Voices from Ravensbrück

Bożysław Kurowski, M.L., Institute assistant taking the record

RECORD OF WITNESS TESTIMONY no. 4

Witness: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
Born: 11 November 1921
In: Będorzyn, Sierpc powiat
Occupation: farmer
Faith: Roman Catholic
Parents' names: Władysław and Helena
Last place of residence in Poland: Świerczynek, Płock powiat
Current place of residence: the same

Having been informed of the importance of truthful testimony, the consequences of false testimony and his responsibility to tell the truth, he has made the following statement:

From June 1941, to June 1943, I was in the concentration camp at Blechhammer in Upper Silesia as a political prisoner, having the number ________, and wearing a red triangle with the letter "P" on it.

After that, I was in the labour camp at Oświęcim [Auschwitz] in July and August 1943. Number tattooed 125,817.

Then for three weeks I was in the Neuengamme camp near Hamburg, and from there was taken to the rubber factory in Hannover, where I worked until 1 April 1945. On 2 April 1945, we were evacuated to Bergen Belsen.

Asked whether I have any specific information from my time or work in the concentration camp about how it was organised, the camp regimen, inmates' working conditions, treatment of prisoners, medical and pastoral care, hygienic conditions, and also specific events in all areas of camp life, I can state the following:

My testimony includes eight hand-written pages, and describes:

1. My being tortured in May 1941 at the Gestapo headquarters in Drobin
2. Work conditions and rations in the camp at Blechhammer in 1942-3
3. Three week stay for interrogations in Mysłowice in May 1943. Daily routine and discipline in the prison at Mysłowice during that time
4. Difficult work conditions at the rubber factory in Hannover
5. The evacuation of 1200 prisoners from Hannover to Bergen Belsen
6. Experiences in the camp at Bergen Belsen from 2 April 1945 to 25 July 1945

[page 2] On 1 May 1941, I was arrested in Świerczynek by the Gestapo, charged with listening to foreign radio broadcasts, and I was put in the prison at Płock after having been interrogated in Drobin at the gendarmerie headquarters. Then I was taken to the camp at Blechhammer in Upper Silesia, where I stayed for two years, [and then] was finally taken to Mysłowice for further police interrogations, and in June 1943 I was put in the camp at Oświęcim [Auschwitz] (bl[ock] 4), and after 3 weeks I was moved to Rajsk-Birkenau in a punishment company (Strafkompanie) for 6 weeks. From Rajsk, I was taken to the concentration camp at Neuen Gamme [sic] near Hamburg. I was quarantined for 3 weeks there, and was taken by transport to Hannover, where I worked in a rubber factory until 1 April 1945. In conjunction with the evacuation of those areas, I was put in the camp at Bergen Belsen on 2 April 1945. On 15 April 1945, we were liberated at the Bergen Belsen camp by the English. On 19 April 1945, I fell ill with typhoid fever, and on 22 June 1945, I was taken to Sweden. - I would like to add that in June 1942, in conjunction with the journey to the camp at Blechhammer, I was given a prison uniform (striped) and a red triangle with the letter "P", which I wore [page 3] until the war ended.

As far as the subject of the torture of those under arrest goes, I can state the following from my personal experience: in May 1941, I spent one week at the Gestapo headquarters in Drobin. I was interrogated every day about my listening to foreign radio broadcasts. Each interrogation lasted about 15 minutes in the presence of four Gestapo. Because I did not admit to having listened to the radio, I got tortured terribly. I was laid down on a stool, one held me by the arms, one by the legs, and two at a time whipped me as if they were threshing grain. The first days I could still feel the number of blows, there might have been about 150, that is: one hundred fifty, at each interrogation, then I lost consciousness and woke up only once I was in the arrest cell already. My whole body was black and blue, there simply was not any white space anywhere, not even the width of a finger. When I fell off the stool, they continued to beat me as I lay stretched out on the floor. This kind of torture lasted the entire week, then I was taken to the prison in Płock. In Plock, I was not beaten anymore. Six months later, I got ulcerating wounds in the area of my hips, I think they were the result of the beatings mentioned above.

In Blechhammer there were about 2000 Poles. We worked building the factory. The work we did varied, making pails, making some kind of lubricant from coal. I worked moving railway tracks in the "Gleiskolonne". [German, "railway track column"]. Everyone used to call it the death column, the work was hard. The worst wachmani [German, Wachmänner, guards] would walk up and down supervising that column. I weighed 45 kg at that time, now I weigh 85 kg. Sometimes just 12 people, who were very weak, would move a big rail; sometimes they had to be hauled through the mud. We got 300 g of bread a day, two dkg of butter and 1 litre of soup, or instead of soup we would get five potatoes and half a litre of soup. Three times a week two to three dkg of sausage was added. In the morning and evening we got ½ litre of coffee. In addition to that, the factory gave ¾ litre of potato soup daily of its own accord. At Blechhammer, there were was no major beating, [page 4] for special punishment people would be put in the bunker, where bread was only given once every other day. The factory would punish people for not fulfilling norms, and would not give just that ¾ litre of soup.

