From the memoirs of a doctor in Gross-Rosen concentration camp

It is not easy to recall events that happened 23 years ago. They were tragic, so they should stay in your memory. However, human perception and memory are fallible. The same event can be perceived differently by two people. Viewed in retrospect, some events are emphasized, whereas others lose their acuity and fade away. There is a law of positive memories (Lersch, quoted after H. Münch, 1967: 88), which says that we prefer to remember the good and happy things and tend to forget the bad things. Over the past 20 years I have not been in the habit of discussing and analyzing the times in the camp with fellow inmates, so the memories I want to present here are only my impressions and experiences, free from suggestions imposed by others. I know that these memories may be imprecise and fragmentary.

I was in Gross-Rosen for almost a year, from April 1944 until it was closed down in February 1945.¹ I cannot say anything about the first, most difficult period of my time in the camp and in the camp hospital. I do not want to describe how Blockälteste and kapos murdered prisoners, nor the long hours of roll-calls and commandos coming back from work and carrying a few prisoners who had been killed. We know it all quite well already. The course of events was similar in all the concentration camps, as there were SS men, German “senior prisoners,” kapos and Blockälteste in all of them. I want to devote this excerpt from my memoirs to the doctors whom I met in Gross-Rosen, and who, despite differences in age, status, and offices they had held prior to their imprisonment, were able offer us, their colleagues, a profound, manly friendship, and decent, honest work on behalf of sick prisoners.

In the first days of February 1944 a trainload of hundreds of prisoners was hastily sent out from Majdanek.² Almost all the medical staff of the camp hospital put on the train. We arrived at Gross-Rosen station³ in covered goods wagons, separated off with a barbed wire fence from the guards in each of the wagons. We were in good spirits. Many factors contributed to that, including the relaxation of discipline prevailing in recent months in Majdanek, the awareness that the Soviet army and Polish units had already crossed the old borders of Poland, and the haste with which the transportation had been arranged. Spring had arrived and could be observed in the world of Nature, so there was hope for a change for the better.

We walked self-confidently and with a lot of vigor, covering the distance from the railway station to the camp on foot. On entering through the iron gate, we saw a fairly small camp laid out at different levels on the slopes of a mountain. You could notice the order and rigor here at first glance. The behavior of the SS men was loud, aggressive and brutal, just as it had been before, in the first years of the War. Soon after our arrival all the people who had come on the train had to take a bath, accompanied by shouting and beating, in accordance with the rules in Nazi German concentration camps. The new arrivals from Majdanek were accommodated in two quarantine blocks. Quarantine lasted for 6 weeks, which passed quite quickly despite the fact that we were idle (not working). The food parcels our families sent to Majdanek which were forwarded and arrived after us were certainly an attraction of quarantine, as were the letters we sent to inform our loved ones about our move to a new address. The first batch of parcels was distributed to us in the big square. Prisoners were called up to a table with the parcels to pick up their package. Professor Michałowicz was called up. He came up to the table at an almost running pace and stood at attention with his cap in his hand. Drozdowski, an SS man reportedly of Lithuanian origin, was on the opposite side of the table. Unexpectedly, Drozdowski asked Professor Michałowicz if he was really a professor and upon receiving an answer in the affirmative, shouted, “I’m the professor here!” and hit our senior in the face. The professor lost his balance, fell down and lost his glasses. Having to watch him slowly get up and search for his glasses was terrible, for we had been on such close terms with him in Majdanek. Camp discipline did not tolerate even the slightest reaction from us. The professor got up, found his shattered glasses with difficulty and again stood at attention.

