Statement
Written in Zeisheim D.P.– camp near Frankfurt on 3. and 4. 11. 1945 with Hermann Przewozník, Šlomo Fuchs, and Chaim Schwarzwald about the concentration camps Auschwitz II., Birkenau.
Przewoznik, born 16. 1. 1914 in Plonsk, prisoner of the concentration camp Auschwitz II. Birkenau (prisoner number 84256 ), Oranienburg, Sachsenhausen, Kauffering, Dachau.
Fuchs, born 3. 5. 1908 was imprisoned in Auschwitz II. Birkenau (Prisoner number 84033), Oranienburg, Flossenbürg, Dachau,
Schwarzwald, born 12. 11. 1921 in Plonsk, imprisoned in Auschwitz I (60.423), Birkenau, Oranienburg, Sachsenhausen, Dachau. All three are currently in the Zeisheim D. P. Camp near Frankfurt.
We worked in the Sauna – Birkenau disinfection chamber – from January 1943 to January 1945, i.e. until the evacuation, I, Herman Przewoznik, as a scribe, I, Šlomo Fuchs, as a worker on the so-called unclean side, and I, Chaim Schwarzwald, as a worker on the ramp.
When the transports arrived, the people were pulled out of the carriages, their things were taken away, and then they were turned over – men and women separately – for selection by the SS doctors Mengele, Thilo, Horstmann, König and others, who had the SS rank of Ober- or Hauptsturmführer. Men always stood on the right, and women on the left. The people selected for the camp were sent to the left side, the others, who were to be gassed, to the right. In the years ‘42 and ‘43, on average 20% percent of the people were sent to the camp. However, there were transports out of which only 5% or 10% were sent to the camp. Some transports were sent to the gas chambers without going through selection. This happened, for example, to the transports from Plonsk and Nový Dvůr, carrying 2,000 people, and other transports of Polish Jews.
In 1944, a larger portion, up to 40%, were sent to the camp, but nevertheless even during this time entire transports were sent to the gas chambers, such as the transport of Lithuanian Jews (1,886 women and children), who were sent to the gas chamber from the sauna under the direct orders of Mengele and Kramer in the beginning of October. Around October 1943, a transport arrived from Theresienstadt with roughly 1,000 to 1,200 children from Bialystok with their caretakers and nurses. They had Palestinian visas, but they were all gassed in Crematorium I. Four weeks later, a transport arrived from Hannover. Its occupants had American visas as American citizens, and we heard that they were to be exchanged for German prisoners of war. The artist Lola Lipmann from Warsaw was a passenger on this transport. In the sauna, Rapportführer Schillinger, who was known and feared as the Birkenau executioner, wanted to hurry her along when she suddenly shot him with his own revolver and seriously wounded the Arbeitsdienstführer from Auschwitz I. Until this incident, men were gassed in Crematorium II and women in Crematorium I. Afterwards, men and women were immediately separated, and women were either shot or gassed by SS helpers. Men were gassed in Crematorium II.
The people who were selected to be sent to the camp went into the sauna, where their hair was cut, they bathed, and changed into different clothes. The rest of the things they were allowed to take with them from the train station were also taken from them here. Each person was given a tattered shirt, sometimes underwear, a skirt or pants, and so-called Dutch clogs. Starting in 1944, women were no longer given any underwear, but only a dress or skirt, and a pyjama camisole. From the year 1Note 1: left blank, selection was conducted in Sauna II, during which pregnant women and other weak or injured people were sent to the crematorium’s sauna or to Bunker V. This selection was ordered by SS doctors, SS members Schniders and Haagen. Haagen regularly beat the women and personally brought them to the crematorium.
People who were selected to be gassed were taken directly from the ramp to one of the 4 crematoria or to Bunker V, which was a rustic house with a straw roof and 4 small rooms. Everywhere there were signs: Zum Bad. People had to get undressed there. Some transports were ordered to write letters in which they stated that they had arrived in one piece, were reunited with their friends, and were on their way to the baths.