In 1943, I was in Mysłowice for another three weeks of interrogations, also in the camp, in a prison building, in the "Single", as it was called. There were about 70 of us. There we slept on iron beds, without any hay, and no blankets, just in our clothes. The daily routine was as follows: reveille was at six-thirty in the morning. At the command "aufstehen!" and preparing [six] to wash, we took our towels, stripped to the waist and, with hands raised high, we had to rush to the washroom, beaten along the way with rubber batons. It was crowded in the washroom, as there were only 2 taps. An SS and German guards counted to 10, sometimes to 15, by which time we all had to wash. Then came the command "fertig!" and everyone whether washed or not had to rush back to their beds, hands raised high. Washing took place by "street", i.e. in groups of 20 or 25 people. After returning from the washroom, the SS counted once again to four, and in that time, people had to be on their beds in the position he required. Basically we were supposed to lie like that all day, a change in position was allowed only on command, and we could not say a single word, either.

Lunch was at noon. We got a piece of bread [weighing] 8-10 dkg, and ¾ litre of thin soup, sometimes sprinkled with a few cabbage leaves. After lunch, we once again were forced to lie on our beds until suppertime in the position dictated to us. During this time, some people would be taken for interrogation. For supper, we would get another piece of bread of about 10 dkg, ½ litre of coffee, and a couple of grams of jam. We would go to the toilet in groups, on command; sometimes we would have to jump into the toilet from a crouching position, with hands held high or placed on our necks. For breakfast, we would get another piece of bread of the same size, i.e. 10 dkg, and coffee. We all slept in one big room, fenced in with barbed wire on the inside, [page 5] and on the outside by the prison wall. The beds were triple or quadruple bunks. Two SS-Wachmani stood guard outside the barbed wire in the middle of the room, a third sat on the "stork", above the fourth level of the bunks, with a machine gun in his hand and a spotlight that he would shine when he heard any noises or movements from the prisoners lying there.

After arriving at Oświęcim [Auschwitz], I got red dots on my back, chest and on the right side of my pants, which meant that I was not allowed to leave the area of the camp. I did not have any work, either, I only wandered around the camp. After three weeks, we were taken to Rajsko-Birkenau to the penal company in bl[ock] 11, surrounded by a high wall. The red dots meant we belonged to the penal company. There was more food there than in the free blocks, and it was cleaner, there were no vermin. We were isolated during our free time, we were not allowed to speak with those who were in the free blocks. For the most part, prisoners from the penal company were assigned more difficult work.

After arriving from the camp at Neuen Gamme [sic] near Hamburg, the red dots were taken off of us and after being quarantined we were assigned work in Hannover, in a battery factory. The work was hard, I shaped rubber with rollers, others made moulds in the kilns and batteries out of rubber. The work lasted 12 hours a day, at a very high temperature, not everyone was able to withstand it; people were surrounded by steam pipes and moulds for battery cases. Even though there were fans every four steps, it was nevertheless difficult to stand [the heat], and people grew weaker, and were drenched with sweat. The factory gave us 1.50-3.00 RM for our work. For 3.00 RM, you could get 20 cigarettes and a bowl of beets in the canteen. We were not beaten especially much. Only the roll calls were long, and took place three times a day. There were about 1800 people employed there.

[page 6] On 2 April, in conjunction with the evacuation, after after having gone 50 km on foot, we found ourselves in the camp at Bergen Belsen. About 1200 prisoners walked there, herded by SS men. Along the way, the civilian population gave us water, but others - especially children - threw rocks and sand at us. One German woman, upon seeing our procession, started to cry, and one SS man replied that those are not people, those are dogs, cattle. One prisoner who fainted was shot on the way. I personally saw 14 [executions by shooting] carried out by SS men, because I was walking in the last group of one hundred. I helped one man along for 10 km, but he was shot, too, because he fell to the ground and simply could not continue anymore. People were shot, mostly in the head, as they lay in the ditch.

At Bergen Belsen

It was terribly frightening entering the camp, most striking was the stench of corpses coming from the place. We entered at night, and were assigned to various blocks. In the morning, I awoke with a lot of vermin all over me. We slept on two-storey bunks, in our clothes, covered with whatever we still had from Hannover, if we managed to bring anything. In other blocks, people were sleeping on the floor, one next to another. When we went out to the yard where the roll call took place, I saw around us were piles of green corpses, one on top of the other, sometimes piled higher, sometimes lower, mostly near the fence. Next to block 13 there was a morgue (a masonry structure) - the corpses had obviously been there for a very long time, as they no longer resembled humans at all. There could have been more than three thousand corpses in the morgue, ones which the crematoria had not managed to burn, it was only later than pits were dug.

