!.  KL Auschwitz-Birkenau

On August 25, 1943, as part of a transport of political prisoners from 

the Pawiak prison in Warsaw, I entered the concentration camp Auschwitz.  

It had been an exhausting trip on a very hot August day.  The cattle 

cars in which we were transported were tightly sealed, and inside the cars it 

was stifling.  When the doors were finally opened in the late evening, in 

Auschwitz-Birkenau, a sub-camp of the “mother-camp” Auschwitz, many 

people were in a state of shock from the frightful conditions and the lack of 

air.  As a result, their behavior, as they tumbled out of the cars, was confused 

and chaotic.  The SS-men turned their weapons on the crowd to get it to 

settle down, killing a number of prisoners.  

After we’d been shaved and washed – with the Germans beating us all 

the while – and after my left arm had been tattooed with my prisoner number, 

I found myself in a so-called “quarantine area” in Auschwitz-Birkenau.  This 

part of the camp was intended only for temporary incarceration; it was known 

for its extreme brutality, and was intended to break prisoners physically and 

mentally.  It functioned as a sort of “selection”:  the only people who survived 

here were the strong and the healthy, who were eventually sent to different 

camps.  The weaker ones died soon after their arrival.  

One worked in this camp under very strict supervision.  People were 

interned there for no more than three to four weeks, enough time to 

understand what it meant to be in Auschwitz and what you could expect 

there.  I will not describe much about my time in this part of the camp, except 

for one incident that I experienced personally.  

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At the first appel, or line-up, an SS man was checking the prisoners by 

reading out the list according to the numbers tattooed on their left arms.  He 

read in German, and every prisoner was supposed to know his number in 

German as well.  When you heard your number, you were supposed to 

respond with “Jawohl” and recite the number in German.  Unfortunately, at 

this lineup, I didn’t hear my number and so I didn’t respond.  Obviously, 

something didn’t quite work out with the appel because they then brought in 

the official list and called all the prisoners by name.  When they read my 

name, I responded, “Jawohl”.  At that moment, the blockowe, the man in 

charge of my section, pulled me out from the lineup and an SS-man started 

beating me.  He hit me across the face.  When I fell, he kicked me all over my 

body.  He kicked my kidneys, my belly, and he injured my legs.  When he 

finished this merciless beating, he compared my number on my arm with my 

last name on the list.  It turned out that the number on my arm had been 

incorrectly tattooed:  one digit was 8 instead of 9.  That was why I had been 

silent during the lineup, because the number on my arm was not called.  

They changed the 8 to a 9 and I have the number on my forearm to this day.  

It is a terrible reminder.  

II

In September, after I completed the period of time under quarantine, I 

was transferred to a neighboring permanent camp and was assigned to 

Building Group #115.  There I worked as a bricklayer.  I was actually an 

architect but had decided I would call myself a bricklayer in order to be more 

useful to the Germans.  It turned out to be not such a bad idea. 

In Autumn 1943, during the evening Appel, an SS-man called out my 

number and ordered me to step forward.  He compared my number with my 

name.  Then he gave an order to the group leader and then told me to step 

back into line, hitting me powerfully in the face.  After the lineup, the block 

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leader gave an order to the lower-ranking sztubowym, barracks leader, to 

prepare me.  I was washed, my hair was cut, and I was dressed in clean 

camp clothing.  I was not permitted to sleep.  They told me that I was being 

transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau to the mother camp Auschwitz.  In the 

beginning I did not understand what all this meant.  Some of my 

inexperienced camp-mates hoped this meant I would be freed.  But the 

barracks leader quickly explained that I was going to freedom through the 

chimney, because they were taking me for interrogation to the political sector 

of the SS, and from there, nobody came out alive. 

In the evening, I said goodbye to my closest colleagues.  I sat down at 

the designated place on the concrete next to the door.  Sitting all night, I 

thought about my fate.  I did not panic; I was quiet.  I tried to think positively, 

to get rid of bad thoughts.  I was already “experienced” at interrogation; I had 

been imprisoned for five months at Gestapo headquarters at the Pawiak 

prison on Shucha Boulevard in Warsaw.   It was a place infamous for its 

murderous interrogations and executions; I had experienced these 

interrogations first-hand.  I knew that if I didn’t prepare myself physically and 

mentally to withstand those tortures, I would be finished.      