Until our arrival there were only a few doctors in the camp hospital. Antoni Mianowski,⁴ who had earlier been in Majdanek for a short time, was the camp’s senior doctor. Dr Kazimierz Biały worked in Block 2. Dr Stefan Żegleń from Maków Podhalański handled ophthalmology, because prisoners who worked in the nearby quarry were constantly in need of eye treatment. Lafone, an elderly Frenchman, worked as a surgeon in Block 6. He was recognizable among other prisoners, as he wore a fancy navy blue beret, manifesting his nationality. Georg Prill, a professional criminal, was kapo in the hospital. He was stupid and evil, and vulgar to prisoners who came to the outpatients’ room. He was involved in the murder of a camp Ältester just a few weeks after our arrival, was degraded and sent to the penal commando and later transferred to another camp. He was succeeded in the office of hospital kapo by Rudi Langer, who was more lenient and had been sent to the camp as a punishment for being a homosexual. The only major problem with him were his visits to patients’ blocks and the examination of young, good-looking prisoners. Knowing about this weakness of his, we were always present at young and handsome prisoners’ examinations, which thanks to our presence finished quickly with only a conversation with a sick boy.

The following physicians came with me from Majdanek to Gross-Rosen: Prof. Mieczysław Michałowicz, Prof. Stanisław Konopka, Jan Nowak, Tadeusz Kosibowicz, Rudolf Glykner (a military physician in the Czechoslovak army), Witold Kopczyński, and Włodzimierz Doktor.⁵ When quarantine was over we were employed in the camp hospital. Prof. Konopka was sent to work in outpatients and supervised the hospital pharmacy. Dr Witold Kopczyński helped him for a few weeks until he was sent with a labor commando to Aslau. The work in outpatients consisted mainly of giving advice, putting on dressings and presenting patients qualified for admission to the hospital kapo, who always had the last say. Nevertheless, we often managed to get many of the less seriously ill patients into the hospital. Prof. Michałowicz and Jan Nowak were sent to Block 2, the internal medicine ward. Block 3 was right behind Block 2. Block 4 was an extension of Block 3. Block 5 was at a much lower altitude than other blocks, with Block 6 next to it. A stone stairway led down to those blocks. Block 5 was the infectious ward, for tuberculosis patients or under observation, suspected of an infectious disease. Block 6 was for surgery cases.

The organization of the blocks in the Gross-Rosen hospital was slightly different than in Majdanek. In Gross-Rosen the individual with the most power in a block was the Blockältester (block senior), who was not a doctor. He managed everything and I think that, considering the shortage of doctors in the camp’s first years, he might have also performed medical duties, at least some of them. The immediate supervisor of all the Blockältesters was the hospital, who appointed his cronies to these jobs. Our role in the hospital block was limited to performing medical activities, but there was a big chance of getting into trouble with the Blockältester.

Initially I was sent to work in Block 3. When I arrived, the individual in charge was Władek, a young boy with a penchant for despotism and brutality. Working with him was difficult. In the first weeks we were distrustful of each other. Soon I was moved to Block 5, where Karl Maul, an elderly German recidivist, was Blockältester. Maul was only interested in the economic aspect of the block’s operations, leaving a certain amount of freedom to the doctors. On our transfer from Majdanek and appointment to the Gross-Rosen hospital, our situation was quite difficult. We were new to a camp that had its own, established life. To work efficiently on behalf of patients, we needed not only to provide them with conditions which were as good as possible (mattresses, blankets, food, medicines), but also to give them the chance to convalesce for as long as possible and see that the work they were given later was not too exhausting. We wanted to admit the elderly and prisoners exhausted by hard labor to the hospital, but in accordance with hospital regulations, that was not a sufficient ground for hospitalization. We wanted to have honest and supportive persons working as medical orderlies, but to achieve that we had to organize a group of friends in all the crucial units of the camp. We needed to have a few kapos, Blockältesters, and even SS men on our side. The best way to achieve this was with money and booze. We had neither. The contents of the parcels we used to get at first were of little value for the camp’s hobnobs. Traditionally the hospital block was under a despotic Blockältester who did not let anyone encroach on his powers. Blockältesters were protected and supported by Prill, the hospital kapo. We did not know any colleagues from other camp facilities, and the camp itself was still under the harsh regime of Rapportführer Eschner and his SS subordinates, even though it was 1944. We doctors were needed in Gross-Rosen by a huge number of prisoners who were weak, emaciated and ill, wanting a respite in the hospital. Our business was to supplement the modest number of medical staff and work together to somehow weaken the rule of the Blockältesters in the hospital, and most of all to create an atmosphere of order, honesty and trust. Whether we managed to do that is for the prisoners who stayed in the hospital to say.

