POLISH SOURCE INSTITUTE IN LUND Malmö, 30 November 1945

Testimony received by Institute Assistant Krystyna Karier transcribed

Record of Witness Testimony 17

Here stands Mr Ludwik Walasik born on 12 August 1910 in Apolda (Thuringia, Germany) , occupation sailor religion Roman Catholic , parents’ forenames Tomasz, Józefa last place of residence in Poland Gdynia current place of residence Gdynia

who – having been cautioned as to the importance of truthful testimony as well as to the responsibility for, and consequences of, false testimony – hereby declares as follows: I was interned at the concentration camp in Stuffhof from 9 February 1943 to 24 March 1945 as a political prisoner bearing the number 19378 and wearing a red -coloured triangle with the letter ‘P’. I was later interned in at the Neuengamme camp (including evacuation therefrom) from 24 March 1945 to 3 May 1945.

Asked whether, with regard to my internment and my labour at the concentration camp, I possess any particular knowledge about how the camp was organized, how prisoners were treated, their living and working conditions, medical and pastoral care, the hygienic conditions in the camp, or any particular events concerning any aspect of camp life, I state as follows:

The statement consists of seven and a half pages (two pages appended) and describes the following: 1. The Stutthof camp – numerically and in terms of living conditions 2. Return to Gdańsk further to an investigation 3. The camp in Stutthof – the drive to eliminate the Jews at the women’s camp in Stutthof during the spring of 1944, the evacuation of Jewish men and women by barge, and the detonation of one of the barges 4. The gassing of a group of Polish partisans – several hundred people – the witness’s own observations 5. The state of the camp following the arrival of transports from ‘evacuated’ Warsaw – August 1944 6. Gdynia shipyard – numerically and in terms of the living and working conditions there as of November 1944 7. The evacuation of the camp – voyages on the ships Cap Arcona and Athen [sic, the witness actually refers to the Elbing and the Zefir at this point]

[stamp] POLISH SOURCE INSTITUTE IN LUND [hand-written mark for ‘continued overleaf’] [/stamp] BLOM’S PRINTING, LUND 1945

8. The Arbeitserziehungslager [Ger., lit. ‘work education camp’] in Kiel – forced labour clearing rubble 9. The camp in Neuengamme – several days’ internment 10. The assignment of the witness to an underground airbase in Schleswig 11. Dispatch of transport to Lübeck and re-embarkation [sic] aboard the ships Cap Arcona and Athen – voyage without food or water 12. Transfer to the Cap Arcona and then back to the Athen – the burning of the Cap Arcona and Deutschland with prisoners on board 13. Panic and fighting amidst the prisoners’ rush to abandon ship 14. Liberation [stamp] POLISH SOURCE INSTITUTE IN LUND [/stamp]

Malmö, 30 November 1945 Polish Source Institute in Lund

Testimony received by Institute Assistant – Krystyna Karier

Record of Witness Testimony

Here stands Mr Ludwik Walasik born on 12 August 1910 in Apolda (Thuringia, Germany): occupation – sailor; religion – Roman Catholic; parents’ forenames – Tomasz, Józefa; last place of residence in Poland – Gdynia; and current place of residence in Poland – Gdynia.

I was interned at the concentration camp in Stutthof from 9 February 1943 to 24 March 1945 as a political prisoner bearing the number 19378 and wearing a red-coloured triangle with the letter ‘P’; I was later interned at Neuengamme from 24 March 1945 to 3 May 1945.

I was arrested in Gdańsk on 20 November 1942 on charges of associating with individuals who continued to work in an underground organization that was later merged with the Home Army. I was taken to the basement of the Gdańsk Gestapo headquarters and placed in a shared cell holding around a dozen people. From the Gdańsk Gestapo headquarters I was transported to the camp in Stutthof. The camp at that time numbered around 3,000 people; Poles made up at least 40% of that figure. A most effective method of finishing people off was [the combination of] twelve hours of hard labour, camp rations (coffee in the morning [note written above text] and evening [/note], 300 grams of bread for the whole day, 30 grams of margarine a day, and 1 litre of soup for dinner), strict discipline, ever-lengthening roll calls (two to three hours), sanitary conditions, and lack of proper clothing. I would describe the medical care as treatment by truncheon, an epidemic of typhus. I worked in the vicinity of the crematorium and, from what I observed, around thirty dead bodies were removed from the camp every day: five coffins holding three people each twice a day. In March 1943, 109 people from one block died in a single day due to typhus and exhaustion. There were special blocks