In the early morning – it was still dark – I was taken to the camp gates, 

my name was removed from register of one camp and I was handed over to 

an SS-man for transfer to the other camp.  He rode a bicycle and was driving 

me on ahead of him, hitting me and pushing me.  I was growing weaker and 

fell to the ground down a few times.  I heard the constant yell, “Fast!”  

“Schnell!” 

    To this day, I don’t remember how I found myself locked in the cell in 

the political sector of the SS.  I lay on the floor all day long.  It was not until 

evening that they brought me into the interrogation room where I met three 

SS-men.  One of them spoke Polish.  They questioned me mercilessly, 

beating me with a whip, punching and kicking me, playing with me as though 

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I was just some object, with obvious pride in their murderous profession.  

They were strong and healthy, certainly after a good dinner.  I was weak, 

exhausted, and hungry, and kept falling to the ground from their murderous 

hits.  They were pleased with themselves, enjoying their senseless brutality.  

They continuously asked me about the structure of my family.  I, half-

conscious, tried to answer.  Then I blacked out.  I don’t know how long I was 

unconscious.  When I regained consciousness, I was back in a cell.  I don’t 

know how much time had elapsed from the time of the interrogation. 

The following morning, I was again brought into the interrogation room.  

For the first time, I felt completely destroyed.   I no longer cared what they did 

to me.  I knew that I was very weak and feared that I would not outlast such 

continued suffering.  I thought about death. 

Then somehow, I pulled myself together.  I banished such thoughts, 

counting on my strong will and my desire to live.  I reminded myself that I had 

promised myself from the beginning that my motto would be:  Survive.  

Luckily, this time, they did not beat me.  Instead, one of the SS-men 

opened some official-looking file and started to read from some document.  It 

turned out to be a letter from my brother, a soldier in the Polish army who 

had been captured by the Germans.  He’d written this letter to me from the 

POW camp.  I remember that the German finished reading this letter, and 

then turned to me and asked, “And this ‘bandit’ you forgot to mention?” 

I suddenly understood what all these interrogations and beatings were 

all about.  Polish political prisoners – including prisoners of war – were 

allowed to write letters home.  I had written to my parents, telling them where 

I was and that I was “fine”.  What else could I write to them?  Of course, they 

had no idea what I was facing; they didn’t even know what kind of place 

Auschwitz was.  And my brother had been writing to them as well, from his 

POW camp.  They must have told him where I was and he then wrote to me, 

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and this was the letter which the Germans intercepted, snatches of which 

they now read to me.  

I realized that the ‘bandit’ to whom the German referred to now was my 

brother, whom I had never mentioned in any of the previous interrogations I 

had undergone.   I didn’t want them to know about him, both to protect him, 

and even more, to protect myself, because he had been actively fighting 

against the Germans until his capture.  That was the reason for my torture; 

the Germans had wanted more information about my brother and his 

activities.   

My brother is no longer alive; he died in 1971.  I never did tell him how 

much health his letter had cost me; I spared him that misery.    

I was very weak.  I remember the SS-men discussing what to do with 

me.  They came to some agreement, and mockingly told me that I would be 

undergoing “treatment”.  

III

I was brought back to Block 28, where I underwent a medical 

examination.  To this day I don’t know what kind of examination it was.  I 

remember only that they took some blood and did various tests which I am 

not able to describe.  Then they took me to Block 20 where I remained.  

Here, periodically, I received a number of injections.  They kept sticking me in 

a number of places and I realized that after each injection I felt worse.  I had 

headaches, my joints and muscles ached—in a word, everything hurt.  I had

a high fever and I was getting weaker.  I was given some strange bitter pills 

that I had to swallow under the watchful eye of an SS-man.  My stomach 

hurt.  I was vomiting and had diarrhea and my entire body was covered with 

spots and a reddish rash.  It’s hard to describe what was happening to me.  

In the beginning I suspected that they were trying to poison me.  I eventually 

discarded this idea because it made no sense:  poisoning could have been 

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done very easily and besides, many others besides me were undergoing 

similar treatment.  I don’t know how long it lasted.  After about three weeks 

the fever started to go down and I gradually felt somewhat better.  But I was 

utterly exhausted.  

