Piotrowice, 20 December 1947
Henryk Głuch
Nowa Street 18
Piotrowice near Katowice
To the Supreme [National] Tribunal in Kraków
Regarding: the murder of a group of nine prisoners from the Mehlfahrer kommando.
With regard to the ongoing trial of Auschwitz criminals, I would like to draw attention to one of many committed crimes, which apparently, as I understand from press and radio releases, has not been mentioned yet but should be exposed. Based on all the clues assembled, that case involves one former Auschwitz prisoner. In order to get to the heart of the matter, I have to start with myself.
I arrived at Auschwitz on 18 December 1940. From the second half of April 1942, I was assigned to a group of millers consisting of 23 prisoners. We were called Kommando Mühle Babitz, and after a year – Kommando Mühle Auschwitz. We worked in a mill situated half an hour’s walk from the camp. We co-operated with a group of 10 prisoners called the Mehlfahrer, who every day came to our mill for ground flour which they transported to the warehouse situated at the opposite side of the street. The Mehlfahrers, as a mobile group, were able to make contact with civilians. It was even easier for them, because one of them was a lifelong resident of Auschwitz and because they delivered flour to different bakeries, hospitals, kitchens, etc. under the escort of two SS men.
Once, a prisoner named Tadek was assigned to the group for a certain period of time to replace a different prisoner who was a wagon-driver. One day in the winter of 1942 to 1943, Arbeitsdienstführer [work service leader] Fliess (with the rank of Unterscharführer) drove up on a motorcycle at 7.00 a.m., loaded those ten prisoners onto two wagons, which were always at their disposal, and rushed off to the camp. The civilians working in the nearby bakery informed us that it happened, because one of the two SS men “sniffed out” ten hidden sets of civilian clothes and phoned the camp. Tadek was not arrested. We were sure that we would never see them again. The head of our mill, Unterscharführer Messner, and the SS men who guarded us told us that the men had been accused of attempting an escape (Fluchtversuch). Long before the dinner, we heard from the grapevine that the arrested were already dead. At noon, Essenfahrers [food monitors] who brought us cauldrons confirmed the news.
When we came back to the camp in the evening, but still before the roll call, we heard the sad news that they had been dead since 9.00 a.m. They died in block 11, although not all of them, but only ten. The eleventh man was held in the bunker in block 11. He was a certain young Ukrainian who could not have been guilty, because he did not work there, but was assigned to replace Tadek. On that day, Tadek did not show up for work, because he had allegedly made an appointment with a doctor and was in the hospital. It was not true, because that very evening I met him on a street in the camp called Birkenallee. When I stopped him and said, “Tadek! You are so lucky you have skived off work today”, he gave me short shrift, saying that he had no time, suddenly turned between block 4-3 and disappeared in the crowd. He was visibly agitated. At first, I did not tell anyone about it. In certain years of the existence of the camp’s underground organisation, Tadek was mentioned as someone whom we should avoid, because he was an informer. When Tadek was thrown into the bunker, those who were held with him would usually die. Stefan Markowski from Lublin, who told me a lot about him, can provide lots of detailed information. Tadek’s close friends said that he was called Tadeusz Rosiak, he came from Warsaw and was known as a thief. It might be true, because he had several scars on his face, which – as his friends claimed – were left by knifemen.
The following fact may serve as another indication of his guilt, or rather his activities as an informer: more or less in the middle of the summer of 1944, Tadek appeared in the same group and in the same place just for one day under the pretext of finding buried gold, which he had supposedly buried when he worked there. On the following day, he did not come again. I still worked in the same mill. The following day on the mill ramp, I saw an elegant civilian in high boots. His face seemed familiar to me. I recognized him as the famous Unterscharführer Emmerich, who was the Arbeitsdienstführer at that time. He went into the private apartment of the head of the mill, SS man Messner. After a while, he came out and waited at the mill ramp, looking in the direction of the flour warehouse. Our supervisor Messner, who also had guilty conscience, was afraid that new Mehlfahrers would give him away. Since the case involved the mill, so the supervisor and we were also concerned, he told us the reason of Emmerich’s visit. We, on our part, tipped off the civilians working in the former Składnica Kółek Rolniczych [Agricultural Associations Repository], who told the Mehlfahrers that they should not communicate with each other, so Emmerich did not achieve what he wanted. Emmerich told Messner that Tadek was also involved in that case, as Messner informed us.
It happened so that I left Auschwitz on 29 October 1944 with the same transport as Tadek. We were in Oranienburg, Sachsenhausen and Barth (assigned to the main camp in Ravensbrück). Prisoners there were also on their guard against Tadek, because for us he was the same person that we knew in Auschwitz.
The above suspicions will linger in the minds of former prisoners until the authorities try to shed some light on this case. Maybe one of the defendants, if confronted with Tadek, could say more about him.
During my whole stay in Auschwitz I closely observed everything, so I could answer a lot of questions and describe many things that will never be described by anyone else. Therefore, I would be glad to testify in the next part of the trial against the rest of the criminals awaiting their trial in prisons.
P.S. Tadek has returned and is alive. I saw him at the reunion of former political prisoners on 14 June 1947.