In the summer of 1944 a few doctors arrived on a train from Kraków, including Dr Ludwik Fischer from Zakopane and Tolek Pieszak, my university friend. They were sent to work in Block 5, too, where we worked until the camp was closed down. Dr Fischer was an experienced pulmonologist, so his work was especially helpful, unfortunately it was limited to carrying out the physical examination and diagnosis of patients with tuberculosis, as there was virtually no treatment available. When new doctors arrived from other camps and prisons they were employed in the hospital blocks. Prof. K. Gibiński was sent to work in Block 2; and Dr Szadurski and his son were sent to Block 4. Dr Walenty Popek, a laryngologist, served as a consultant for all the hospital blocks and outpatients. Dr Zygmunt Kulig was in Gross-Rosen for a short time and was then sent to the Hartmannsdorf commando. Dr Mieczysław Kotarbiński lived in Block 5 in the hospital, but like Dr Żegleń worked as an ophthalmologist treating prisoners working in the quarry. I cannot say whom Polish doctors had to thank for their appointment to jobs in the hospital. There must have been one Pole or a group of Poles who procured the employment of physicians in the hospital and gave them a chance to survive the last months of the War. Perhaps it was Antek Mianowski, who was always energetic and full of initiative, or maybe Janek Nowak, who had no trouble with winning the confidence of his superiors.

Prof. Michałowicz was the person who enjoyed our greatest respect, cordiality and deep trust. At difficult moments of anxiety and crisis, we all ran to him with our problems, always receiving paternal understanding and good advice, administered in a straightforward, simple and honest way. The Professor was always optimistic and liked to laugh at himself and others. He delivered lectures on medical subjects, which were always big events for the hospital staff. The camp authorities gave their consent to these lectures, providing they were delivered in German and in the presence of the SS sanitary officer. Prof. Michałowicz spoke on medical issues related to the camp hospital, and used this context to discuss the physician’s duties, the humanism inherent in his or her work, and the question of good and dedication. He quoted passages from literature, just as he usually did in his university lectures, and spoke of the future of medicine. Several lectures of this kind were held in Gross-Rosen. I remember the tall, slightly stooping figure of Jan Nowak standing next to Prof. Michałowicz. Dr Nowak, who came from Kraków, tried to help the Professor in everyday life, offering him his cordial and discreet support. He would see to many things, which were so very much needed in the camp. He looked after the Professor’s health and kept him away from the world outside the hospital, to avoid trouble with German prisoners and SS men.

Block 2, where Prof. Michałowicz, Dr Nowak, Prof. Gibiński and Dr Biały worked, was full of patients who were members of the Polish intelligentsia. We tried to as many ailments as possible to keep a patient in the hospital as long as possible. That required a certain amount of diplomacy and a knowledge of the psychology of people in authority. The Blockältester in Block 4 was a young Czech, and fortunately Dr Glykner, a senior Czechoslovak army officer, was appointed physician of that block. His calm approach managed to influence his young and very energetic compatriot. Block 6, the surgery ward, was staffed by Drs Tadeusz Kosibowicz, Włodzimierz Doktor, Władysław Bernadzikowski, and Stanisław Różycki, who had worked in this field of medicine before their arrest.

All the doctors in the hospital worked well with each other and there were no personal conflicts. None of us aspired to leadership or had the ambition to gain honors granted by the camp’s authorities. Juniors supported the seniors with their energy and initiative; and seniors assisted the juniors with their prudence and professional experience. It would have been dangerous and unnecessary to hold meetings and appoint assignments. We knew the rules and habits governing the work in the hospital from previous camps. We knew and trusted each other. New colleagues conscientiously set to work with us.

One Sunday in summer the camp was shocked to learn that the dead body of an Ältester (the top job a prisoner could hold) had been found in the firemen’s water reservoir in the middle of the camp. He was a German, and had a big wound in his head. We Poles were alarmed, as we knew that we would be suspected of the murder. However, it soon turned out he had been murdered during the night by German fellow prisoners who belonged to the big shots in the camp. There was an investigation, a few of them were locked up, and others were sent to other camps. The main culprits were sentenced to death by hanging.