I wished I could back to the unit I’d previously been in; I believed that 

that could save my life.  I pretended that I felt better than I actually did, but, in 

truth, the condition of my health at this time was tragic.  I was so weak that I 

couldn’t walk.  It’s hard to estimate exactly how much time passed from the 

time I’d been taken to the political section and how much time I spent in the 

mother camp, Auschwitz.  I do know that in late 1943 I was transferred back 

to the camp in Birkenau and to the Unit #115 in which I had worked 

previously.   I was very weak and almost totally deaf.  What saved me was 

that for some time I worked in the women’s camp doing building – cement 

work – in the barracks, and luckily that was not so demanding.  However in 

my weakened condition, I could barely stand the long appels in the freezing 

cold, being marched, naked, to the latrines/showers, dressing afterwards in 

the wet rags that were supposed to serve as clothing, and sleeping in 

freezing, unheated barracks.  

IV

In the beginning of 1944, possibly in February, my health worsened 

further.  A high fever did not leave me, my joints were constantly painful.  It’s 

hard to describe the pain caused by this condition.  

They transferred me to the hospital barracks in Birkenau.  In fact, there 

was no treatment in this so-called hospital.  From time to time, they gave me 

some medication which did nothing.  Besides, conditions in the barracks 

were extraordinarily difficult:  that winter was exceptionally cold, and the 

temperature often dropped below minus 20 degrees Celsius.   

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In the barracks you heard the terrible moans and gasps of the dying.  

Some were praying, others cursed and called on God to avenge them and 

punish those who caused such terrible suffering.  Still others who didn’t have 

any strength to bring forth any sound died in silence.   They were the 

happiest.  They didn’t have to stand for the appel and listen to the 

commands:  “Stand still!” “Hats off!”  They didn’t feel hunger, cold, and all 

kinds of insults and degradation inflicted by the persecutors.  The prediction 

came true that “the living will envy the dead”.   

I was still alive and in terrible pain in all my joints, exacerbated by a 

severe itching of the skin which remained from the previous sickness.  I was 

terribly cold; death was embracing me, but I, still conscious, fought it.  It was 

an uneven battle.  I didn’t want to die; I wanted to survive. 

Next to me lay an older man.  I don’t remember his name.  From the 

time I met him, he kept trying to encourage me.  He helped me during the 

time I was unconscious.  I owe him my life.  With great emotion I remember 

those moments and the words of this friend who himself was deathly ill.  He 

was smiling at me and kept repeating, “You regained consciousness, you will 

live.”  After a few days, unfortunately, that man was not among the living.  As 

he lay dying, he held my hand and kept whispering, “Goodbye, young friend.  

Have courage and survive.”  

I wonder if anyone could understand how much words like these mean 

at such difficult moments.  His death was, for me, an additional blow.  I saw 

people dying every day; death had become meaningless.  But this time, I 

cried like a small child.  I also took this as a sign that my psychological state 

was not that bad, that despite all of the brutality I saw and experienced, 

despite living everyday among corpses and walking arm-in-arm with death, I 

still could feel, and think, and could differentiate between good and bad.  

I was released from the ‘hospital’ – it was actually a morgue – in early 

spring 1944, and was assigned to a unit digging ditches and drying out the 

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swampland surrounding the camp.  The earth was already partially thawed; I 

lost my wooden clogs, sucked off my feet by the wet swampy mud.  This was 

terrible work, much too much for me; it fully overwhelmed my physical 

abilities.  Already by the end of the first day I couldn’t even drag myself back 

to camp on my own and had to be carried back by friendly colleagues.  

One of these camp colleagues – who is no longer alive; I don’t know 

what happened to him after we met in the camp or whether he even survived 

the war –  happened to know a distant relative of mine, and he decided to try 

to get me transferred back to my own unit.   Luckily, his efforts were 

successful.  I found myself back in Building Unit #115 where I worked until 

the last day of my stay in Auschwitz-Birkenau.  

