On 30 December 1946, in Kraków, investigative judge Jan Sehn, member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, in accordance with the provisions of and procedure provided for under the Decree of 10 November 1945 (Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland No. 51, item 293) in connection with Articles 255, 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed a former prisoner of the Auschwitz concentration camp, who testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Adolf Gawalewicz |
| Date and place of birth | 2 September 1916 in Lwów |
| Parents’ names | Adolf and Maria née Tustanowska |
| Education | Master of Law |
| Profession | Official at the Municipal Board in Kraków |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Nationality and state affiliation | Polish |
| Place of residence | Kraków, Jabłonowskich 7 Street |
| I | was arrested on 16 September 1940, in Kraków, at the office of the Municipal Board |
| Social Securities, where I | was employed. Initially, I was taken to Montelupich Street |
| in Kraków, and then I | was transported on the Tarnów–Kraków line to the Auschwitz |
concentration camp on 9 January 1941. This was a rail transport, and around 300 inmates from prisons in Tarnów and Kraków were transported at the time. In Auschwitz, I was given prisoner number 9225. I was placed in the main camp, where I remained until 20 April 1942.
I remember, among other things, the decimation of Block 10, carried out in July 1941 by Camp Commandant Höß as retaliation for the escape of one of the prisoners belonging to the block’s staff. I am nearsighted and I would not be able to recognize Höß by sight.
I learned that it was going to be decimated from a speech that our block supervisor gave us at the start of a selection. In this speech, he scolded us and stated that our block would be decimated for having failed to observe the fugitive and having allowed him to escape; that the commander was coming to carry out the decimation. He stated very clearly that the Lagerkommandant was coming. After this speech, an SS man, whom the block supervisor addressed as Lagerkommandant, came in the company of other SS men, and he chose about 30 people – I do not remember the exact number – from among the prisoners of Block 10, who were standing in ranks for the roll-call. At first, he selected every tenth prisoner, and later he searched for the physically weak, or those who were behaving questionably under the influence of fear. The SS men escorted all the selected prisoners to the bunker of Block 11. The block supervisor announced that [the prisoners] would stay there for 10 days, and if, during that time, the fugitive or his body was not found, all those imprisoned in the bunker would be shot. The man was not found, and I did not see any of those imprisoned in bunker 11 in connection with his escape.
On 13 March 1942, all the staff of Block 19 in the Auschwitz main camp, which at that time was a convalescent block, were deported. [The prisoners there], who were assigned a lighter job due to Schonung [prisoners not required to work], worked repairing stockings. The block inmates told them that they would be transported to lighter work and to a camp where there was better air. In fact, all of them were transported to the camp in Birkenau, which was being built at that time. One week later, a few patients returned from this group, including prisoner Wierzbicki, who told us that all the deported prisoners in Birkenau were living in terrible conditions and were being tormented in various ways. In particular, we learned that convalescents deported to Birkenau are harassed by being made to stand at night; additionally we were made to bathe in dirty vats with cold water in the open air, which was especially malicious and severe due to the season [as it was March], a punishment used primarily with regard to elderly prisoners, who were also starved.
I personally experienced the relations prevailing in Birkenau at that time, because on 20 April 1942, as a convalescent from Block 20, I found myself in a transport of 200 convalescents deported to Birkenau. We were told before departure: “zur leichten Arbeit” [“for light work”]. Before we left for Birkenau, we received extra soup and were dressed in gym shorts from Russian prisoners of war, in Russian military shirts and coats.
Immediately after arriving at the camp in Birkenau, the latter were taken from us in order to prevent a lice infestation.
We were placed in the brick Block 4, which was later marked as Block 7 and Isolierstation [Isolation]. At the time of our arrival, there were about 200 Russian prisoners of war and 40 prisoners in this block; the remaining prisoners were from a group of 1,200 convalescents deported from the main camp to Birkenau on 13 March 1942. On the day of our arrival, the straw was thrown out of the bunks, and we lay on bare boards, or on bare bricks on the lower bunks. As for our daily food, we received one liter of soup, most often for three or even five prisoners. We received bread very rarely, and it was not distributed in portions, but a loaf was thrown as if to dogs, and the prisoners divided it among themselves. There were fights because of hunger. The block supervisor, whose name I do not remember, told us directly that we had come to Birkenau to die, that there was no way out for us, that we were forbidden from receiving any medical help, that he was sorry that he had to do this to us, but that he had been given orders and had to follow them.
We were not given any work. During the day, we stood in groups of five from the morning roll-call until late evening outside in front of the block. Standing punishment was arranged every other night. After the first night of standing, 14 prisoners died. However, it was not enough for the camp authorities, so the next night we were detained in the block, where the executioner of the block, a Vlasov soldier named Wańka, hanged 36 prisoners on the entablature of the block. Both Wańka and his associates were drunk. They chose their victims at random, by eye.
This lasted until the first days of May 1942. The SS authorities knew about this, because the SS officer, the Blockführer, attended the roll-call twice a day, saw the conditions in which the prisoners lived, knew about the standing punishment at night and day, and saw the victims of the conditions created by the SS. By the beginning of May 1942, this is after about two weeks in an isolation block, around 60 [people] remained alive.
In the first days of May – I think it was May 4 – the first selection for the gas chambers took place. At the time, it was called selecting prisoners for light work. The selections were carried out by an SS man from the SDG [Sanitätsdienstgrade – medical corps] together with prisoner officials. Freight cars were waiting for the chosen ones, onto which they were loaded and transported, as it later turned out, to the gas chambers. At that time, the block was enclosed by a wall and survivors were brought there from the entire camp to be gassed. There was a sluice and the entrance to the crematorium. The block was constantly overcrowded, cars drove up from time to time and took up to 90 percent of the selection, which sometimes amounted to as many as 1,200 prisoners. I estimate that from May to September 1942, around 40,000 people passed through this block and were transported from it to the gas chambers. This number includes only those who were still alive when they were taken from the block. Moreover, many prisoners died inside, and the rest were killed by Albert (a German criminal prisoner). In the presence of an SS man, the Blockführer, he pulled the prisoners out of their bunks and smashed their heads with a wooden truncheon.
Despite the fact that there were people sentenced to death in the following days in the block I am describing, prisoner doctors were employed there. I remember Dr. Ciepłowski from Warsaw, Dr. Jarząbek, and the Slovak doctor, Dr. Kraus; they were allowed to dress the prisoners’ wounds. The SDG then checked the dressings, and these people were transported with fresh dressings to the gas chambers.
On 20 September 1942, for reasons unknown to me, I was transferred to the main camp in Auschwitz, where I stayed until 22 June 1944, when I was transported to Buchenwald.
I contracted tuberculosis as a result of the conditions in the Auschwitz camp. After the liberation, I underwent plastic surgery in Sweden, during which seven ribs were removed. Before I was arrested, I was completely healthy; I had never had any pulmonary conditions.
I would like to point out that until May 1942, people in the Isolierstation were also killed by injections of lethal doses of poisons. The SDG selected prisoners to receive the injection.
Read out. At this, the hearing and the present protocol were concluded.