 years old, an architect (MSc.), resident in Prague VII (Czechoslovakia), religion – none.
Presiding Judge: I hereby instruct the witness, pursuant to the provisions of Article 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, that you are required to speak the truth. The provision of false testimony is punishable by a term of imprisonment of up to five years. Do the parties want to submit any motions as to the procedure according to which the witness is to be interviewed?
Prosecutors: We release the witness from the obligation to take an oath.
Defense attorneys: Ourselves also.
Presiding Judge: What information does the witness possess regarding the case itself, or the accused?
Witness: In April 1943, I was arrested together with my husband by the Gestapo in České Budějovice, together with members of the national resistance movement. After a week I was sent with a group of 500 men and seven women to Auschwitz. On 22 April, I was transported to the camp in Birkenau, and my husband to Auschwitz I.
First of all, since I am an architect, I would like to present how this 20th century camp looked under the command of Lagerführerin [camp leader] Mandl. I arrived there at 5.00 p.m., when roll call was being held. Women, haggard and thin, were standing in front of the block – at the time, there were some 22,000 female prisoners. We were led to the so-called Zugangsblock [block for new arrivals]. This used to be a stable. Four children and some 20 new female inmates were lying on the clay floor. Near the wall there was a structure made of logs – this was the toilet, whereas in the middle of the block there was a small stove, near which there sat Ani, a German woman who was the head of the Zugangsblock. She handed out tea to the new arrivals. Shortly after, some female prisoners came to tattoo our numbers, and they instructed us to remain there for the next 24 hours. Next, we had our hair cut and were led to bathe in the “Sauna”; we were ordered to take off our clothes and put on some old clothes that had been worn by Russian soldiers, previously killed. Thereafter we were led to another block. This was the quarantine block, which we were not allowed to leave for the next four weeks. The barrack was bricked, but the floor was just compacted earth. Towards evening, a transport of Greek Jewesses arrived, and soon our numbers had swelled to one thousand. We all had just two of those log-type toilets to use, one at each end of the block, and 14 women would have to share a plank bed two by two meters.
After three days a typhus epidemic broke out, and 14 days later this was followed by a typhus fever epidemic – the worst ever in Birkenau. Over a period of two months, the Revier [hospital] had 7,000 patients. When I fell ill, I was transferred to the typhus ward of the Revier. While in the hospital, we were treated with somewhat greater leniency, however this is not what I intend to discuss. For I would like to state that although we were suffering from a sickness that required injections, there were none available for us (nor were any other drugs for that matter). Finally, the Bauleitung [building authority] set up a sanatorium for the dogs, because dogs too started falling ill with typhus. As we learned from the orderlies, considerable quantities of injections had been prepared for the dogs. But we prisoners received none. The dogs had a diet and better food than the inmates throughout the year.
The climax of the epidemic came in September 1943. Our kommando counted some 500 dead through a single night.
Then, however, the camp administration found a way of combating the typhus fever. Namely, they started sending [sick] prisoners to the gas chambers. The Germans also opened block 25, which has already been mentioned here.
I would like to say a few words about the sewage system in the hospital and the camp. The whole sewage system available for inmates was a channel some 120 meters long, with an opening 3 meters wide, surrounded by fragments of wood that served as a gangway. If a patient was so ill that she could not keep her footing [on the planks] and fell inside, then an order would be given for her to be gassed, since this was cheaper than providing her with fresh clothing.
I would like to mention the first gassing, which took place on 15 September 1943. At the time, I was working in the Revier and was present when patients were thrown from the third tier of bunks as they were unable to climb down themselves. The accused Mandl stood in the middle [of the block] with a stick and a dog, and if a patient did not walk with the requisite speed, she hit her with the stick so severely that the walkway was soon covered with blood.
In December 1943, a Bauleitung was set up in Birkenau. There, I managed to find work in the camp planning office. I learned that the plans had been drawn up between 1939 and 1942. I saw how they had been continuously improved, until finally the Germans erected a crematorium, which was immediately put to use. The crematorium was approved by the Bauleitung of Auschwitz. The document contained some four or five signatures, so it is out of the question that the administration did not know what the facility was to be used for. The furnaces were manufactured by “Töpfer and Co.”. One each were installed in crematoria I and III. A simpler system was used in crematoria II and III – these were two underground bunkers, 50 meters long, which could accommodate one thousand people at a time; there were no windows, however ventilation stacks protruded above ground. A network of exhausters was set up around the wall, and these removed the lethal gas after gassing.
Thus, within a quarter of an hour they were able to kill and remove the bodies of 1,500 people.