I worked building round storage containers, called okronglakow, and 

pompowny, pumping units.  These structures were attached, on one side, to 

a barbed-wire fence surrounding Crematorium #2, and, on the other, to the 

women’s camp.  Working there as I did, from the Spring 1944 until 

September 22, 1944, (when I was transferred out of Auschwitz-Birkenau to 

another concentration camp), I was an eyewitness to the greatest murder in 

the world, which I will now describe:  

At this time, large transports of Hungarian Jews were brought to the 

side railings of the railroad tracks near where I worked.  The Jews would exit 

the trains.  After a selection process, they were lined up on the road and 

were marched directly to the crematorium.  I saw how they approached the 

steps and went down to the gas chambers.  They all went, starting with 

grandfathers and ending with small grandchildren.  Whole families held 

hands.  Then, the doors, over which hung a sign saying “Bathrooms”, were 

closed.  Through a special opening in the ceiling of the gas chamber, an SS-

man threw in an open canister of gas and then closed the opening and 

calmly left the area, looking pleased with himself for having carried out his 

duties.    

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Before each such occurrence, he’d check the direction of the wind and 

place himself facing the direction of the wind.  He didn’t always wear a gas 

mask.  On more than one occasion, because of the proximity of our work 

position, he ordered us to move away, especially when our work on scaffolds 

placed us above the level of the land.  As I recall, this happened on those 

occasions when the wind was blowing in our direction.  He certainly didn’t do 

this out of concern for our lives.  I believe the idea was simply to prevent 

anyone from figuring out their plans.    

For some time after the gas was thrown into the crematorium, it 

seemed me that that earth trembled and shook from the moans of the people 

inside.  After a while, smoke and fire shot out of the chimney of the 

crematorium.  Day and night, the chimneys and all four crematoria were in 

operation. 

In addition to my daily construction work, my task was to deliver ‘soup’ 

– our so-called dinner – to the camp from the soup kitchen.  Two of us would 

walk to pick it up with a two-wheeled wagon on which they loaded barrels of 

this ‘soup’.  Our route was the same road on which they’d lead people from 

the railroad siding to the crematorium; there was no other road.  One day, 

after we had delivered the empty soup barrels, an SS-man stopped us and 

told us to move closer to the siding from which a long column of people had 

recently emerged on their way to the crematorium.  On the siding, stood a 

long freight train, now empty.  We were uneasy but we did as we were 

ordered.   When we reached the assigned place, he pointed out a heavy-set 

older woman sitting on the ground.  He ordered us to put her on the wagon.  

This order was almost impossible for us to carry out:  we were too weak to do 

it, and in addition, the cart was a rickety contraption:  two-wheeled, with a 

central pole running down the middle that was connected to the axle, and the 

whole thing kept falling from side to side.  The SS-man kept after us, yelling 

at us and hitting us with the butt of his rifle.  Somehow, with great difficulty, 

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we managed to carry out his order.  Then he told us the direction to go in:  it 

was the road of death, the direction of the crematorium.  It was also the same 

direction to our unit.  With difficulty we were pushing and pulling the wagon, 

driven onward by the SS-man.  When we got to the gate of the crematorium, 

he ordered us to turn right.  We went onto an unpaved dirt side road.  The 

way became even harder.  The wheels of the wagon kept getting stuck in the 

mud.   I was thinking, “where are we going and what will happen next?”  After 

some time, he ordered us to turn to the right again, in the direction of the 

crematorium, and then stop.

 We stopped at the edge of an embankment.  Below was a ditch filled to 

the edge with burning bodies.  We were struck dumb, overcome by terrible 

fear.  Corpses were thrown in all directions.  Some – human skeletons of all 

sizes – were almost completely burned.  In some places, the fire was very 

intense; in others, it hardly smoldered.  That’s all I could observe in such a 

short time because the SS-man came to the wagon, picked up the central 

pole of that wagon, on which this woman was sagging, and pitched her over 

the side, into the fire.   He ordered us to leave.  It wasn’t very far to our unit 

from there, and in spite of being exhausted, we ran as fast as we could, as 

long as we still had breath in our breasts, to get as far away as we could from 

there.  As we ran, we heard a shot.  I’ll never know if he was shooting at the 

woman, still alive in the fire, or at us, as a joke, to scare us.  

That day I discovered new depths of human sadism.  I realized that the 

term “factory of death” was too narrow, and that the Germans had found a 

way to broaden it even further.  

