Bydgoszcz, 5 December 1947
Eugenia Glina
Weyssenhoffa Square 7, flat 4
To the Chief Prosecutor
of the Supreme National Tribunal
in Kraków
While reading the reports from the trial of Auschwitz tormentors, I found out that SS woman Brandl is also present in the dock. I have a lot to say about her activities.
As Auschwitz prisoner no. 7435, I worked in the clothes barrack since 1942. Defendant Brandl was our Aufseherin [overseer], so I had the opportunity to observe her actions.
Defendant Brandl was particularly hostile towards Jewish women and she tormented them inhumanely at every occasion. When a transport of emaciated and famished Jewish women from the Łódź ghetto arrived, they took the required bath and were given, in winter, a set of camp clothes consisting of a shirt, a dress and a pair of clogs. Then, when one of the newly arrived women asked for a warmer dress, defendant Brandl launched herself at her, beat and kicked her so severely that the poor woman never got up.
I also saw defendant Brandl carry out a selection in the bathhouse on her own, sending all the women with stomachs bloated from hunger to the crematorium. From one transport consisting of 500 women, she chose 200, justifying her decision with the fact that they were pregnant and therefore unable to work. She used to say, “We don’t need none of those”.
Among the defendants in the Kraków trial, there is also the former camp commandant, Mandl, whom I remember very well, because she took Tusia, my companion in distress, as well as my aunt Rena Igel to the block of death (1) in Birkenau, claiming that they were sick.
When both women begged for mercy, assuring that they were healthy and able to work, Mandl beat them so hard that they had to be carried to that block. We were left behind the hospital wires and forced to watch it. It happened during the horrible selection in 1944.
When, on 10 August 1943, I saw my father at the camp road, after he had been brought there, I threw myself into his arms, because I had not seen him since my arrest, that is since 11 May 1942. As a result, commandant Mandl sent me to the bunker in block 11, in the men’s camp, where I was horribly tortured for two weeks. Then, I was transferred to the SK [penal company], where I paved roads and cleared forests for three months. That work was beyond my strength and completely ruined my health once and for all.
I also had to watch my mother and 15-year-old sister being thrown into the crematorium furnace and being burnt alive. My husband was also murdered in Auschwitz.
When I now read the reports from the Kraków trial, all those horrible memories are so real and clear to me that the above testimony fully represents the truth and is not in the least exaggerated. I reckon that the members of the Supreme National Tribunal will believe the testimony of an old political prisoner of Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, and it will contribute to the imposition of a deserved punishment on my tormentors.