In Crematoria I and II, gas was introduced from the top. The gas used was zyklon B Degesch (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung, Hamburg). In Crematoria III and IV, gas was let in through small windows. Bunker V used the same method. In the middle of Crematoria I and II, there were 4 four-sided poles out of tangled wire, into which gas was let in from the top (through green or yellow pieces of cardboard that released hydrogen cyanide gas when they came in contact with the humidity of the air). In Crematoria III and IV and in Bunker V, these gas carriers were thrown into the chambers through a side window by SS members wearing gas masks. The windows were then hermetically sealed. Crematoria I and II had a capacity of 3,000 people; Crematoria III and IV and Bunker V had a capacity of 1,500 people. Rottenführer Schniders, Haagen (at the time in Dachau), Sturmmann Gräf from Romania, Dobrovolský from Slovakia, and George from Katovice were in charge of the gassing. Moll was the head of the crematoria. Jews worked in all of the crematoria. Fifteen Russians, 3 Polish Kapos, 2 German head Kapos, and the Jewish Kapo Kaminský from Grodno, who was shot by Moll in 1944, worked alongside them. Death in the gas chamber took about 3 minutes for men, 5 minutes for women. Children, when they held onto their mothers, died in about 7 minutes. If the bunker was damp, it took longer to die in the gas chamber. The necessary dose of gas for 3,000 people was 3 kg of Zyklon. Schniders sometimes let less gas in, thereby prolonging the suffering of those inside the chamber.
When an Italian transport, arriving probably in January ‘44 and carrying 1,500 people, was sent to the gas chamber (Haagen administered the gas), a prisoner managed to throw a box containing the gas out of the window, and only a small amount of gas was released into the chamber. Then the bunker was hermetically sealed. Mengele, Kramer, and Haagen listened at the doors. For a long time, about ½ an hour, we could hear the desperate cries of the prisoners. Hauptschaarführer Moll, who beat women with a 2-meter whip, or used them for target practice, was also active around those sent to be gassed. He once tried to shoot 5 selected women with one shot. He like to pick beautiful women who he then shot in the neck while the others were killed by gas. He would then clean his jackboots with their blood. Our friend Jankel Silberberg from Zakroczym, who previously resided in Plonsk and is currently in the Polish Army, and who worked in the so-called Sonderkommando, can corroborate this. We know this because we brought gas for delousing to the crematoria every day.
In front of Bunker V there was a small birch grove that we called the little birch. It was mostly women who were gassed in Bunker V. If the transport contained more than 1,500 women, the rest waited behind the bunker until the first 1,500 were gassed and made ready to be burned in the ditch. Bunker V did not have a crematorium nearby, but a ditch in which the bodies were doused with gasoline and burned in piles. About 6,000 bodies were burned all at once. The ash was used as fertilizer for the tree nursery, to seal potato bunkers in order to keep out the humidity, or to scatter over the paths in Buna. The rest was thrown into water.
Crematoria I and II were put into operation in March 1943. The first transport was from Krakow. Its men arrived at the camp and received the numbers 108 thousand and higher. It was followed by transports from Greece with numbers 109 all the way up to 117 thousand. About 2 months later, Crematoria II and IV were put into operation. Bunker 5 was used until the crematoria were ready, which was later, once again in 1944, when Hungarian transports arrived carrying 850,000 Jews, 70,000 Jews from Lodz, and 2 transports from Theresienstadt.
The Birkenau camp had 27 buildings, 12 of which were wooden (former horse stables) and 15 of which were made of stone. There were up to 1,000 prisoners in each wooden building, and up to 1,500 prisoners in each stone building. This was in the old men’s camp, which was changed to the women’s camp later in June, 1943. At the time, men were sent to Camp D, Bauabschnitt II (B II d). Until March 1943, the Blockälteste of block 15 was the Polish priest Vladyk. He was followed by the French Jew Leon Cimbler, nicknamed the boxer, who killed up to 50 Jews a day. The Blockälteste of block 21 was the Polish officer Januš Pokřivnický, who sadistically beat and tortured the prisoners of his block.
The Blockälteste of block 5 was a German named Albert Hammerle, who tortured and killed
many Jews every day. French
Jew
Schaffmann carried out acts of equal cruelty
in block 27. The French
Jew
Pinkus was in block 22, where members
of the new transports were sent. He greeted newcomers by striking them with a cane, hammer,
and an iron strap. He tried to kill as
many as he could and also took from them what money, gold, and valuables they had left. He
greeted them with the words: I’ll make sure you’ll live for only 1 or 2 hours, you
Hurensöhne.