From there, the bodies were taken to the goldsmith’s, where they had their rings and gold teeth removed; thereafter conveyors transferred them to the furnaces.
There were eight furnaces in total, and they could operate simultaneously. In Birkenau I learned how the camp was supposed to look. At the time, two subcamps were operational – Ba1 and Ba2. Ba3 had already been erected, whereas later we were forced to commence planning work on Ba4 and Ba5, which were identical to Ba2.
According to information provided by the SS men, construction work was to last until 1950.
To this end, the Germans built new roads that were to connect the old camp with the new facility, and also erected a new Postenkette [network of guard posts] and made preparations that seemed to indicate that Auschwitz would be in existence for a very long time.
I would also like to touch upon one more interesting thing. Namely, we were ordered to count the bricks that were to be used for building work. We counted approximately five million, and these were allocated for the construction of the camp and the villas of the SS men located on its grounds. The camp administration had to have known about this, for Berlin issued a document allocating bricks as a camp investment project. In the Bauleitung I met one SS man who said that it was the other SS men who were guilty, not him. In the summer of 1944, when a Sonderaktion [special action] was being conducted against the Hungarians, we received a new Hauptsturmführer, a Latvian by the surname of Schosenow. He came to our block and inquired what was going on in the field. Initially, we thought he was provoking us, however soon we mustered the courage and told him that some 400,000 prisoners are currently being gassed. The Hauptsturmführer turned pale and said that he had to return to the front. And indeed, within three weeks he had gone back to the front. All the other accused could have acted in the same way.
The Hungarian Sonderaktion, which concerned the extermination of Hungarian Jews, had been under preparation from the spring. I do not know, however, why the transport arrived so early, when the crematorium was not yet ready; whatever the case may be, the Germans were forced to burn the bodies not only in the crematorium, but also in open pits. At the time it was calculated that 10,000 prisoners had undergone incineration – the maximum number for Birkenau.
Availing myself of the occasion, I would like to say a few words about Brandl during the period when she served at the camp for Hungarian Jews, of whom no more than 10 percent survived. The womenfolk were provided with such rags and tatters that the way they looked was demeaning even by camp standards. A rag and a headscarf were all that a woman had; no other garments were provided. I am sure that every former prisoner of Auschwitz who witnessed this sorry sight will attest to my words. I do not know why this was done, for after a month or so they would be burned in the crematorium anyway. I remember one of the moments when prisoners were burned in the furnaces. It was a September night and we were returning to the camp from work in the Bauleitung when I saw these human forms fighting for a place on the truck – they could not wait any longer, they wanted to be incinerated in the crematorium as soon as possible. There were some 500 of them, and they had previously been sent to the bath and left standing, naked, until half past eight in the evening before being loaded onto the trucks. This was in September 1944.
The liquidation and evacuation of the camp has already been described, and therefore I would just like to mention the accused Buntrock, who killed my father on 20 December 1943. My parents had been sent in a transport from Trenčín in September 1943. I was very weak after the typhus epidemic and I could not go out to meet them; I managed to do so only on 20 December 1943. I went as a member of the parcel kommando, in which I worked ferrying parcels from our camp. My father and mother were summoned. I first talked with my mother, and my father came up next. At the time he was 68 years old, but he was in such a state that initially he did not recognize me. After a while he did, and he started to cry and caress me; suddenly, I saw a military figure next to me, and it shouted: “Was ist los?” [What is going on here?] and hit me, and also my father. A moment later, I saw my father lying on the ground and an SS man’s boot just inches from his body. The SS man started shouting: “Aufstehen!” [Get up!], and it seemed as if my father was already dead. He got up after a while, however, and was led aside. But four days later I was informed that he was dead.
Presiding Judge: Does the witness recognize Buntrock?
Witness: Yes I do. At the time he was the commandant of the Czech camp in Birkenau.
Presiding Judge: The accused Buntrock, did you hear what the witness said and do you admit that her account is truthful?
The accused Buntrock: The fragment of her statement wherein she maintains that I hit or killed her father is not consistent with the truth.
Witness: I only said that he hit my father, who died later due to the internal injuries which he sustained.
Presiding Judge: Does the witness mean to say that he kicked and otherwise maltreated her father?
Witness: No, he only hit me and my father with his hand.
Presiding Judge: In the head?
Witness: I do not know, for he had just hit me and I was dazed. My mother witnessed the entire incident, but she was gassed on 7 March 1944.
Presiding Judge: Are there any questions?
Prosecutors: No.
Defense attorneys: No.
Presiding Judge: The witness may step down.