Five gallows were set up on a platform in the big square, and all the camp’s prisoners, including the personnel of the hospital, had to stand in dense columns and watch the execution. It was the first time in my life I saw a hanging at close quarters. That sight I saw in Gross-Rosen will stay in my memory until the day I die. Although I had already seen many shocking things, in September 1939⁶ and in the concentration camps I had been in earlier, this hanging of five people made a deep impression on me. The worst moment was the removal of the step from under the feet of the convicted and the noose tightening. Perhaps not everyone reacted in the way I did, but many of my colleagues turned their heads away and some even fainted. It made no difference at the time that the men hanged were German and criminals who had murdered hundreds of prisoners. Often when they were still alive we had wanted to see them dead, but now our hatred of them vanished. The way they were killed by hanging and the aggravation of the impression by the five consecutive executions made us disgusted with those who had organized it. Fortunately, the times when criminals were executed by being ripped to pieces by a pair of horses, or by being impaled have passed. But is execution by hanging still necessary in today’s societies? Making thousands watch these executions may perhaps be attributed to the Nazi German sadism and evil-mindedness.

Amid the gloomy working days, Sunday was a day of relative calm in the camp and hospital. The SS men were not so conspicuous and the Blockältesters and kapos not as active as usual. There was no work on Sunday afternoons and for many prisoners one of the best entertainments were the football matches. There were three teams that participated in them in Gross-Rosen, two were Polish and one was German. A Polish team always played against the German team, and though they were each other’s equals, perhaps with a slight advantage for the Polish team, yet of course the Germans always had to win. If the German players had problems with winning the match, the referee had to help them. The referee was always German. The forwards in the Polish team were two league players, Stolarski from Łódź and Łysakowski from Warsaw.

After the match a group of us would take a stroll in the camp and visit friends to discuss the military and political situation. We developed a nice Sunday afternoon habit, wearing clean prison gear and having a freshly shaven strip on our heads.⁷ It was an elegant custom reserved for Sunday and a sign of our mentally and physically stalwart attitude. Our Sunday meetings and conversations were not seen favorably by the SS men and German prisoners. As the situation on the fronts got worse they were afraid the Poles might organize a resistance movement. Every time a few Polish prisoners were seen standing together in a group they would call it a polnische Widerstandbewegung (Polish resistance movement). We Poles also jokingly resorted to this saying, which was pretty widespread, but there were no special reprisals on this account.

I can neither say whether there was any form of underground resistance movement in Gross-Rosen, nor how far its operations went if there was one. I don’t know whether prisoners had any illicit contacts with the outside world. Working in the hospital’s infectious diseases ward, I had few occasions to meet prisoners in the camp. The precautions taken by Gross-Rosen veterans in relations with us seem justified, because we were newcomers from Majdanek and they didn’t know us well. Perhaps there were some underground organizations, but the issue of a camp resistance movement falls outside the scope of my personal story. However, it will undoubtedly be the subject of other, new items in the literature on Gross-Rosen.

The Poles in the camp were surprised when a dozen or so well-known and popular Polish prisoners were put in the penal commando. Being in the penal commando, “care of” Blockältester Vogel usually soon led to death due to emaciation as a result of hard labor in the quarry or at the hand of the kapos or the Blockältester himself. Prisoners working in the penal commando who fell ill had no right to treatment in the hospital.

Krzysztof Radziwiłł,⁸ Roztworowski, Dr Włodzimierz Bołądź, Raczkowski (his nom de guerre), my hospital colleague Jan Lech, and others were sent to the penal commando. We didn’t know why.⁹ We did not suspect them of being connected with a resistance organization. Some of us thought it was a measure to intimidate the Polish prisoners following the July attempt on Hitler’s life,¹⁰ others associated it with the Warsaw Uprising. We heard of the Uprising very late, from Völkischer Beobachter, the official German newspaper; a short news bulletin said that the “rebellion” by groups of Polish “bandits” in Warsaw had been put down. This was in late August 1944.