Often transports of Jews destined for the crematoria arrived at the 

railroad siding around the time we were transporting that ‘soup’ to the unit.  

We saw many SS-men waiting, gleefully, for the entire process to begin.  

One time, we were on our way back to the camp.  On the way, we came 

across food, spread all over the ground, that had been dropped there by the 

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people who’d recently been herded through the area.  The boisterous 

murderers were still on the siding.  I bent down and picked up a piece of 

cake.  Immediately two SS-men ran up to me, one of them screaming.  I 

looked him straight in the eye.  I thought, surely they could understand the 

hunger of a prisoner and would allow me to eat this special gift.   I was 

mistaken.  One of them reached for his gun and shot at me.   Despite the 

proximity, he missed.  Maybe he was drunk or maybe I was just destined to 

live.  He did not repeat the shot.  Despite the passage of many intervening 

years, I still have nightmares in which I clearly see him aiming that bullet into 

my head.    

On the 7th of August, 1944, I made a very risky decision.  I wanted to 

give testimony that I was an eyewitness, that I had observed, in great detail, 

and from this very spot, a simply unimaginable human tragedy.  I chiseled 

onto a brick my prisoner’s number, the initials of my first and last names, and 

the name of the town in which I was born.  When I finished building the main 

wall of the pumping station, I cemented my brick into that wall, right under the 

roof.    It survived together with the entire building and is the sign of my truth 

which I have just described.  

The Auschwitz museum sent me a photograph of this brick, still 

cemented in place.   I am enclosing that photograph with this report together 

with a diagram of its location within the former KL Auschwitz II – Birkenau in 

Brzezince.  

V. Dachau-Natzweiler

Komando Dautmergen i Vaihingen

At the end of August 1944, I was transported, together with other 

prisoners, from Auschwitz to the concentration camp Natzweiler-Komando 

Dautmergen.  Our group was one of the first to arrive in this camp.  We had 

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to organize everything from the most basic things.  The most bothersome 

was the lack of drinking water, and as for water for washing, there was 

nothing even to discuss.  Water was delivered in barrels, only to the kitchen 

and for the SS.  Prisoners quickly lost their strength, and many fell into a 

state that we called “muzelmen”, the walking dead.  The death rate was high.  

As a result of the filthy conditions, the filth of our clothing, and our inability to 

wash and change our clothing, lice multiplied quickly.  The fight to get rid of 

them was impossible and hopeless.   We had sores all over our bodies and 

prisoners became unable to work.  Those who couldn’t work were taken 

away, I don’t know where.  

I worked there under very difficult conditions, building buildings 

assigned to the military, under the management of the TODT organization.  

The nature of the work was digging, concrete work, and construction.  The 

terrain was wet, the soil slimy.  Just crossing this area caused many 

difficulties.  I worked there as a bricklayer together with a group of uniformed 

personnel from the TODT organization.    

Our strength was uneven:  I was weak, hungry, emaciated.  They, by 

contrast, were strong and well-fed.   But my work output had to match theirs.  

I was assigned a certain area which I had to finish at the same time they did.  

They were rough and intolerant of me.  As a result, I looked for a way to 

change my work assignment. 

One morning, while the prisoners were taken to their various 

assignments, an official from the TODT organization took me to a group of 

carpenters.  I was very happy with this assignment, but it did not last long.  

This official decided that I had changed assignments on my own initiative.  

He smashed me in the face and started insulting me, calling me, in German, 

“You Polish pig.”  I couldn’t take it any longer and responded in kind, but in 

Polish.  He threw me into a deep hole containing broken chunks of building 

materials.  When they pulled me out of there, I did not go either to the 

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building or carpentry details.  I just lay there in terrible pain, waiting for the 

end of the work day.  

I was carried by colleagues to the camp.  The camp doctor set and 

bandaged my leg which was completely rotated in the socket (the toes were 

facing where the heel should have been) and also bandaged my injured side 

and left hand.  I couldn’t work.  After some time, there was a “selection”.  The 

sick were being prepared for a transport.  At my request, I was included in 

this transport since I knew I couldn’t return to work at the building unit.  That 

would have been fatal.    Although being included in the transport was also 

risky, I thought it might offer me some chance of staying alive.  I was not 

wrong.  

