Voices from Ravensbrück
Interview no. 100
(English translation)
Polish Documentary Institute, Lund
Dädesjö-Ramnasa, 12 January 1946
Bożysław Kurowski, M.L., Institute assistant taking the record
RECORD OF WITNESS TESTIMONY no. 100
The witness being questioned is Mr. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, born in Radom on May 15, 1900, a master
carpenter by trade, of Roman Catholic faith, son of Piotr and Teofila, whose last place of residence in
Poland was Stolin, in Polesie (Horyń). The witness currently resides in Dädesjö.
Having been informed of the importance of truthful testimony, as well as of his responsibility, and of the
consequences of false testimony, he has made the following statement:
- Beginning on February 4, 1943, I was held at the Stolin prison as a political inmate. My number was
__________, and I wore a triangle of ... colour with the letter ___ on it.
Then in May 1943, I was in a transit camp in Parchim, and from May 13, 1943, until May 2, 1945, I was in
Bobitz, in Mecklenburg, as a civilian laborer marked with the letter "P".
Asked whether I have any specific information from my time or work in the concentration camp about
how it was organized, the camp regimen, inmates' working conditions, treatment of prisoners, medical
and pastoral care, hygienic conditions, and also specific events in all areas of camp life, I can state the
following:
The testimony includes four hand-written pages, containing the following:
1. - That in the Stolin prison in February and March 1943, there were one hundred trucks loaded
with the corpses of Polish families that were being executed daily; children under the age of
three were killed by smashing their heads against an oak post; Ukrainians carried out crimes on
the Gestapo's orders; pits were dug by the condemned in front of their own houses. Twentyseven thousand Jews were shot on June 8th and 9th, 1942, on top of other corpses in pits.
Villagers from Weronie [probably Woronie], Buchlicze, Udryck, and Teregierzów [probably
Terebieżów] were rounded up in barns, which were then doused with benzine, set ablaze, and
the people burned alive.
2. About the transit camp at Parchim: wages, working conditions, the life of Polish civilian laborers
in Germany in Bobitz, from 1943-1945, generally, and also in comparison to those of the
German civilian laborers also there.
In 1941, as a Russion prisoner of war in the Polish camp at Smolensk, I was taken prisoner by the
Germans. From there, I was sent to work on the Horyń River. There, I worked building berlinki [small
river barges] that were going to Kiev and the Volga. In 1943, on February 4 th, I was taken from work
and arrested by the Germans on the grounds that I had been in contact with the partisans. They put me
in the prison at Stolin, where I stayed for one month. In total, 98 Poles were there at the time. The
prison staff and guards were Ukrainians in German uniform.
I remember exactly how all the Polish families were taken daily into the prison yard - men, women, and
children - at six in the morning and six in the evening. They were told take off all their clothes, and then
to lay on the ground, facedown. When they were in this position, naked, a uniformed Gestapo agent
read them their death sentence, and then Ukrainians walked along the row of people who were lying
there and shot each one in the head with a revolver (in the back of the skull).
Children three years old or younger were not shot, just stripped naked, then a Ukrainian would grab
them by the legs and smash them with all his might against a specially erected, two-meter-high oak
post, and then tossed them to one side. So this was how the corpses of the men and women who had
been shot, and those of the children who had been killed or were still dying, were loaded onto trucks
and taken into the forest. Children over the age of three were also shot. Every day, with five other Poles
I worked in the forest burying the corpses. They were buried in the shallow pits, and covered [only] with
branches, so that after we left, dogs and wolves would come around and dig up the pits. When I was
working there, about one hundred trucks loaded with corpses were brought to the forest - all had been
Poles from neighboring towns and villages.
I had some conversations with cellmates who were later among those shot, and I know that these were
innocent people, murdered on the basis of "Banderites" accusations. There were various reasons: for
example, for participation in the [Polish-Soviet] war of 1920, for Polish activities during the interwar
period of Polish independence, and for belonging to partisan bands. Those were ad hoc accusations
invented solely for the purpose of killing Poles.
