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  Deposition made by HENRYK TAUBER in the Polish Courts
May 24, 1945
. In Auschwitz, on 24th May 1945, Jan Sehn, examining judge in Cracow, member of the Central Commission for the Investigation of Hitlerite Crimes in Poland, at the request of, in the presence of and with the participation of the vice-prosecutor of the Cracow Regional Court, Edward Pechalski, pursuant to Article 254 and in connection with Articles 107 and 115 of the Criminal Code, interrogated former Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner 90124, who testified as follows:

My name is HENRYK TAUBER, I was born on 8th July 1917 in Chrzanow, son of Abraham Tauber and Minda nee Szajnowic, unmarried, of the Jewish faith, of Polish nationality and citizenship, shoemaker by trade, domiciled at 1 Grunwaldzka Street, Chrzanow, with no police record.

Until the war broke out in 1939, I lived with my immediate family of 12 persons in Chrzanow. Of this family, one of my brothers-in-law and myself are the only ones to have survived the war. Up to now I have had no news of the fate of one of my brothers who went to Russia. After many expropriations and displacements, my family and I were separated and I found myself in the Crakow ghetto. There, I was arrested in November 1942 and incarcerated in the Jewish police prison at 31 Jozefinska Street. On 19th January 1943 I was transferred to Auschwitz with 400 Jews from the Cracow ghetto and 800 Aryans from Monteluppich (Cracow prison). This transport consisted of about 800 men and 400 women. On our arrival at Auschwitz station, the women were separated from the men and installed in the women's camp in Birkenau. Included in a group of 250 Jewish prisoners and about 550 Aryans, I was assigned to block 27, sector B1b. This block was unfinished, without windows, doors or bunks. Later on, I went to blocks 22 and 20 in the same sector of the camp. I spent a few days at Buna (Monowitz) from where, because of typhus detected in my group, I was transferred back to Birkenau and put in block 21 of sector B1b. In the meantime, there were the formalities of registration, during which I stated that I was a qualified fitter-mechanic by trade.

At the beginning of February 1943, Unterscharfuhrer (sergeant) Groll of the Arbeitsdienst (labor service) and prisoner Mikusz of the Arbeitseinsatz (labor deployment) came in our block and selected from among the prisoners living there some specialists for what was supposed to be work in the Auschwitz workshops. Twenty young Jews were picked out. We were then taken to block IV (main camp) where we were examined by a doctor who declared us all fit. The same day we were taken by truck, under SS guard, to Auschwitz and installed in Bunker 7 (basement cell) in block XI (main camp). The next day we, the twenty prisoners, were taken under a stronger SS guard, to the bunker in which, as we learned later, Krematorium I was installed. There we met seven Jews, among them Jankowski, and three Poles. The Capo was Mietek Morawa from Cracow. He was a tall, blond, slim man about 24 years old. One of his brothers was a boxer in Cracow. I heard that Morawa's family lived in Dibnikach (a district of Cracow). From the very beginning of his activity in the first crematorium (Kr. 1), he was a very strict Capo who carried out the work ordered by the Germans in conformity with the regulations. Later on, he was promoted to Obercapo (principal Capo) of Birkenau Krematorien II and III. There, he tried to live on good terms with us, for there were then about 400 of us and we had been working there long enough to be ready for anything and to let nobody spit in our plate (Polish expression: "not let anyone walk over us").

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