where the weak and sick would be placed to finish them off. At the end of August 1943, I was taken back to Gestapo headquarters in Gdańsk in connection with an investigation being carried out, an entirely unrelated case which had come about when entirely different people on the outside had their cover blown. Beating was used during the interrogation; however, having failed to prove anything against me, they sent me back to the camp after two months in the Gestapo headquarters basement. In the spring of 1944, transports of Jews from eastern Europe (from Latvia) and Jewish women from the Łódź ghetto were brought in; the latter had already spent several days at the camp in Auschwitz. A wired-off section of our camp housed the women’s camp, where there were a dozen or so thousand inmates. One twelve- by-fifty-metre barrack building held 1,500 women, with no beds. At that time, a special campaign was being conducted against the Jewish women: one of the SS-Oberscharführers [SS rank, lit. ‘senior platoon leaders’] who was an overseer at the camp would carry out examinations of the women every day and segregate them, ordering them to stand to the left or the right. The women thus selected were trucked away to the gas chamber or given injections. You could see the gas chamber and crematorium from the camp. On our way back to the camp from work we would see women being driven over to the chamber. The same kind of selections would sometimes take place in the men’s camp, but on a smaller scale. Around 3,000 Jewish women were finished off that way. Out of a total of 15,000 Jewish men and women, around 1,000 were saved (that is, saved from the gas chamber). During the evacuation of the camp, they were shipped out on barges along with the Revier [Ger., infirmary] patients. One of these barges, which had about 1,000 Jewish women on board, was set adrift by SS men and blown up. According to captains of the German ships, such as the Athen and Cap Arcona, the same fate was supposed to befall all the prisoners from Neuengamme and Stutthof who were aboard ships near the town of Neustadt. It was supposed to happen on the night of 3–4 May. On the afternoon of 3 May, we were taken by English forces.

In the summer of 1944 a group of several hundred suspected partisans was brought to the camp; they were Poles from the Białystok area. Individual death sentences would be carried out either by hanging or by a shot fired from a revolver to the back of the head. Mass executions would be carried out by gassing. In this case, an order probably came through that this group of partisans were to be gassed. The first group of over 100 people, carrying shovels under the pretence of a work deployment, were led out of the camp and into the gas chamber. Or rather they were pushed into it – by SS men. You could see it happening from the camp and the workshops. Other prisoners, myself among them, witnessed it. After the chamber had been filled with people, the gas was thrown inside; it looked like canisters of white powder. Then you could hear screams coming from inside the chamber. The SS men stayed outside, of course. When roughly half an hour had passed, the chamber was opened up and the prisoners who worked at the crematorium (three prisoners) started dragging out the corpses. The position of the bodies showed signs that there had been a struggle in the chamber; many victims had bite marks on their arms and other wounds on their bodies. The gas must have been very weak or slow-acting. When the next hundred were being led in, one of them broke away and made to escape. Shots rang out and the whole group started to flee. Unfamiliar with the layout of the camp, most of them took the road between the old and new camps, along each side of which there were several guard towers. Machine-gun fire erupted from these, killing or wounding would-be escapees. The survivors were [note written above text] killed [/note] by the Rapportführer [SS rank, lit. ‘report leader’] and Hauptscharführer [‘chief platoon leader’] Chemnitz inspected them, finishing off any left alive, which he would first determine with a kick. That scene unfolded before the eyes of the entire camp. During the gunfire from the towers, two people were killed and several wounded. The third hundred were tied up by kapos [prisoner functionaries] and handed over to the ‘gasworks’, where the sentence was carried out. In mid-August 1944, the camp started to fill up with evacuees from camps to the east and from the Warsaw Uprising. Those people would be lying for weeks on end either in the square or with walls around them but no roof over their heads – women, men, and children together.

