Guards at the Auschwitz death camp rode motorcycles around the camp’s crematorium on one occasion to drown out the screams of 300 Jews being gassed, a survivor testified today at the trial here of 22 former camp personnel. Gnazy Golik, who spent four years in the camp, said the 300 victims were members of the camp’s “special squad,” a group of Jews forced to drag corpses from the gas chambers and then burn them.
One day, the witness said, the prisoners “got the order to undress. As members of the special squad, they knew what was going to happen to them and they refused. SS men then began to beat them until they finally disrobed and were driven into the gas chambers.” The witness said that an SS medical orderly then threw in a cylinder of poison gas.
The court took under advisement today a prosecution demand that 26 additional charges of murder be added to the indictment against two of the 22 defendants.
The demand was based on testimony against Hans Stark and Stefan Baretzki that they had drowned victims in ditches and reservoirs at the camp. Polish witnesses testified that Stark ordered the drowning of 20 prisoners and forced another prisoner to drown his own father. Stark was accused of later shooting that prisoner. Stark, 42, had been free on bail but after this testimony, he was ordered arrested and confined.
Baretzki was charged with having forced four inmates into a reservoir and with pushing them back into the water until they became too exhausted to try to leave and were drowned. Stark originally had been charged with shootings and Baretzki with abuse and murder of prisoners. A decision on the prosecution demand is expected next week.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
