Eighth day of the proceedings.
Presiding Judge: Next witness, please: Antonina Piątkowska.
(Witness Antonina Piątkowska approaches the stand.)
Presiding Judge: Please state your personal details.
Witness: Antonina Piątkowska, 48 years old, employed at a railroad co-operative; religion: Roman Catholic; no relation to the defendants.
Presiding Judge: I advise the witness as per Art. 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure that she is obliged to speak the truth. False testimony is punishable by incarceration for up to five years. Do the parties offer any motions regarding the manner of questioning of the witness?
Prosecution: No.
Defense: No.
Presiding Judge: Therefore the witness will be heard without an oath. What can the witness say about the case itself, particularly as regards the defendants?
Witness: I recognize Mandl, Aumeier, Kraus, Danz, Plagge, Brandl in the dock. I arrived in Auschwitz on 27 April 1942 and remained there until 18 January 1945, that is, until the camp was shut down. After my arrival I was in block 8, a men’s block. After one Polish woman escaped from our column we, all the women, had our hair cut and were sent to Budy [sub- camp]. After four weeks of work there, three quarters of the Poles died. Aumeier would arrive frequently and order us flogged 50 times each, and if one of the block elders was too exhausted to continue, he would beat us himself. After every such visit our situation deteriorated, both in terms of food and in terms of labor. Around a hundred Polish women worked at building the railway, and every group had to load a rail car full of dirt in one hour. Those who could not go on were mercilessly beaten to unconsciousness. In August, when Birkenau was built, we were transferred to that camp. The hygiene situation was horrible, mud up to the knees. We had no water at all. There was a single well, where defendant Mandl set up a German woman, a criminal, and ordered her to push any Pole who came too close into the well. So, dead bodies were often pulled out of it in the morning. The water was not potable, as it was red. At the time, numerous transports from the Lublin and Zamość regions were arriving in Auschwitz. Right out of the wagons they were loaded onto cars and three quarters of them were taken to the crematorium. Some women and children were taken to the camp. After a few weeks, after a selection performed by Mandl, they were taken to the crematorium. All the female defendants – Mandl, Brandl, and other Aufseherins [overseers] – took part in the selections. All of them, without exceptions, performed the so-called “review”. Selected prisoners had special numbers and were sent to block 25, the block of death. When they gathered more than 1,500 prisoners, they were carried off to the crematorium. Throughout their time in the block they were not given food, because – as Mandl herself said – it was not going to pay off anymore. I witnessed defendants Mandl and Brandl personally shove those victims into cars.
Next came a transport of 500 Polish women, who were placed in block 26, where Stenia was the block elder. I once ran into Mandl in that block when she was conducting an inspection. There were no pallets or blankets in that block. The prisoners did not have bowls or spoons. I heard Mandl say that they were not given blankets or pallets because she wanted them to croak faster, as she needed the space for the next transport. Subsequently, a 360-person transport came from France. They were, according to Mandl, communists, and thus had to die. Soon, only seven were left. Next came a transport of the Russian populace from Smolensk and Vitebsk. Three quarters of those transports went straight into the crematorium. In June of 1943, transports of women with children came. The children were taken away, to the great despair of the mothers. Mandl would personally tear the children away from their mothers, beat them, and throw them onto the car like rocks. What happened to them afterwards, I do not know. However, word would come that some were sent to the gas, others to Germany to be Germanized.
Mandl organized a general delousing on 6 December 1942. Of course, they did not care about our health, in this case it was about a few SS men falling sick with typhus. On 6 December, all female prisoners were chased out in front of the baths. While some had their time to bathe, others had to stand there and freeze. The delousing was conducted by men, it was a disgrace for the 20th century. The prisoners were naked. I remember Dr. Walentino, an elderly woman, who could not walk up the stairs into the bath, collapsed from the hot steam (few people could stand its temperature). Then, on Mandl’s orders, an SS man burned her with a white-hot iron so badly she died from the burns. Mandl then ordered us covered with some sort of liquid. It was all done by men on her orders, because she intended to torture us not only physically, but also morally.