As time went on the doctors gained more significance in the camp. Kapo Rudi rarely showed up in our infectious diseases block, and when he did come, he would do so to look for young boys, as usual. Blockältester Maul did not interfere with the way we handled patients. I have deliberately used the word “handled,” not “treated.” The Gross-Rosen hospital did not have many medications to offer patients. We had a very small supply of sulfonamides, medicinal carbon, white clay and Isticin¹¹ at our disposal. We had non-sterile gauze, lignin, paper bandages and ointment for dressings. Whenever the problem of scabies intensified, we got a sufficient supply of Wilkinson’s ointment. There was a big demand for this sulfur ointment. We had no laboratory glass or reagents, and no X-ray or pneumothorax apparatus. All that the hospital block could offer prisoners was some rest, staying in bed and full portions of food, sometimes some dietary soup. The working conditions for us, the hospital staff, were much better than in the camp’s work commandos, but not a moment of solitude and constantly being with patients and in the company of colleagues, which made our lives automatic and superficial. There was no time for memories, personal thoughts, or a moment of reflection. Nonetheless such moments came, often at the least expected times.

Every morning before the reveille (in fall and winter it was before dawn) Tolek Pieszak and I took turns to determine the identity and numbers of prisoners who had died during the night. There were always a few naked, emaciated bodies lying on the floor of the block washroom. Our job was to check the number of the deceased prisoner, determine his surname, write his camp number on his chest and prepare a notice of death. In the silence of the block and camp which was still slumbering, this rendezvous with prisoners who had died filled us with sad thoughts about the loneliness and humiliation of a human being in a concentration camp and about the nature of suffering, death, and justice. We asked ourselves whether patients got everything from us that could be given in these conditions. Writing a camp number on a dead man’s scrawny chest and a moment’s reverie were the last farewell those of his colleagues who were still alive could give him.

More and more patients were coming to the hospital, but the impossibility of providing them with a quick recovery forced us to make the cramped conditions in the block even more congested. The growing numbers in the hospital resulted in selections,¹² which I knew very well from other camps. I remember one selection at Gross-Rosen. It was conducted in the hospital by SS men and the hospital kapo. A large group of the most seriously ill was selected for transportation. We knew very well what that meant. That selection stuck in my memory because the camp’s authorities suspected us of not presenting the full list of patients designated for transportation. The hospital kapo appeared on the scene. Even a young German doctor in an officer’s rank bothered to come. The doctor behaved in a very calm way, he examined the patients qualified for transportation, as well as the rest of the inpatients, and he even considered the request of a former employee of a Poznań theatre, who asked him in fairly fluent German to let him stay in the camp. After the doctor left the matter died away, although it could have had very serious repercussions; the specter of the penal commando loomed over our heads.

The fall of 1944 brought a relaxation in the discipline in the camp, which was a result of the inauspicious development of matters on the western, southern and eastern fronts and a big influx of trains from other camps and commandos subject to Gross-Rosen. A hasty construction of new blocks started in the camp’s westward extension. There were many more patients in the hospital than usual, but the lack of supervision by the German authorities allowed for greater independence and the chance to protect convalescents for longer.

The significant mitigation in the camp’s regime was manifested in the authorities’ permission for us to organize a Polish Christmas play in December of 1944, which Dr Jagielski has described in Sclavus saltans. We had unforgettable and moving moments of reminiscences of everything that is dear to our hearts. We had the Sigismund Bell toll for us from the stage, we heard the melody of the bugle call from St. Mary’s Church, Góral Highlanders danced the zbójnicki, there were recitations of Polish poetry and even a violin solo. The makeshift hall set up in a barrack could not accommodate all the Polish prisoners, so the play was performed several times. Prisoners came, watched, listened, and wept. Some came several times. The Polish doctors also took part in that unique, very Polish Christmas show staged on the premises of a Nazi German concentration camp; Dr Jagielski was one of the main organizers and Dr Różycki sang a solo.

Then there were more harsh days. It was a very cold winter with heavy snowfall. Trains with starving, freezing and exhausted prisoners started to arrive. They had frostbite on their hands and feet. Two barracks were vacated for a large group of women who came on foot from Auschwitz. After a few days of rest they went on. The number of prisoners in the camp escalated. Our bread and soup rations were reduced. There was a lot of work in the hospital.

