Presiding Judge: I would ask the next witness, Erwin Bartel, to approach.
The witness Erwin Bartel presents himself.
Presiding Judge: Please provide your personal details.
Witness: Erwin Bartel, 24 years old, religion – Roman Catholic, a student, resident in Świdnica, relationship to the accused – none.
Presiding Judge: I hereby instruct the witness, pursuant to the provisions of Article 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, that you are required to speak the truth. The provision of false testimony is punishable by a term of imprisonment of up to five years. Do the parties want to submit any motions as to the procedure according to which the witness is to be interviewed?
Prosecutors: No.
Defense attorneys: No.
Presiding Judge: The witness is not required to take an oath. What information does the witness possess regarding the case, and in particular concerning the accused?
Witness: I arrived at the camp in Auschwitz on 6 June 1941. After two months I was sent to the camp’s admissions department, which was administered by the political department. My immediate superior was Grabner. Our work consisted in receiving all newly arriving prisoners and filing the documents that accompanied them. At the time, the camp accepted transports of Jews from Hungary, and also of Jews from France, Yugoslavia and Slovakia. I first encountered the accused Grabner at the office in August 1941. He notified me that I was working in a department from which absolutely no information could escape. And if I were to tell anyone what went on in the department, and he were to learn of this, then each and every [lower ranking] worker at the political department would be shot.
As I gather from the course of the trial, Grabner does not admit to any of the charges made against him. But it is a fact that in the camp, he was omnipotent. All matters concerning the incarceration of prisoners at the camp came directly under his authority, that is to say they were taken care of by his subordinate officers, and he was informed of everything. Initially, the head of our office was Unterscharführer (later promoted to Oberscharführer) Hans Stark, and thereafter Brock and Hoffer. None of them is present in the courtroom.
I will give but one example to show that Grabner was the master of life and death for every one of the prisoners. When during one of the shootings the Germans killed a prisoner with a surname similar to that of the intended victim, the officer in charge of the execution was distraught, for it had turned out that he had killed an innocent man. He went to inform Grabner of his error, and Grabner responded thus: “it does not matter, now just go and shoot the proper man”. And so it is a fact that he – and no one else – took the final decision in each and every instance, even though today neither he, nor any other of the accused admit their guilt. They did not expect anyone of us to survive the camp. People whose files carried the annotation “aware of camp secrets” had no way of returning home.
The accused states that his share in the extermination of people was negligible. This can be best disproved by the fact that he was a functionary of the police – the Gestapo. After some two years he was promoted, while towards the end, shortly before the evacuation of Auschwitz, he was made an Oberscharführer. These are indisputable facts, clearly attesting to his important role in the annihilation of people in Auschwitz. Now in all probability he is saying that he left because he was not suited for the job. Testimony provided by former SS men shows that the entire command of the camp was changed because the SS men stole the Jewish property that passed through their hands – tons of gold and thousands of items of clothing. All the better garments would go to support the Winterhilfe [winter help] campaign, or be sent to the army. In 1943, a special commission from Berlin became interested in the goings-on, and it sent a few representatives to carry out a search. As it turned out, all of these SS men (and all of the bigwigs such as Höß, Aumeier and the others) had loads of cash which they had robbed from inmates. In consequence, they were dismissed and their places taken by a new garrison.
As regards Liebehenschel, I first heard this surname in 1942, while being notified of an incoming transport. Our office would receive reports about each new transport, whether Jewish, Polish or Russian. Such information was a closely guarded secret. There were instances when Grabner barged into our office and saw us writing a report itemizing an incoming batch of prisoners, Untergebracht [for placement at the camp], and would go hopping mad, saying: “remember, this is all confidential”.
As I have testified, I first encountered Liebehenschel in 1942. During this time escapes from Auschwitz – or escape attempts – were becoming more frequent. We considered that this was due to fact that people were being regularly shot for even the slightest transgression; these killings were not reported to Berlin. When Liebehenschel was in charge, these penalties were more formal in nature, that is full reports would be drawn up and notification sent to the administration of concentration camps in Berlin. Berlin approved the penalties, whereupon prisoners would be punished.
But while it is true that following Liebehenschel’s arrival the situation changed, we were able to learn the whole truth. He occupied a very important position, namely that of head of the office which occupied itself exclusively with the campaign of resettlement of Jews – as they called it – from the west to the east, which in layman’s terms consisted in sending elements that were considered inferior to the Herrenvolk [master race] to the east and gassing them there. Only when Liebehenschel was appointed camp commandant did we start to search for notifications concerning Jewish transports that he himself had undersigned. This is indisputable proof of the fact that he is not telling the truth when he says that these matters did not interest him. He was actually in charge of these affairs.
Presiding Judge: I have no questions. Do the Prosecutors have any questions?
Prosecutor Szewczyk: I think that what the witness said about Liebehenschel is somewhat unclear. Do you mean to say that following his arrival in the camp you determined that you had heard of him and on the basis of files ascertained that in Berlin he was in charge of the Jewish resettlement campaign?
Witness: Yes, the eastward resettlement campaign.
Prosecutor: And not to the gas chambers, perhaps?
Witness: This was commonly called “resettlement to the east”, while in actual fact it consisted in the deportation of Jews from Slovakia, Hungary, Greece, Yugoslavia and Italy to Poland, directly to Auschwitz, where they were immediately gassed.
Prosecutor: In my opinion it is important to note that they were not sent east, but to the camp in Auschwitz, for the lists which passed through your office were documents that accompanied the Jewish transports arriving in Auschwitz.
Witness: It is a fact that the Jews were sent to Auschwitz to be gassed, while the lists accompanying their transports had been undersigned by Liebehenschel.
I would like to add a few words concerning the tattooing of prisoners. It was all Stark’s idea; he was once the head of the Aufnahme [admissions office]. On 11 or 12 October 1941, the first transports of Russians arrived at the camp. Since the mortality rate for these people ranged from 700 to 1,000 per day, it was impossible for the SS men to determine who exactly had died. After all, some fictitious reports and lists had to be elaborated. They thought long and hard, and finally decided that the best solution would be to make a tattoo on the arm. They started off by tattooing the so-called political instructors, that is the Russian officers, but soon proceeded to tattoo all the Russians. The idea to tattoo Polish prisoners was in reality Grabner’s, for escapes were becoming more and more frequent, and in order to counteract this they marked each prisoner with a number, so that he could be easily identified if he escaped. They told us that the Third Reich did not have enough photographic film, for everything was needed by the army, and so prisoners were tattooed instead of being photographed. In any case, the fact that all the prisoners were thus marked, including people from earlier transports, is best proof that tattoos were introduced to prevent escapes.
Prosecutor: The witness mentioned that some of the prisoners sent to the camp had their files stamped with the following: RU – Rückehr unerwünscht [return undesirable]. Can the witness describe how such people were treated and how it was noted in their files that their “undesirable return” could never occur?
Witness: Annotations such as RU, NN and NS were made by the institutions that sent these prisoners to the camp. In the main, they had red circles on their shirts and were sent to the penal companies. If a prisoner was morally strong and had great resolve to survive his incarceration, and therefore did not die naturally due to malnutrition, backbreaking work and torture, he would be shot, for as regards these people it had been decided that they must die in Auschwitz.
Prosecutor: The witness has said that such a person “would be shot”. Did this take place on the basis of a written sentence?
Witness: No, he would just be summoned and then killed.
Presiding Judge: The witness may step down. Please summon the next witness, Stanisław Głowa.