Then after their clothes were changed, they would be sent to work off-camp or crammed behind the wire. The camp was running at over 50,000 at that point. In what passed for normal conditions when each inmate slept in his own bed, there were 500 bunks (in stacks of three) to a block; at the height of the overcrowding there were 2,000 people in a block, so two beds had to accommodate five or six people. In November 1944, I was assigned to work in Gdynia shipyard. I lived in a camp on the grounds of the shipyard. The camp numbered 800 people, including more or less 200 people [note written above text] Poles [/note] and as many Russians and Latvians. The rest were French, Yugoslavian, and German. We worked twelve-hour shifts assembling submarines. On 18 December 1944, we survived a bombing raid by English planes. Within the camp grounds (measuring approximately 100 by 250 metres) fell ten half-ton bombs. Two barracks sustained direct hits; twenty-some-odd people were killed and over thirty wounded. In January 1945, we dug trenches around Gdynia because of the looming Russian offensive. The food grew worse with every passing day. The commandant of the labour detachment, Oberscharführer Bock, was a typical SS man. He implemented a harsh regime: it was not permitted to wear anything warm, and terrible beatings were meted out for the most minor of infractions. For stealing a few potatoes from the kitchen, for example, the culprit would receive from fifty to sixty lashes, after which he would be made to crouch in the freezing cold with potatoes between his teeth. He [sic, Bock] prevented all contact with the civilian population who were trying to help the prisoners, some of whom were their family members. Thus, he would cycle out on the road we took back from work, brandishing his revolver and threatening to confine anyone who approached the marching prisoners. Those captured while trying to escape were beaten and made to stand outside in the freezing cold after being doused with water. If anyone so much as moved, the guard was authorized to shoot them. They would stand like that for twenty-four hours. Anti-tank ditches were dug in the vicinity of Babi Dół airport (Hexengrund) and on the airport grounds

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Testimony of Mr Ludwik Walasik, born 12 August 1910 in Apolda (Thuringia, Germany), cont’d there were residential military barracks. There was a rubbish heap located right beside our work site within the Postenkette [Ger., cordon of guard posts] where they would throw away scraps from the kitchen, bits of potato and fish. Several prisoners made a break for the rubbish heap but were forced back by the guards. During the following attempt, one of the guards fired on the prisoners, dispersing them. A few of the hungriest, waiting until the guards were busy conversing, made yet another attempt. One of the guards let off two shots, killing one prisoner outright and wounding two more, one of whom died later at the work site. One day as we were leaving work, we found out from a woman passing by that Kościerzyna had been captured by the Russians. Some of the navy guards were reassigned to serve on the front. As a result of his efforts, our commandant received new guards from the Volkssturm [German conscript militia], who escorted us off camp to continue digging ditches. One day, the area where we were working came under Russian artillery fire originating from the direction of Wejherowo. That same day, the Russians closed in on the airport in Rumia and were making their way towards Sopot too. We were surrounded. Our commandant tried desperately to evacuate the camp. Twice we went to the port to find space on the ships, yet with no success. The Russian air force and artillery started to bombard us unrelentingly. We worked off and on. Shells often landed around the camp; there were losses, several people. A final and ultimately successful evacuation attempt took place 24 March 1945. The fighting was already on the outskirts of the city. Sopot had already been captured. We were embarked onto two ships: the Elbing and the Zefir. On the Zefir there were 350 people, on the Elbing 200. The Zefir, which I was on board, set sail from the harbour the following day in a convoy made up of several navy and merchant ships. While underway, it was attacked a few times by planes and submarines. Our voyage to the Bay of Kiel took a week. We received a one-and-a-half-kilo loaf of bread per twenty people once a day and about 100 grams of margarine, as well as water to drink.

During the voyage, body searches were carried out and some prisoners were found to be in possession of cigarettes (we were allowed to smoke at the camp), towels, and the like. Their numbers were taken down. After arriving at Kiel, we were placed in an Arbeitserziehungslager camp. After making his report on the prisoners’ conduct during the voyage, the seaman in charge of our group submitted to the camp commandant the list of prisoner numbers recorded on the ship, explaining that those items had been stolen. The prisoners were immediately taken to the bunker and shot dead three days later. We were starving and exhausted; despite this, we were immediately taken to work clearing rubble from the bomb-ravaged city of Kiel. After work, some of the workers would be carried by others in the group, because they couldn’t walk under their own strength. One particular day, in search of volunteers for additional work – as in his opinion the pace was too sluggish – the commandant showed up in the dormitory with a revolver, firing on the prisoners and wounding two of them. After a week we were transported by train to the camp in Neuengamme. Our arrival at the camp followed the standard procedure; that is, we had to bathe, hand over all our things, and change into old rags. They were striped civilian clothes with patches on them. If nothing else, at least that freed us from the lice that had plagued us throughout the evacuation. The next day we were taken to work inside and outside the camp. The front was a few dozen kilometres away. Regardless, we were rushing like mad to lay the foundation for some kind of factory. It was there that we received Red Cross packages for the first time. Over the course of the final weeks our diet changed radically: during the voyage from Gdynia we’d only had bread and water, and now we got as much swede and cabbage soup as we liked, because the Scandinavian blocks, supplied with Red Cross packages, had given up their soup rations. Bread was given out in the normal amount: 300 grams a day. The drastic change of nutrition triggered illnesses. After ten days at Neuengamme I was taken from the Appellplatz [Ger., area where roll call was taken] for reassignment to an underground airport in Schleswig. We arrived in Hamburg (a group of 400 people), where we were held up because the city