In the village of Rzyczyca, on the Horyń River, where I worked, I also saw how twenty-two families were
taken out their houses and shot in front of them, and in pits dug in front of them. Before they were
killed, they all had to dig the pits themselves. These murders were a daily occurrence, driving all
involved simply insane. Strangely enough, I somehow managed to survive, though my entire family - my
wife and three children - were all murdered in the village of Duboj-on-the-Prypeć. I was informed of this
fact in 1943, when I was already a forced laborer in Germany.
- I also remember that in June 1942, just before the harvest, I even remember the exact date, the eighth
and ninth of June - in my presence, 27,000 Jews from the district capital, Stolin, and the surrounding
area were shot in the forest. They were first told to congregate in the Stolin ghetto, and then were taken
to the forest - men, women, and children. About two months before these executions, the Jews had to
dig long pits in that forest, with the explanation that they were building a shooting range. In reality, it
was a grave for 27,000 Jews. That was in Prince Radziwiłł's forest, located three kilometers outside of
town. The Jews were shot in groups [page 4] of one thousand.
They had to take off all of their clothes, and then they were searched for diamonds, gold, and other
valuable items in their hair, then they had to go down into the pit and lie down one next to the other
facedown. Then all those in the pit were shot with a machine gun. The next thousand Jews had to lay
down on top of them, and in this way, successively, 27,000 Jews were buried in a pit 80 meters long by
18 meters wide. After those two days of executions, I was among the 500 Poles from the "Horyń" camp
that went out to bury that pit.
I also remember how in January 1943, the entire village of Weronie in the Stolin district was herded into
barns, a total of about 1600 people, supposedly to a meeting that had been organized, and then the
barns were doused with benzine and set ablaze. The Germans and Ukrainians burned the entire village,
which they also did in the villages of Buchlicze, Udryck, and Teregierze. There was a Polish population
there, too, of both Roman Catholic and Orthodox faiths. It happened during the day, and because it was
near where I was working at Horyń, we saw everything that was going on, and the fires, and we knew
exactly what had happened.
On May 1, 1943, along with others, I was transported by railway freight cars to Germany, to Parchim,
where I was put in a camp in the forest. There were 3000 people there, in civilian clothes, mostly Poles,
but there were also Russians. I was there eight days, and we lived in wooden barracks. As far as food
was concerned, we got rutabagas for lunch, morning and evening we got coffee, and one loaf of bread a
day for ten people, which means about 100 grams per day per person. We did not do any work at all,
and the daily routine consisted of constant roll calls, meetings, chores, and shouting in German, [page 5]
which was constantly audible.
After eight days there, I was sent to the Arbeitsamt in nearby Schwerin, where we were given numbers,
photographed, and sent in groups of twelve to the brick factory in Bobitz. The letter "P" was put on our
civilian clothes, on a square piece of canvas, yellow outlined in purple, which we were required to wear
on the left lapel of our clothing. Germans were also employed doing the same work there, civilian
laborers. Poles, however, had to do the hardest work.
The wages were officially the same as they were for the Germans, but in reality, Poles received much
less. You could say that Germans received 8 RM a day for the work, while Poles got 2 RM. When we
pointed out this difference, we were told various costs were deducted from our wages, for example for
rebuilding Poland, for wearing the letter "P", because this was considered to be a kind of tax. They
explained to us that Poles would have to rebuild Poland, because Germans had not wanted the war, and
by leading to war, [the Poles] led Poland into ruin.
As far as food was concerned, the employer gave us rutabagas for lunch one day, and potato soup made
from unpeeled potatoes the next, then carrot soup the following day. Morning and evening we were
given coffee. We had food ration cards to buy bread with which we got 1500 grams per person every
seven days. The cards for fats had been cut out of our ration cards, and we got only 50 grams of fats per
week. The Germans received 200-250 grams of butter, and they got a "Schwerarbeiterzulage" . We also
only got half as much sugar as the Germans, who got 400 grams every two weeks; we got the same
amount every four weeks. As for tobacco, from May 1943-2/V 1945, I only got 400 grams of
"Grobschnitt", on ration cards.
Read, signed, accepted.
(-) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The witness seems an honest and
very trustworthy person.
(-) B. Kurowski