On the square there could have been about 6000 corpses. We stood on the square for roll call from 7 to 10 a.m. [page 7] No one took the roll call. The camp commandant would come and the orders would only concern the removal of corpses and digging of pits for corpses at a distance of about 800-1500 m from the barracks, but within the camp. We pulled the corpses on ropes or straps, tied by their hands or legs, through the women's camp to the pits. Two people would drag one corpse. The blokowi [German, die Blockältesten: prisoners who were the heads of blocks] supervised the work and the "Ordnungsdienst" [German, "order service"] people, who would beat people who could not pull anymore with rods. I personally saw cases [sic] when six prisoners were killed by being beaten with rods like that. Others grew weak and fell along the way, and were taken away to the pits. The people who were pulling also had fevers and were ill. - The pits were filled with earth.

For the entire two weeks of my stay, I received about 200 g (two hundred grams) of bread one time only, and daily ½ litre portions of thick soup made of swedes, thickened with flour. This was what everyone who was strong enough to go get the food received. There was no coffee at all, or water in the taps. You could just get water by pilfering it from the basins next to the kitchen. It was not possible to wash, either, the taps in the blocks were broken, there was no running water whatsoever. I washed just twice during those two weeks.

It was very cold in the blocks at night. Once I wanted to move closer to the man next to me so it would be warmer, but he was dead already - his body was stiff, and the man on the other side was also dead.

Several times, I saw hungry prisoners carving or cutting out a corpse's heart and flesh from the buttocks, then they cooked it, or roasted it if there was no water, and then ate it. Once, an SS man, upon seeing that a prisoner was cutting flesh [from a corpse], shot and killed him on the spot, I saw that with my own eyes. I also saw instances of Ukrainian prisoners selling human flesh for cigarettes. They said it was meat organised from [page 8] the kitchen. It was wrapped in paper. Boards ripped off of barracks, among other things, were used for firewood. They were set under the barbed wires, in between the barracks and among the corpses. They had to be set on the sly, as the blokowi and the "ordnungsdienst" people responsible for order would put out fires by pouring cooked food on them. A swede peel found tossed out behind the kitchen was a tasty morsel for everyone, just like people used to eat cake at home.

Liberation by the English army

On 15 April 1945, at two in the afternoon, three English tanks entered the camp. The prisoners went wild with joy, as if they had gone mad. They hugged each other, moved that they had survived it all. We looked like animals, we had not shaved for a long time, unwashed, dressed in rags, emaciated. Not everyone could go out to greet the liberators, however, because they were ill and dying - but they were overcome with emotion and joy. There were shouts of joy "Hurrah!" The tanks stopped half-way through the camp, as the prisoners gathered there blocked their way. We asked them for food - the English officer promised there would be food the next day, saying that they were just the first of the English forces that were still to come. The prisoners rushed to the warehouses and cellars immediately, and to the earthen mounds where potatoes were stored, which were opposite the women's camp. All night long, people cooked things over fires, without fear, and with the sense that they were free men.

The next day, English convoys brought bread, tins, and all day long split pea soup with meat was cooked in all the kitchens, milk. People ate so much that everyone fell ill afterwards with diarrhoea.

Four days after liberation, [page 9] I fell ill with typhus and was taken to the hospital in Celle, located 24 km away from Bergen Belsen.

Burying corpses after liberation

It was no longer permitted to drag corpses hundreds of metres across the ground with ropes. SS men, caught in the forests, and SS women as well, were brought back, and it was they who now were put to work disposing of corpses. The dead were gently put onto lorries and taken outside the camp, to where the burial pits were, except that now the pits where the dead were placed were now narrower, and the bodies were then covered with branches. After all the corpses had been removed, a special Mass was said for the dead at the burial site. Mass was said by a Polish priest who had been a prisoner at the Bergen Belsen camp.

The SS men were forced to work by the English, who sometimes beat them, and had to work at a good pace. At that time, we got the same as we had gotten at Bergen Belsen, i.e. ½ litre of swede soup a day.

I was taken to Sweden on 25 July 1945.

I am prepared at any time to testify regarding the events described above under oath in court as an eyewitness.

My arm bears a tattoo from Oświęcim [Auschwitz] - prisoner number 125,817. I currently feel completely healthy, and I am glad to have survived. Sometimes in camp I thought to myself that it would have been better had I never been born.

Read, signed, accepted
(-)
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Comments of the person taking the record:
The witness showed me his tattoo number 125,817 from Oświęcim [Auschwitz]. The witness gives the impression of being truthful and elicits complete trust.
( - )
Bożysław Kurowski
Institute assistant