The head of the sauna until March 43 was a
Pole named Štefan, who was a dangerous sadist, especially towards
the Jews. Other dangerous sadists were the Germans Alois and Martin, a certain Stefan – a Volksdeutscher from Poland ‒
Schilfsmeer, the camp
kapo Thin, the kapo
Chaim Kleinmann from Plonsk, and head kapo
Rudi(a German who was also
an executioner) from the More commando.
Camps B I A and B I B were FKL (women’s concentration camps). The head SS women were, among others: Mandler, Drexler, Greise, Hasse, Brandl, Zarecki, Müller, and the SS men were: Perschel – Arbeitsdienstführer, Teller – Rapportführer, Schluz – Arbeitsdienstführer. Hössler was the Lagerführer. All of them tortured prisoners in indescribable ways. Schulz once grabbed a woman who was working on the road construction by the legs and beat her head with a stone. I, Chaim Schwarzwald, saw this with my own eyes.
B II A. A QuarantineCamp for newcomers. Quarantine lasted from 3 weeks to 3 months. It consisted of 16 wooden buildings. Sometimes, Dr. Mengele, Thilo, and others carried out the selection process there. Most were sent to the gas chambers, and the rest was transferred to Camp D or other camps. This camp was put into operation when the transports from Sosnowiec and Bedzin arrived. At the beginning of August 1943, the people from these transports received the numbers 132,000 and higher.
B II A. The so-called Czech camp was opened to accommodate the Theresienstadt transports in September 1943 with numbers 146,000 and higher. Men, women, and children were housed together in this camp. When these transports arrived, selection didn’t take place by the tracks and the arrivals did not have their hair cut. On 8. 3. 1944 during Purim, the entire transport but for a few exceptions was gassed. Later, this camp was changed to an FKL. At the time, Greise was the Rapportführer there.
B II C. It was opened in June 1944 for the women from the transports from Hungary and Lodz. The SS woman Kuk was the Rapportführer. This camp was liquidated in October 1944. The majority was sent to the gas chambers. Only the women employed in the weaving mill were spared. SS guard Hasse oversaw this selection.
B III D.
A labor camp for men, 32 blocks. The camp opened in 1943 and was in operation until the evacuation of Auschwitz.
B II E. The so-called Gypsy camp opened in the spring of of 1943. Gypsies from everywhere in Europe were there until 1944. Afterwards, some were put onto transports and the rest were killed in the gas chambers. Transports from Hungary, Lodz, and Theresienstadt then arrived in the camp. This camp was in operation until the evacuation.
B II F. Krankenbau was supervised by the Polish doctor Zengfeller, a mass murderer and assistant to the doctors during the selection process.
B II g. The so-called Effektenlager and sauna. At the beginning of May 1944, all of the luggage from the people on the latest transports was brought there. A total of 1,200 women and 600 men worked in the Effektenlager, which was called Kanada. The head of the Effektenlager was Oberstrumführer Kratzer who said that luggage was insignificant, the main thing was the destruction of the Jews. The luggage was sorted by women and sent to Germany. Also, human hair was disinfected, packed, and sent.
B III., so-called Mexico. This camp opened in May 1944 for transports from Hungary, Lodz, and Theresienstadt. Here, too, there were only women, at least 90% of whom were sent to the gas chamber at the beginning of 1944. Kramer, Mengele, and most of the doctors and SS female wardens personally took part in this selection process.
The newly arrived generally didn’t know what lay ahead for them. At night, they sometimes saw the glow of the fire and the loading of dead bodies. Acts of resistance would sometimes occur. There was shooting, but the SS usually managed to calm them down. They were shown the sauna and told it was a delousing station, and, when their anger subsided, people were led to the gas chambers.
I, Herman Przewoznik, saw with my own eyes a mother with 3 small children try to run away at night, horrified at what she’d seen. She came upon Sturmmann Wagner in Camp D. He calmed her down and led her to the gas chamber.
One night during the arrival of a transport from Theresienstadt in October 1944 the
women supposedly resisted. We heard a scream and Moll’s voice,
shouting: Quickly get back inside. You’re only going for a bath and then you’ll be out
again.
Then we heard them being hit with canes and dogs barking. During the selection
processes in the camps
people knew what was truly happening, but they never resisted.