My transport left on about the 20th of November 1944 to Vaihingen 

camp, another sub-camp of the mother camp Natzweiler.  I remember that I 

did not work for some time.  Many prisoners were sick, dying of typhus.  I did 

not catch this because the medical experiments I had undergone in 

Auschwitz had made me immune to the disease.  

As soon as I became stronger, I was sent to work.  I worked with nine 

fellow inmates building a military shelter.  In my physical state, this work was 

very hard.  We were digging an underground tunnel and supporting it with 

heavy logs.  The soil we dug out had to be removed, by wheeling it out, and 

always uphill.  The deeper we dug, the harder the work became.  Water 

poured down on our heads and we then had to pump it out using hand 

pumps.  Our work was supervised by an officer of the Wehrmacht who was 

treated in this hospital.  He was very nice and understanding, and for this I 

thank him in my name and the name of my fellow inmates. 

Setting aside for the moment the difficulties of our work in the hospital, I 

also want to report on one positive thing that I and my colleagues 

experienced.   

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The place where we spent our few free moments eating was the 

hospital’s central heating area.  The man in charge of keeping the furnace 

going was an elderly man, about 70 years, maybe even older, heavy-set, with 

rosy cheeks.  He treated us prisoners with sympathy and understanding.  

Every day he cooked a portion of potatoes that was sufficient for a meal.  

They were always hot and very tasty.  They restored our strength.  What 

strengthened us most, however, was this man’s good heart and the 

goodness which he showed us.   From the depths of my heart I pay tribute to 

his memory.  May he be an example for others and live forever in human 

memory. 

In the beginning of Spring, that is, on April 9, 1945, when the front 

moved closer, we were evacuated to the concentration camp Dachau, where, 

on April 29, we were liberated.  It’s impossible to understand this senseless 

evacuation.  Everything was under  bombardment, railroad tracks were either 

occupied or destroyed, and we – hungry, crammed into sealed cattle cars – 

were shifted  from track to track, continuously, never knowing where we were 

going.  After all that, they could have finally left us in peace.  No!  They 

needed more victims.  Oh horror!  Oh endless villainy!   

Pay respect to those who returned from this Hell on earth,  

And remember those who remained forever there.  

Let Heaven’s rays shine on all of us

so that such terrible things never happen again.   

Unite, people of the world,

Become one, united in friendship and brotherhood.   

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Epilogue

At the outset, I affirm with full responsibility that everything in my report 

is the truth.  This report is supported by my morals and my conscience.   The 

experiences which I describe here were not isolated incidents, limited only to 

me.  Such experiences were suffered by many thousands of people 

incarcerated in the concentration camps.  Their accounts differ only with 

respect to the details.  

It’s usually accepted that every human being forges his own fate and 

that thus has control over the way he directs his life.  There are, however, 

exceptions.  One such exception was life in the concentration camps.  There 

the ability to direct one’s life was limited to the minimum.  Human beings 

became an object and had absolutely no say in their lives.  It’s known that 

every one of us is unique in the way he sees, feels, distinguishes, 

experiences, and suffers.  Depending on this, one’s life is formed.  The 

greatest strength of a human being is his psyche which guides all, gathers all 

strength and is the biggest treasure, especially in one’s difficult moments.   

All this, as in a mirror, was reflected in the concentration camps.  People with 

such characteristics survived.  The weak ones died.  

I asked myself, what is the limit of human endurance?  I am sure that if 

I, in my statement, were to describe everything I lived through, adding all that 

I have omitted from these pages, nobody would believe it, since we don’t 

know the limits of human endurance, just as we don’t know the boundary 

between life and death and we die with this ignorance.   

In the camps, one had to grasp quickly that one had to work constantly 

with his psyche not to give up the fight for one’s life until the last breath and 

simultaneously believe that he would be successful.  This made some 

chance for survival possible.  

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WLADYSLAW MINOTA:  TESTIMONY

Reflecting on the above, one should also ask the following question:  

what is the limit to barbarism, bestiality, evil?  How, in the twentieth century, 

in civilized Europe, could such Satanism rage?  Yes indeed, in truth, there is 

no answer to this. 

