Testimonials of Auschwitz Survivors
Grzegorz Czempas |
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English translation:
I remember the story of my friend, Karol Siemek, an ex-prisoner. He was already in the concentration camp when they started bringing in the first transports of Soviet captives. He was working in Block Eleven at the time. He was involved in preparing the camp’s underground cells for the first trial gassing. He was ordered to seal up the windows and then he had to carry out the bodies of the people who had been gassed, load them on to a trolley and transport them to the crematorium. Nightmarish work! The bodies were very slippery, dirty hands, legs, everything. “I often dream about that nightmare,” he sometimes says.
Another image. In front of the hospital block lies a prisoner. He’s naked, his entrails spilling out of his stomach. A sign’s been placed on him, bearing the inscription “The same fate awaits all those who try to escape”. It also happened that after a successful escape, the Nazis would put the prisoner’s family in Auschwitz .
One of the reasons I survived was because other prisoners helped me. I was lucky. Władek Wieczorek (number 1335) brought me bread and margarine and, from time to time, a bit of sausage. I ate those rations at night, so as not to cause pain and suffering to others. Władek got that food via a contact in the camp’s civilian population who risked his own life to help the prisoners.
When Wieczorek was released, he passed me on to the care of another prisoner, Oswald Gruszczyk. “Oswald, this ‘mutt’s’ all yours, you’ll look out for him as long as he’s here, just as long as you can”. Oswald kept his word. I was saved.