In 1942, when the crematoria weren’t yet in operation, Bunker V was never enough. Once, children were thrown into the fire. Some had previously been killed, but some were still alive.
Until March 1943 the selection process took place 2 to 3 times a week in the camp. The selection process was carried out by SS doctors, with the help of a Polish doctor named Dr. Zenkfeller, who was a dangerous anti-semite. During the roll calls, the selected had their numbers taken down and they were sent to block 7. Prior to this, they were tattooed with the letter L next to their number. During each selection process 1,500 men and 1,500 women were selected to be gassed. Then, from March until Yom Kippur 1943, the selection process didn’t occur. At that time, the women from Camp B I a and B I b were taken to their camp’s sauna, and Obersturmführer Roder selected and ordered 5,500 women to be gassed. At the same time, 6,500 men from all of the camps that were part of Auschwitz were selected to be gassed. These 12,000 Jews were led to the gas chambers at the same time as the Kol Nidre was being sung. Naked men and women were led to the crematoria to the sound of the Kol Nidre and Hatikvah being sung. Afterwards, only smaller selection processes resumed, until the day of 1.1.1944, when Drs. Mengele and Thilo conducted a large selection process in the men’s and women’s camp. This was repeated on 19.1.1944. After these selection processes, only about 800 Jews remained in the camp. On 7. 3. 1944, the September transport from Theresienstadt, numbering 5,000 people, were gassed.
This is how it happened: On March 7th, the entire transport was led to Camp B II a. During the evening of March 8th (Purim) at 11 o’clock at night they received refreshment packages and the order to write the date March 27th on pieces of paper. They were told that they would be taken to another camp in Heidebreck. In order to confuse them, they were first taken to Auschwitz I and from there back to Birkenau.
During the arrival of the December transport from Theresienstadt, when the people were having their jewelry and gold taken away, an older woman wanted to keep her wedding ring. Rottenführer Waldemar Bedarf, a Volksdeutscher from Poland, violently pulled her ring off and beat her. Bedarf was one of the leading executioners in Birkenau. The transport that I have just mentioned was taken to Family Camp B II b without going through the selection process. One thousand six hundred and twenty five men and about 500 women from this transport were sent to work and the rest were gassed in May 1944, with the exception of roughly 80 children aged 10-12, who arrived at Camp D and later departed on another transport.
In May 1944, transports of Hungarian Jews began arriving in Birkenau, first from Transylvania, and then from Carpatho-Ukraine. Eight to ten transports arrived every day, each carrying 2,000 people. The selection process took place on the ramp. J. Kramer was personally charged with liquidating the Hungarian transports. A total of 800,000 Jews came from Hungary, 115,000 of whom were sent to the camp, most of them women. After the transports from Hungary, in August several transports arrived from Lodz, totaling about 70,000 people. Roughly 9,000 of them were sent to the camp. At about the same time, 7,000 women arrived from other Polish labor camps and from Lublin. A transport arrived with about 5,000 non-Jewish people, among them around 300 young, healthy, Jewish women and girls from the Lublin labor camp. These women were sent to the quarantine camp, and 3 days later were sent from there to the crematorium to be gassed. They fought back, but were quickly subdued. They then asked to be given more gas, and their wish was granted. It’s unclear why these young, fit to work women were gassed.
Before the arrival of the Hungarian transports, a transport from Theresienstadt arrived in the Czech family camp in May 1944, again without going through the selection process. Later, those able to work were sent away.
In the fall of 1944, many transports from Theresienstadt arrived, totalling 20,000 people. These transports weren’t sent to the family camp like the previous ones from Theresienstadt, but went through the selection process on the ramp. The number of the people selected is unknown, but it can be assumed that no more than 25% of the individual transports were sent to the camp. On January 24th, 1945, a sauna was to be prepared for the rest of the inhabitants from Theresienstadt. Since all of the mothers who had their children with them from the Theresienstadt transports – like all the others – were gassed, sometimes the mothers were advised to give their children to older women. There were even cases of children being violently torn away from their mothers. Only rarely did a mother know what awaited her and still handed over her child. There were some cases of children who were more mature and understood the situation, who stated that they were orphans and thus saved their parents.
