BARBARA KLEKOWSKA

On 21 June 1947 in Kraków, a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, District Investigative Judge Jan Sehn, acting upon written request of the first prosecutor of the Supreme National Tribunal, this dated 25 April 1947 (file no. NTN 719/47), and 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 Article 254, 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed the inmate of the Auschwitz concentration camp named below as a witness, who testified as follows:


Name and surname Barbara Klekowska
Date and place of birth 26 September 1921, Częstochowa
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Citizenship and nationality Polish
Marital status widow
Occupation office worker in the Municipal Power Station in Częstochowa
Place of residence Częstochowa, Olsztyńska Street 3

In the Auschwitz concentration camp I was assigned no. 37265. I stayed there from 13 March 1943 to October 1944, for the entire time in the FKL [Frauenkonzetrationslager; women’s concentration camp] in Birkenau.

The camp was run by senior overseer (Oberaufseherin) Maria Mandl. Apart from her, I recall another overseer well, later promoted to senior overseer, a woman by the name of Brandl. She is the same woman whose photograph has just been presented to me. (The photograph of Therese Brandl, appended to her files, was presented to the witness). In September 1944, Brandl beat me with her keys on the head in the following circumstances.

A group of my fellow inmates, numbering some 200 women, who were lined up as they were to be marched off and deported, had to stand from the morning until noon without any food. That group included my friend Alicja Dziuk and her sister Irena. I managed to organize a jug of soup and wanted to hand it over to them. When Brandl noticed this, she came running to me and beat me so severely that I had a headache for a few days in a row.

Another time I was beaten by Maria Mandl because I didn’t clean the bucket well. She hit me in the face with her hands. In the winter of 1943 to 1944, Mandl punished me and five of my friends with “stójka” [prolonged standing], and I had to stay from the morning hours of a frosty day to the evening roll call in the gate by the Blockführerstube [guardhouse] in which Mandl had her office. We were thus punished by Mandl for an attempt to give water to prisoners locked up in block 25. Some Slovakian functional prisoners had walked in on us then and reported it to Mandl.

I don’t recall the surnames of Danz, Kock, Bodem or Zlotos.

The report was read out. At this the hearing and the report were concluded.