You could hear artillery fire somewhere in the far distance, especially at night. Anti-aircraft alarms were announced, and we could hear bombs going off. Trainloads of prisoners being transported to Germany started to leave the camp. Finally, in the first days of February we received an order to select all the patients fit enough to make the journey and able to walk on foot from the camp to the railway station. There was unrest in the hospital; all the patients wanted to prepare for the journey, but many of them could not even leave their bunk beds on their own. Haste and chaos reigned in the camp. One day in the late afternoon all the doctors in the hospital, the less severely ill, and the rest of the prisoners walked out of the camp in a long column over a thousand strong. On the way we were stopped a few times, and finally in the late evening we all came back to the camp. Next morning we marched out of the camp again, and then we were put on a train with open freight wagons which set off for an unknown destination.

Our train was the last to leave Gross-Rosen. Those who stayed in the camp were a few dozen Germans, the kapos and Blockälteste, along with the small group of SS men. I fear the worst must have happened to the patients left in the hospital.

Translated from original article: Romuald Sztaba, “Ze wspomnień lekarza obozu w Gross-Rosen.” Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim, 1968: 153–157.

Notes

1. 1944 saw the evacuation of the Majdanek concentration camp. At that time, prisoners were evaluated to the following camps: Natzweiler Gross-rosen, Auschwitz, and Ravensbrück.^a
2. Majdanek was liquidated on 22 July 1944. The last prisoners were then sent to KL Auschwitz.^a
3. Now Rogoźnica, Poland. In 1940 the Nazi Germans set up a concentration camp there next to the stone quarry. Initially, if was a sub-camp of Sachsenhausen. In May 1941 Gross-Rosen became an independent concentration camp. It claimed the biggest number of victims in 1945, when thousands of prisoners from various sub-camps and Auschwitz were evacuated there. Numerous sub-camps of Gross-Rosen operated until 1943. Gross-Rosen was evacuated in February 1945, although thousands of prisoners perished of the cold or were shot dead on the trains and during the death march. 125 thousand prisoners passed through Gross-Rosen, and over 40 thousand died.^b
4. Antoni Mianowski (born 1917, date of death unknown) was a doctor from Lviv. He was a imprisoned in Majdanek, Dachau, Gross-Rosen, and KL Leitmeritz (a branch of KL Flossenbürg). His further fate remains unknown.^a
5. More information about those physicians is available at the website of the online exhibition Doctors in Prison Uniforms. Medical service at Majdanek.^a
6. The Polish defense campaign of September 1939 following the German invasion on September 1.^c
7. All the prisoners of Gross-Rosen, except for the Germans, had short hair and a clean-shaven strip running across the top of the head from the forehead to the back of the neck. Prisoners in the penal commando had an additional clean-shaven strip running from ear to ear over their poll.^b
8. Krzysztof Radziwiłł was arrested in August 1940 and interned in a Sandomierz prison. In September 1940 he was transferred to KL Buchenwald, where he worked in a quarry, and then, in December 1941, to Majdanek, to be a prisoner interpreter. InInitially he was a camp clothing warehouse manager. Later he was transferred to the Soviet POWs’ field to work for the sanitary service. During the evacuation of Majdanek, he was sent to Gross-Rosen, and then, in February 1945, to Mauthausen. Source: Radziwiłł, K.M. Pamiętniki. Od feudalizu do socjalizmu bezpośrednio. Warsaw, 2000.^a
9. Of these, Radziwiłł, Bołądź, and Lech, were sent to other camps after a few weeks in the penal commando. After the War Radziwiłł and Lech returned to Poland; Bołądź remained abroad. I don’t know what happened to the others.^b
10. The unsuccessful attempt on Hitler’s life was carried out by Col. C. Stauffenberg in Hitler’s Rastenburg HQ on July 20, 1944. It was inspired by a nationalist opposition group of generals and right-wing politicians.^b
11. 1,8-dihydroxyanthraquinone, also known as Chrysacin or Dantron, a laxative.^c
12. In Nazi German concentration camps “selection” meant selection of the weakest for death in the gas chamber or by phenol injection. Selections were carried out by German SS physicians.^c