Defendant Brandl was in charge of the clean clothes warehouse. We were to receive those clothes after the delousing. On orders from Mandl (given on 2 August), who had an interest in as many of us dying as possible, Brandl would give us lousy clothes. Underwear stained with blood, pus, and excrement. After delousing, we were taken from that chamber to the showers. A friend of mine worked as a stoker at the boiler, she said the boiler was always full of hot water, but Brandl forbade us from getting hot water and ordered those freezing women sprayed with cold water. Then we stood in the field for another few hours before getting those lousy clothes. When we came to the block, we found nothing at all: the pallets had been burned, the blankets taken for delousing, we usually only got them back after several weeks. Thus, we shivered with cold at night, and Mandl did not take care of us, because she used to say: “You Polish swine, you are here to die within three months, because we need space for other transports”.
There was such a shortage of water that the sick would ask for urine to drink and sometimes drink it. 20–30 sick, feverish women were washed in a single tub of cold water. The prisoners suffered from scabies, tuberculosis, and all kinds of infectious diseases. That was how Mandl conducted delousing. The prisoners who were not very ill would go to wash in the baths. They were columns of skeletons without clothing, columns which, on their way back, would leave three quarters of them dead behind the baths building.
Brandl took part in the selections. I saw her conduct a selection in our block.
Danz I know from 1944, when Mandl and Drechsler had already run away from the camp. Danz went mad then, she would hold standing punishments, long roll calls, she would search the blocks. She beat and tortured the prisoners. On the last day, that is, 18 January 1945, starting at three in the morning, none of the female prisoners had a moment’s respite. Danz unloaded her entire beastliness on the prisoners. Her reign was short, but we suffered greatly from it. She would beat and push around even the sick, she forced even those who were supposed to stay in the camp to leave, so that they would be shot along the way.
I will not say much about Grabner now. I remember that on 29 July 1941 he gathered the youngest – 17-, 16-year-olds. There were 500 of them. While sending them away, he said they would be going to do lighter work. In actuality he sent them to Dresden, and they were gassed in the train on the way there. My son was one of those boys. Such was Grabner’s work.
In 1940, the so-called Gypsy camp was founded. 30,000 Gypsies were brought to Auschwitz. They were given a Gypsy band, only for 25,000 of them to be gassed later. The Gypsies knew what was in store for them, they rebelled, they did not want to board the cars. For that reason they were sent away in groups, first one transport of men, then the next and so forth. It was Plagge who organized that murder.
Of Kraus I can say he was a bloody executioner, he would beat, kick, and humiliate prisoners. In early December he arrived with some SS men and took Zosia Gawron and Danusia Kluze. He supposedly beat them horribly. Later they were in the bunker in block 11 and sent to Ravensbrück. Kraus would beat and oppress prisoners personally. I would just like to explain and highlight one thing, Supreme Tribunal: the Germans did not only oppress us physically. They also killed our souls, and succeeded at that in many cases. In lager A, a young Jewish girl from block 11, coerced by defendant Mandl, pushed her own mother into a car carrying people bound for the gas. There were many such incidents. Naturally, they did not succeed with the Poles, as the Poles were always brave and they will be until the end, and the Germans failed to break them.
Presiding Judge: I call a 10-minute recess.
(After the recess.)
Presiding Judge: Witness Antonina Piątkowska. The witness has mentioned defendant Kraus in her testimony. What could the witness say about the behavior of the defendant?