had been levelled by the American air force. We were sent onward to Lübeck. The evacuation of Neuengamme had begun by then. In Lübeck we were loaded onto the SS Athen and the passenger complement included transports from the camp, around 2,000 people. We were put in the cargo holds where we slept on the bare deck. Every other day we would be given half a litre of soup, and every day roughly 150 grams of bread. Water was very hard to come by. In each hold/dormitory, there was a designated elder who was in charge of rationing out the food. There were days when nothing was provided to drink. What tormented us more than anything was the thirst; often we would stand for hours by the trapdoor just to get a few mouthfuls of water. Water was traded for cigarettes. From Lübeck we reached Neustadt or thereabouts, where there were several ships in the bay. After the few days spent on the Athen, we were transferred to the SS Cap Arcona. The accommodation conditions were better and the ship was heated, plus it had plenty of water. Only the food was worse. For several days we got no bread at all, only half a litre of soup each. We were dreadfully weak and listless. Two weeks after the evacuation of Neuengamme, despite our efforts to remain on board the Cap Arcona we were transferred back to the Athen. You could see the struggle amongst the prisoners to get their fair share. The stronger ones, perhaps an organized gang, would rob their fellow prisoners of whatever they had; that was a daily occurrence. The perpetrators were usually exclusively Russians, who didn’t get any packages. They banded together in small groups of a few men each, attacking and robbing their chosen victims. Their The screams of the robbed could be heard constantly. It was no concern to the rest, who just sat by quietly. On 3 May at noon, we were ordered out on deck with the aim of alerting the English airmen to the presence of Häftlings [Ger., prisoners] with our striped uniforms. It was then we reached the shores of Neustadt. From the deck of the Athen you could see the burning hulks of the Cap Arcona and Deutschland, on board each of which there were a few thousand prisoners. The ships had been bombed by English planes. Any prisoner who was able to get out on deck leapt overboard, making their escape either directly in the water or in one of the few lifeboats that

were rescuing first and foremost German SS men. Aboard the Athen were to be loaded even more prisoners, from the Stutthof camp. This was during an air raid. One of the SS officers gave the order to embark and depart, but the captain of the ship wouldn’t comply. Then someone – maybe a prisoner – shouted to abandon ship. At the exit from the cargo hold, fighting erupted as everyone rushed to be the first out. Those who made it out started climbing down ropes to the shore. Others jumped into barrels full of raw cabbage. There was no sign of authority on the shore. Later we came across a drunk SS man in the street who ordered us to fall into formation. This crowd of several thousand people on the grounds of the submarine training facility began to surge towards the city. From the direction of the city appeared tanks with stars on them. At first we didn’t know what to make of them. One of them stopped in front of the guardhouse, in front of the signal flagpole, and tore down the Nazi swastika flag. The rest drove in amid the jubilation of the former prisoners. We were free! In Neustadt we took up residence in the barracks of the now defunct German navy, organising a Polish association. We were looked after first by the English authorities, and later by UNRRA, which in mid-July sent us to Lübeck. From there we arrived [note written above text] around [/note] 20 July in Sweden.

Read and signed by

Ludwik Walasik

The witness, Mr Ludwik Walasik, gives the impression of being a level-headed, intelligent person. Reconstructing the entire period date by date causes him some difficulty. He is affected by his impressions as he recounts them; nevertheless, he makes an effort to describe them calmly and in a matter-of-fact way. His testimony is absolutely trustworthy. Krystyna Karier Lund, 1 December 1945 [stamp] POLISH SOURCE INSTITUTE IN LUND [/stamp]