On 3 December 1947 in Kraków, Investigating Officer Dr. Eryk Dormicki, head doctor of the Montelupich Prison at the Ministry of Public Security in Kraków, interviewed the person mentioned below as a witness, having advised him in accordance with Article 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and Article 64 of the Code of Military Criminal Procedure of the criminal liability for making false declarations pursuant to Article 140 of the Penal Code.
| Name and surname | Willi Schlagintweit |
| Parents’ names | Lorenz and Anna Mayer, of blessed memory |
| Date of birth | 5 June 1907 |
| Place of birth | Montelupich Prison |
| Nationality | German (Bavarian) |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Occupation | merchant |
| Education | 8 years of primary school and 3 years of merchant school |
| Marital status | bachelor |
| Property | none |
| Criminal record | in 1939 sentenced to 3 years in prison for fraud |
| Relationship to the suspect | none |
Aware of the criminal liability for concealing the truth or making false declarations,
I solemnly swear to tell the whole truth and not to conceal anything I know.
/-/ Willi Schlagintweit
Question: What can the witness say about defendant Wilhelm Gehring?
Answer: I met the defendant in the Monowitz camp when I was punished with 10 days in a Stehbunker [standing cell]. The defendant was the manager of the bunker at that time and his task was to feed the prisoners once a day. He, however, decided to starve the prisoners and gave them food every second day, delaying the serving of food on purpose.
Question: What else can the witness say about defendant Gehring’s activities?
Answer: He had the worst reputation in the camp, among both the prisoners and the SS men.
Question: Will the witness please tell me in which other camp the witness stayed, what food the prisoners were given and how they were murdered?
Answer: From 15 December 1942 to April 1943, I was in Mauthausen-Gusen, and then I was transferred to Monowitz, Flossenbürg and Hersbruck. I escaped from Hersbruck with a Russian officer named Wasyl Mikołajewicz Sołotow, born in Kalinin [Tver] near Smolensk, resident in Moscow. After the escape, the officer hid in his sister’s house in Garmisch- Partenkirchen.
As far as my stay in the Gusen camp is concerned, I can say that during three months of work in the quarry, I lost nearly 70 pounds, so I looked like a skeleton. At that time, prisoners were given frozen fodder beets and rotten, smelly and frozen potatoes, three-fourths of which were dirty and unpeeled. The smell from a cauldron with such soup was horrible. It was inedible. On such a diet, we often worked day and night, for example during the Christmas of 1942, when I worked for 12 hours in the quarry, and then I peeled potatoes for the whole night. The cycle was repeated for five days and nights, followed by one night off, and then we worked again and again for four consecutive days and nights. The majority of my fellow inmates died of hunger and exhaustion. Among the dead, there were the following prisoners: Soviet POWs, Germans of all categories, Poles, Republican Spaniards, Frenchmen, and people of other nationalities. I heard from my inmates that by the time I arrived only about 500 of 6,000 Red Spaniards were still alive.
Eating so poorly and working so hard, it was impossible for any prisoner to survive and it was only a matter of time. During my stay in the camp, in each block there were 680 prisoners, from which about 10 to 12 would die every day. One event has stuck in my memory: one day a friend of mine told me that he was so starving that he had to steal someone’s bread in the evening, in order to eat his fill, and then he would throw himself against the wire. Although I begged him not to do it, he carried out his plan, and as he was approaching the wire, he was shot dead.
As far as the murdering of prisoners is concerned, I myself never saw anything like that during the three months I was imprisoned in the Gusen camp. However, I heard rumors about lethal injections being administered to the ill to make them die faster. There was an operating crematorium in the camp, where they could not keep up with burning the bodies, and they did it day and night without a break. The smell of burning bodies, which constantly came from the crematorium, poisoned the air and converted Gusen into such a hell that the main Auschwitz camp seemed a paradise.
That is everything. I hereby certify, by my signature below, that the present testimony is consistent with the truth.