Witness: Kraus took over from Hessler [Hößler?], that is, in November of 1944, and he was in that office until January of 1945, when the camp was shut down. In that time, Kraus gave us a very bloody account of himself. He would hold roll calls lasting hours, searches of blocks, which very often ended in beatings, theft of the most necessary items, like sweaters in winter and many other things. Later on Kraus – as I have mentioned already – beat two female prisoners very severely, to the point where Zofia Gawron lost her hearing after her eardrum burst. He beat her, alongside Danuta Kluze, in the Blockführerstube [guardhouse], as he suspected them of having had contact with their families, who lived near the camp. That is what they were beaten so badly for, they were even supposed to be shot. They owe their lives only to the fact that the front was approaching and they were sent to Ravensbrück. He would generally go on rampages in our blocks. He was like a ghost – one would never know when he might arrive in the camp. We called him a ghost, but when that ghost showed up we would hide wherever we could so as not to run into him. During the shutdown of the camp, during the night of 17–18 January, we did not sleep, as we could hear planes and explosions. At midnight, Kraus arrived at our block 2. Rapportschreiber [report writer] Ryja was there. He called her and said that there would be a wake-up for a roll call at three and that she was to set up all columns for a march out of the camp. As the Poles were well organized, they ran from block to block; we would get the youths dressed, get the older women dressed to prepare to leave. At 4.00 a.m. Kraus and Danz arrived. Danz inhumanly beat those old, sick women who failed to get dressed quickly and leave for the roll call. She beat up an elderly 60-year-old lady from the Warsaw Uprising so badly that she died on the way. We would try and make compresses of snow for her along the way, but she was horribly bruised, her eye almost came out due to Danz’s beating.
Kraus gave an order saying that if any of the women were late and did not march out in time, anyone could shoot them. Along the way there were incidents of SS men shooting prisoners who could not walk. Children, sick, pregnant women giving birth along the way – they were all cast out of the camp on Kraus’s orders.
Presiding Judge: I have no more questions.
Prosecutor Szewczyk: Regarding Kraus, may the witness say if the witness is aware that Kraus would, revolver in hand, force prisoners to leave the camp during the evacuation?
Witness: Yes, I saw that firsthand.
Prosecutor: Were there any incidents where he would shoot anybody in the process?
Witness: I do not recall that, but I know that Kraus beat a prisoner with a revolver until he lost consciousness. I left Auschwitz on 18 January at six o’clock, with the last transport, and I did not see Kraus’s mad rampage in the camp.
Prosecutor: As for Mandl, what was her attitude towards pregnant women before 1943?
Witness: Under Mandl’s orders, Drexler or another SS woman sent by her would come and say to the women lined in front of the block that if any of them were pregnant they should report their number to get food and better work. Women unaware of that ruse stepped up. After a few days an SS woman would come, call out those numbers and lead them to the Revier [hospital] for injections or to the gas.
Prosecutor: Were those lethal injections?
Witness: Yes.
Prosecutor Szewczyk: How does the witness know it happened under orders from defendant Mandl?
Witness: I was interested in everything that happened in the ambulance and I took notes. I brought a diary, which I passed on to the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland. Over 10,000 names of Polish women driven to death by defendant Mandl. It contains detailed plans for the crematorium and copies [descriptions?] of the anthropological research performed. As for the children, the defendant had a trusted and close friend in the Revier, nurse Klara, who – when a child was born – would dip its head into a bucket of water, throw it into a burning furnace or throw it out into the field, where the baby was eaten by rats.
Prosecutor Szewczyk: Would Defendant Mandl beat prisoners and approach cars with women earmarked for the gas? What did that look like?
Witness: In 1942 and 1943 selections would be conducted and groups of 200, 300, 400 selected women would be forced into the cars. I must note here that if defendant Mandl did not like someone’s face, she sent that woman to the gas. Women were selected without regard to nationality. Defendant Mandl personally assisted in loading the cars.
Prosecutor Szewczyk: Did defendant Mandl select [the victims] herself?
Witness: The defendant did not have to do that, she liked her comfort too much for that, she had a car and a riding horse, and she had her own assistants for that anyway.
Prosecutor Szewczyk: Can the witness say something about the general roll calls?
Witness: General roll calls took place in 1942. We would be driven out into the yard and made to stand in the snow the entire day. Then we were formed into fives and approached the gate. SS men and women were formed up in the camp grounds, everyone was there.
