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Behind the boiler room there was a small coke store with a little
office beside it and then on the right the store for the urns containing human
ashes. The entrance door which now leads to the hall that I call the boiler
room was put in later. When I was working in Krematorium I, that door did not
exist. We used to enter through the corridor to the boiler room through the
door to the left of the entrance. There were two (other) doors of this type.
The first door, on the right of the corridor, opened on an auxiliarystore where
the spare fire bars were kept. The men from small transports, brought by truck,
used to undress there. When I was working at Krematorium I, they were shot in
the bunker of the crematorium. Such transports arrived once or twice a week and
comprised 30 to 40 people. They were of different nationalities. During the
executions, we, the members of the Sonderkommando, were shut up in the coke
store. Then we would find the bodies of the shot people in the bunker. All the
corpses had a firearm wound in the neck. The executions were always carried out
by the same SS man from the Political Section, accompanied by another SS from
the same Section who made out the death certificates for those shot. Capo
Morawa was not with us in the coke store during the shootings. I don't know
what he did during this time. We carried the still warm and bloody bodies of
the shot people from the bunker to the boiler room. The second door on the
right of the corridor led to a small room where the human ashes were put. We
passed through this room to reach the bunker proper, used during my time there
for shooting the victims and which previously had been used for gassing people.
In December 1942, 400 prisoners of the Sonderkommando were gassed there. The
prisoners who worked before me in Krematorium I, where I had met them, told me
that. I worked in Krematorium I from the beginning of February 1943, 4th March
1943, or just over one month. During all this time, we were put in bunker 7 of
block XI. We were in fact 22 Jews there, because at the beginning of February,
two dentists, Czech Jews, were sent to join us, coming from Birkenau. The seven
Jews I had met working in Krematorium I were also locked in block XI, but in
another cell. Capo Morawa and the Poles Jozek and Wacek who worked with him,
lived in block XV, which was open. Besides the two Czech Jews, four Poles came
to join out group during that month: Staszek and Wladek, whose family names I
have forgotten, and Wladyslaw Biskup from Cracow and Jan Agrestowski from the
commune of Pas in the Warsaw region. I remember their names well, because I
wrote letters to their families in German for them. These last four Poles were
housed in block XV. When we left for work, the old Kommando that had preceded
us at Krematorium I was called "Kommando Krematorium ". Our group, that is the
22 Jews from block XI and the four Poles who were detailed to it, was called
"Kommando Krematorium II". We did not understand why there was this separate
designation. Later on, we understood that we had been sent there for one
month's practical training in Krematorium I in order to prepare us for working
in Krematorium II. I would emphasize that the crematoriums and the Kommandos
who worked in them came under the Political Section. The personal records of
the prisoners working in these Kommandos were kept in the Political Section.
Our sick were not sent to the hospital, but to an infirmary set up for us in a
closed block. The block we occupied was isolated. In Auschwitz (main camp),
this was closed block XI. Authorization to leave the Kommando and transfer into
another did not depend on the Arbeitdienst (labor service), but on the
Political Section. Our doctor was Pach, a French Jew. He was a good specialist
who also looked after the SS, which enabled him, thanks to them, to get out of
the Sonderkommando block and install himself in another. When the Political
Section heard of this, he was sent back to our infirmary, even though he had
lived for some months in an open block. During my training in Krematorium I,
Untersturmfuhrer (SS Second Lieutenant) Grabner and Oberscharfuhrer (senior
staff-sergeant) Kwakernak were the overseers for the Political Section. I
remember Morawa having to ask Grabner to give him another prisoner because one
of our group had died. Grabner replied that he could not give him one "Zugang"
(new arrival), but if he killed four more Jews, he would supply five
"arrivals". He also asked Mietek [Morawa] what he beat us with. Mietek show him
a stick. Grabner took hold of an iron fire bar and said he should hit us with
that. At the end of the first day's work in Krematorium I, five of my group
declared they were sick and stayed in the block. The next day, pulling the
bodies out of the bunker of Krematorium I, we found their naked corpses without
any traces of bullet wounds. I suppose they must have been given jabs. A month
later, of 22 Jews, there remained only 12. On 4th March 1943, my group,
including on Wladyslaw Tomiczek of Cieszyn and the four Poles I have already
mentioned, was transferred to Birkenau and installed in closed block II of
sector Blb. I learned later that Tomiczek had already worked in the crematorium
{Krema I] in 1941. He was an old hand, with a prison number of 1400 and
something, and before being detailed to our group in March 1943, he worked for
a while in the mill and the abattoir, where, with 49 other people, he was
arrested on suspicion of engaging in clandestine activities. All were
incarcerated in Auschwitz block XI and condemned to death by the SS tribunal.
Untersturmfuhrer Grabner recognized Tomiczek just before the execution and
transferred him to our group. In Birkenau, Tomiczek worked as Capo of the
Kommando employed in Krematorium II, and later on in Krematorium IV. In the
month of August 1943, I think it was, Tomicek was summoned to the Political
Section, from where that very day Oberscharfuhrer Kwakernak brought his corpse
that we incinerated in Krematorium V. Although Tomicek's head was wrapped in a
sack, we identified him by his large size. Kwakernak personally supervised the
introduction of his body into the furnace, then went off. We then opened the
door of the furnace, unwound the sack and recognized his face very well. He was
a good man, hard working, decent with us, and we had told him about our
clandestine activities.
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