I leave this subject to the politicians, sociologists, psychologists and 

maybe psychiatrists.  Let them analyze and suggest solutions and proposals 

for the future.  My “world” is coming to an end; I have lived my years.  I leave 

this, my testament, to my descendents, and after that, it is no longer my 

affair.  I know that the period in which I lived was terrible, and life was very 

difficult.  I did not experience much joy in my young years.  I was arrested in 

the 18th year of my life.  Later, I returned to a country devastated by war and 

to a life-long fight to regain my lost health which has continued to this day.   

In writing this account, I didn’t have any intention to praise or elevate myself.  

There were hundreds of thousands of people who suffered and died.  I am 

just a background on which I present the facts, supported by proofs which I 

possess.  I didn’t write all I could have written about.  I chose only what was 

the most important!  My aim was and is to prevent anybody from daring to 

erase the historical truth and state that there were no concentration camps, 

no heavy slave labor, no pseudo-medical experiments, no crematoria and no 

mass burning of people.  The world needs the truth, and the warning!  

Nowhere and never should such murders ever again take place!  No fascism, 

racism, and xenophobia!  People should live in peace and friendship!  

I affirm that writing this deposition cost me a lot of health.  It reopened 

old wounds.  It was very painful for me.   But could I desist from doing it?  I 

think not.  Better to suffer while writing than to die suffering!

Wladyslaw Minota

Auschwitz  Prisoner Number 139187

Nutzweiler Kom. Dautmerger Prisoner Number 31346

Nutzweiler Kom. Viahingen  Prisoner Number 31346

Dachau Prisoner Number 150357 

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WLADYSLAW MINOTA:  TESTIMONY

Postscript

Upon my entreaty, the authorities of the city of Vaihingen undertook a search 

to discover the name of one of their citizens, a German, about whom I write 

in Chapter V.  Their efforts were successful!

I wrote my reminiscences of this man and handed it personally to the mayor 

of Vaihingen, Mr. Heinz Kalberer, with the request that it be published in the 

local press.  I enclose those reminiscences here.  

Wladysalw Minota

June 2001

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WLADYSLAW MINOTA:  TESTIMONY

Reminiscences of Karl Gluck

None of us is immortal.  We enter this world crying and we depart it with 

sorrow.  Every death induces us to enter into meditation and reflection.  

That’s when we reflect on unpleasant but truthful memories.  We stop to 

consider our own lives and their passing.  We draw conclusions about how to 

live, how to behave.  Often we do this much too late and cannot correct our 

earlier mistakes.  After we pass from this world, we are judged by those who 

remain alive.  The bad, they condemn and quickly forget.  Goodness is 

cherished for many years.  

The proof of this:  here, in this city of Vaihingen, there lived and worked a 

German, Karl Gluck.  To this city came I, a Pole, a former prisoner-of-war in 

the Pawiak prison in Warsaw, a prisoner in the concentration camps 

Auschwitz, Natzweiler Komando Dautmergen, Komando Vaihingen, and 

Dachau.  I survived the worst that human beings can do to one another.  (I 

describe this in my memoir, “My Road of Suffering”.)

After my liberation, I struggled with myself, trying to rid myself of the 

memories of the horrors that had been done to me.  I also tried to remember 

any examples of what could be called “goodness”.  An example of such 

goodness which I nurture in my memory over the past fifty-six years was and 

is represented by Karl Gluck.   He is a man who demonstrated such 

goodness.  The potatoes he cooked for us prisoners were a gift of life.  

Karl!  Your help gave us strength!   Empowered our spirit!  Gave us wretched 

prisoners hope for survival!  Your noble deeds balanced out some of the guilt 

of those who were not sympathetic toward us.  Thanks to you, I feel a 

sentiment to your city Vaihingen.   I erase from my memory the bad that was 

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WLADYSLAW MINOTA:  TESTIMONY

done to me and leave only the good.  Karl Gluck!  With this memoir, I seek to 

restore you to the memory of your fellow-citizens of Vaihingen.  Because he 

who lives within human memory does not die.  Therefore live forever!

In my name and in the name of my fellow-inmates who worked in the Military 

Hospital in Vaihingen, I salute you!  I thank you for what you did for us 

prisoners.  May your memory be honored forever!

Wladyslaw Minota

April 6, 2001

Vaihingen