If one of the prisoners did not catch up or could not run through quickly, an SS woman would touch her with a cane – never a hand, they were disgusted by us – and send her to block 25, the block of death.
Prosecutor Szewczyk: Which [female] defendants took part in the general roll call?
Witness: Mandl, Brandl and Lächert. As for Orlowski, I heard from trustworthy persons that she would torture, beat, kick, hold all kinds of roll calls and standing punishments. When Mandl hit somebody in the teeth, they had to get them extracted, for she had colossal strength, and moreover, she was a graduate of a boxing school in Berlin.
Prosecutor Brandys: Is the witness aware of the fact that Aumeier personally administered lashings after arriving to a roll call?
Witness: He was always in the roll call square and calling out a list of prisoners who were later beaten, and when one of the block elders was tired after giving a Pole 25 whips, Aumeier grabbed her stick and started to beat the victim himself.
Prosecutor Brandys: Is the witness aware of someone suffering from rheumatism being flogged?
Witness: Yes, I know of that. The sick woman suffered terrible pain to the lower back and was carried out of the block to the roll call square. She was beaten horribly and carried back.
Prosecutor Brandys: And what happened in Budy?
Witness: I have no firsthand knowledge of that.
Prosecutor Brandys: Did defendant Plagge take part in the liquidation of the Gypsies? Did the witness see it, or just heard about it?
Witness: I saw it when I was in the Birkenau camp, which was only separated from the Gypsy camp by a road. The liquidation of the camp took a few days. They [the Roma] were aware they were going to be gassed and thus Plagge was afraid of a revolt. He tried to endear himself to them at first, giving them blankets and more bread. Then he picked out the young Gypsies and sent them to the transports, leaving only women and old people, and that was how he liquidated the Gypsy camp. Plagge did all of that. In 1942 we had Christmas in the camp. They set up a Christmas tree in the middle of a street and started running around shooting all over the camp. 200 Jews died.
Prosecutor Brandys: What was Plagge’s role in that?
Witness: He was one of the shooters.
Presiding Judge: Are there any more questions?
Defense Attorney Walas: In what period did defendant Lächert perform selections in Auschwitz?
Witness: I cannot recall the months or the year. I can say she took active part.
Defense Attorney Walas: Maybe the witness can recall for how long?
Witness: They kept changing, so I do not know exactly. We did not take any notes, because that could end in gallows.
Defense Attorney Walas: For how long was defendant Lächert in the camp?
Witness: At the end of the camp[’s existence], I do not know how long exactly.
Defense Attorney Walas: Where exactly was defendant Lächert active?
Witness: They were everywhere, as they were moved from camp to camp.
Defense Attorney Walas: What can the witness say about defendant Danz?
Witness: Defendant Danz did not conduct selections, as she was in the camp at the end of 1944, when the Germans were already demolishing the crematoria, sensing their coming defeat. The only things going on were the so-called rozwałki, that is, the shootings of specific groups. If selections were still going on, she definitely would have participated. She would beat and kick people, because those German women found it enjoyable.
Presiding Judge: The defendants may speak. Do they want to ask questions of the witness, do they want to present statements?
Defendant Plagge: Please ask the witness when was the Gypsy camp liquidated.
Witness: In 1943.
Defendnat Plagge: As far as I know, the liquidation took place in 1944.
Witness: I say it was 1943 and I stand by my testimony.
Defendant Brandl: I want to ask the witness if she knows who decided who would go to the gas chambers.
Witness: Every one of you decided on your own.
Defendant Brandl: Was a doctor present for it?
Witness: Sometimes a doctor was there, sometimes not.
Defendant Brandl: I would like to ask the witness if she has ever seen me with a dog?
Witness: No, I have never seen her with a dog.
Presiding Judge: Are there any questions?
Prosecution: No.
Defense: No.
Presiding Judge: Therefore the witness may be excused.