If a smaller transport – under 50 people – arrived, its occupants weren’t taken to be gassed, but were killed with a shot to the back of the head. This was done with a nail gun and then the corpses were burned. This was also done in the crematoria. These executions were often carried out by SS men: Moll and a certain Unterschaarführer nicknamed Mojše Borek. People who were sentenced to death were led to their executions individually by a special commando of 12 prisoners called shooters. The corpses were then dragged away, and so the next people in line didn’t know what was happening, although blood could be seen.
After the transports from Theresienstadt came the transports from Slovakia, roughly 10,000 people. They were put through the usual selection process.
On December 10th, 1944, Crematoria I and II and Bunker V began to be torn down. The whole camp was mobilized and made to perform this work under the supervision of several SS men. After this date, only very small transports arrived. Gassing stopped altogether. The crematoria gas chambers were blown up on January 7th, 1945, several hours before the camp was evacuated. Crematorium IV remained standing.
During this whole time, smaller and larger transports continued to arrive from all over Europe. Once, 3 Jews from Tunisia, Corfu, and Rhodes, and a Jewish American navy soldier arrived by airplane. Later, they were gassed with a group of pregnant women. During Passover 43, 2 Rabbis who had privileged positions arrived from Thessaloniki. They were allowed to keep their clothes, their hair and beards weren’t cut, they didn’t have to work, they were often photographed, and had to write a letter stating that they were treated well and that they were performing their religious functions. This comedy didn’t last long. They were sent to the gas chambers. In the fall of 1944, twins, midgets, and people with other physical disabilities were selected from the Hungarian, Theresienstadt, and Slovak transports and sent to the Krankenbau in order to be experimented upon.
From 1942 to 1944, the Lagerführers in Birkenau were: Obersturmführer Schwarzhuber, who was replaced for a short time by Obersturmführer Thumann, then Obersturmführer Krause. Of the Lagerältestes from B I a and B I b, we mention additionally the Polish woman Stenia (currently a defendant in the Lüneburg trial) and the Slovak woman Ila Klein from Bardejov, both of whom are responsible for the deaths of a countless number of women.
The underground movement in the camp began in May 1943 in the sauna in the old men’s camp. One Polish Jew (Fuchs) and 2 Jews from France (Stein and Handelsmann) first agreed to mutually help illegal workers. Those who worked in the so-called better commandos agreed to help their comrades. The movement did not have a clear ideology. It was an underground liberation movement. The organization could exist because at the time people could move around the camp with greater freedom than before (prisoners could meet after work, the death penalty was banned, etc.) Their membership was small because they only accepted people who were known to have performed illegal work before arriving in the camp. Later, the organization also contained women, mainly French and Polish. In terms of nationality, its members were mainly Polish and French Jews, there were also several Czech Jews, several Jewish women, and one German who was not a Jew. When the Hungarian transports began to arrive, gassing was supposed to cease and so we decided to procure explosives and weapons. The women who worked in the Union commando, Auschwitz I (a munitions factory), acquired dynamite in small doses. The dynamite was used to make small handmade grenades in Crematorium I. With the help of Russian prisoners, we managed to acquire 4 revolvers. One Belgian Jew got a machine gun with the help of the Russians. The committee that orchestrated the uprising was composed of Alexandre Lazar (France) and two Polish Jews, David and Minko, who fought in the Spanish Civil War. To establish contact with the outside world, the Pole Kostek was sent to the join the partisans in the area. We soon received an order from the outside that we shouldn’t start anything without outside help. Nevertheless, we continued organizing and creating cells. The movement was rather strong at the time. For example, in the Effektenlager 110 people were part of the movement. We were never betrayed. We got in touch with the Russians and began planning an uprising. But the Russians were also of the opinion that we shouldn’t prepare anything more without
The Russians are here!and ran. The SS surrounded the area and all of them were shot. All in all, 455 men were killed that day. The whole uprising was spearheaded by a special commando, but the illegal organization didn’t participate in it because it didn’t get an order from the outside.
On January 17th, 1945, the camp was finally liquidated. At the time, it still had 6,000 people in it. On January 18th, it was completely liquidated. Only the sick from Camp B II f remained.
Dr. Robert Weinberger
Statement written up by: Dr. Robert Weinberger and Dr. Erich Nasch during his visit to Zeisheim near Frankfurt.