On 31 January 1947, in Końskie, the Końskie Branch of the Radom District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes interviewed the person named below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the wording of Article 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Helena Krajew |
| Age | 30 |
| Parents’ names | Berek and Rywka |
| Place of residence | Pabianice, Turyńska Street 50 |
| Occupation | desk clerk |
| Religious affiliation | Jewish |
| Criminal record | none |
Before the war, I lived in Pabianice, where I was a desk worker for a textile company, Fogel and Płotkin. Towards the end of 1940, I was resettled to Łódź, where I worked as a cleaner in a German military office; there were 20 of us – Jews – working for the Germans there, and in the evenings we were escorted to a common dwelling, where we were guarded by German soldiers. Once a day, we were given 150 grams of bread and thin soup.
After six weeks, I was sent with a transport of about 200 Jews, by train, to [illegible] – if I am not mistaken – but on the way, before Końskie, I managed to escape and I came to Końskie, where I stayed with different people for two weeks.
When a ghetto was established in Końskie, I found myself in the ghetto. Its inhabitants included a few thousand Jews from Końskie and from other towns, who had come or had been transported there. In the ghetto, we were given 200 [grams], and later 150 or 100 grams of bread a day, as well as soup – twice a day at first, and then once a day. The cramped conditions and poor nourishment in the ghetto resulted in typhus and dysentery, which took the lives of 10 to 15 people each day. During the one and a half years of the ghetto’s existence, several hundred Jews could have been killed for trying to get out or for attempting to take food from a Pole across the wires. These murders were perpetrated by the German gendarmes guarding the ghetto. One of the gendarmes killed a Jew from Łódź called Juda Brumsztajn [?].
Towards the end of 1942, the ghetto in Końskie was liquidated by the Germans – that is, by the local gendarmes and Gestapo and by a non-local German unit. A few thousand Jews were taken away from the Końskie ghetto, as well as from Radoszyce and Gowarczów – I don’t know where to, but I suppose they were sent to death camps. During the deportation, a few Jews were killed by the Germans. [Only] some 100 Jews remained in Końskie, mainly ill people, who were looked after by a woman doctor and four nurses, including me. The Germans killed some Jews they found later and sent others to Auschwitz. To my knowledge, the Germans killed about 50 Jews that they found.
At that time, I escaped from the Końskie ghetto and stayed in hiding nearby. After two weeks, I was arrested by gendarmes and sent to Auschwitz with a group of 50 Jewish girls. At Auschwitz, I spent three weeks in a barrack in which there were a thousand people. They gave us 200 grams of bread and 50 grams of sausage a day; lunch consisted of fairly thick soup. We spent the whole day in the barrack and were not allowed to go out. Once a day, the ward head took a group of 100 people to the toilet: at 3:00 at night [3:00 AM]; and at 4:00 in the afternoon, there were assemblies during which you had to stand for three or four hours, regardless of the weather. If anyone was missing, we had to kneel for two or three hours or we didn’t get the soup. On our arrival in the camp, they took away all our clothes and cut off our hair; they gave us only dresses with no underwear; no shoes were provided, and it was nearly autumn. I saw prisoners returning from work – each time, they brought back a few dead bodies. Weaker people were sent to a special ward from which they were taken to be gassed and then to the crematorium.
After three weeks, 200 people were selected, including me, and sent to Germany to do forced labor, locked up in freight train cars. They gave us food for two days, and we traveled eight days because the railway line had been bombed. We were brought to the Bergen- Belsen camp, where we spent six weeks in tents in the forest; we recuperated there, as they gave us soup to eat once a day, 200 grams of bread, and 50 grams of sausage or margarine. Later, we were taken to a labor camp [illegible] Hanover, where I worked in an ammunition factory. The nourishment was poor and the work was exhausting. There were 1,500 Jewish women working there; 200 of them died of typhus and other diseases; several fatal accidents happened due to carelessness. More than 20 people got killed by an explosion. [We] were tormented with pointless work and beaten if they thought you were not working as you should. I remained there until liberation – that is, until May 1945.