Archive/File: camps/auschwitz/glowa glowa.001

Stanislaus Glowa testifies
--------------------------

Glowa, like many of the witnesses who preceded him, tells of the 
"experimental gassing" at the end of 1941 in Block 11, of the slayings
with phenol, first at Block 28 and then in Block 20 of the prisoner
hospital.

"Klehr, Scherpe and Hantl regularly took part in the killings with 
phenol. But I would like to point out at this time, for the sake of
justice, if I had to set up a scale of responsibility, that the last-
named behaved like saints compared to Klehr".

[...]

The court also hears this witness tell of the fate of 120 boys from the
Polish village of Zamosc. Their parents had been killed, and the
children were brought to Auschwitz, where, after a few weeks, it was
decided to kill them as well. Work-detail leader Palitzch brought them
into the courtyard of the hospital on a February morning in 1943, where
the played and were given food by older prisoners. 

"They were hungry and frightened and told of having been beaten. All of
us felt sorry for them. Again and again they asked: 'Will we be killed?
Why?'. They had to wait a few hours to the end".

Prisoner-clerk Glowa sat in the aisle of hospital building 20, where
almost daily he crossed of the names of patients "injected" by Klehr
from the list of inmates. Not far from where he sat was the curtain 
behind which the victims had to stand in the corridor until a prisoner 
took them into the "examination room" where Klehr was waiting for them 
with his phenol injection.

"Scherpe and Hantl came in that afternoon, and they worked for a long
time. In order to shorten the terrible torment of the children, I would
take them to the curtain and tell them they are going to be bathed. The
first ones had screamed with terror in the room".

"Do you have children"? Glowa asks in a breaking voice, and then 
continues: "It was horrible. Why did they kill us? That is why I 
helped, to shorten the torment. After it was over I saw Hantl in a 
state of complete collapse". (Nauman, Bernd. Auschwitz: the Proceedings 
Against Mulka and Others. 183-6)

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