...Paul Szczurek arrived in Auschwitz in October 1940. He held various positions within the camp and worked not only at censorship office for letters and parcels for prisoners but also as a guard and block leader. At Auschwitz Szczurek turned into a sadist who beat and tormented prisoners regardless of their gender and age.
As the block leader at blocks 10 and 22, Paul Szczurek enjoyed organizing roll calls.
During roll calls the prisoners were lined up in rows of ten and then counted, which sometimes took hours and could be especially tormenting for the prisoners, particularly in the bad weather. Some SS guards organized roll calls which lasted from 5.00 a.m. to the late in the evening hours. Due to freezing weather and exhaustion, many prisoners collapsed and were then taken to the gas chambers.
Szczurek also took part in selections on the rail ramp, The process of selection and murder was carefully planned and organized. When a train stopped at the platform, the arrivals were lined up into two columns – men and boys in one, women and girls in the other. The SS physicians such as Josef Mengele performed a selection. The only criterion was the appearance of the prisoners, whose fate, for labor or for death, was determined at will. Szczurek – when supervising with other SS men the loading of prisoners who were to be transported in cars to the gas chambers – behaved inhumanly, and tortured the inmates in a cruel way, beating the women, the men and the children with a stick or a cane while forcing them into the cars.
The SS men kept the people fated to die unaware of what awaited them. They were told that they were being sent to the camp where work was waiting for them, but first they had to undergo disinfection and bathe.
They were then told politely to hang their clothes on the hooks, take a shower and were even promised they would be provided with soup and tea or coffee. However they were taken into the gas chambers, locked in, and killed with Zyklon B gas.
Between 1942 and 1944, more than 40 Auschwitz sub-camps, exploiting the prisoners as slave laborers, were founded, mainly at various sorts of German industrial plants and farms. In one of them, Monowitz-Buna, Paul Szczurek was also deployed.
Paul Szczurek remained in the camp until December 1944 or January 1945 when Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz concentration camp complex and the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps. These forced marches of concentration camp prisoners became known as the death marches.
After the end of the war, Szczurek was tried at the Auschwitz Trial which began on the 24th of November 1947 and lasted one month.
On the 22nd of December 1947, the Polish Supreme National Tribunal in Krakow sentenced Szczurek to death by hanging. He was 39 years old when he was executed on the 24th of January 1948.
As the block leader at blocks 10 and 22, Paul Szczurek enjoyed organizing roll calls.
During roll calls the prisoners were lined up in rows of ten and then counted, which sometimes took hours and could be especially tormenting for the prisoners, particularly in the bad weather. Some SS guards organized roll calls which lasted from 5.00 a.m. to the late in the evening hours. Due to freezing weather and exhaustion, many prisoners collapsed and were then taken to the gas chambers.
Szczurek also took part in selections on the rail ramp, The process of selection and murder was carefully planned and organized. When a train stopped at the platform, the arrivals were lined up into two columns – men and boys in one, women and girls in the other. The SS physicians such as Josef Mengele performed a selection. The only criterion was the appearance of the prisoners, whose fate, for labor or for death, was determined at will. Szczurek – when supervising with other SS men the loading of prisoners who were to be transported in cars to the gas chambers – behaved inhumanly, and tortured the inmates in a cruel way, beating the women, the men and the children with a stick or a cane while forcing them into the cars.
The SS men kept the people fated to die unaware of what awaited them. They were told that they were being sent to the camp where work was waiting for them, but first they had to undergo disinfection and bathe.
They were then told politely to hang their clothes on the hooks, take a shower and were even promised they would be provided with soup and tea or coffee. However they were taken into the gas chambers, locked in, and killed with Zyklon B gas.
Between 1942 and 1944, more than 40 Auschwitz sub-camps, exploiting the prisoners as slave laborers, were founded, mainly at various sorts of German industrial plants and farms. In one of them, Monowitz-Buna, Paul Szczurek was also deployed.
Paul Szczurek remained in the camp until December 1944 or January 1945 when Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz concentration camp complex and the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps. These forced marches of concentration camp prisoners became known as the death marches.
After the end of the war, Szczurek was tried at the Auschwitz Trial which began on the 24th of November 1947 and lasted one month.
On the 22nd of December 1947, the Polish Supreme National Tribunal in Krakow sentenced Szczurek to death by hanging. He was 39 years old when he was executed on the 24th of January 1948.
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LearningTranscript
00:00The 22nd of December, 1947, Krakow, Poland.
00:11The former staff of Auschwitz, the deadliest German Nazi concentration camp, hears their
00:15sentences read.
00:17After a month of gruesome testimonies, it is revealed that many SS officers were involved
00:22in the acts of inhumane torture and the mass murder of prisoners, often for pleasure, and
00:27that their cruelty went far beyond what their superiors ordered them to do.
00:31One of the perpetrators of this criminal Nazi regime is Paul Sturek.
00:36Paul Sturek was born on the 26th of June, 1908, in Konigshütte, then part of the German
00:42Empire.
00:43In 1922, the eastern part of Silesia, including Konigshütte, was separated from Germany and
00:49awarded to Poland.
00:50Sturek, after graduating from elementary school, became a steelworker by profession.
00:55The Second World War began on the 1st of September, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.
01:02Until this moment, Sturek, a Polish citizen of German nationality, felt Polish, but this
01:07changed with the outbreak of the war.
01:09To justify the action, Nazi propagandists accused Poland of persecuting ethnic Germans
01:14who were living in Poland.
01:16They also falsely claimed that Poland was planning, with its allies Great Britain and
01:19France, to encircle and dismember Germany.
01:23Under the SS, in collusion with the German military, staged a phony attack on a German
01:27radio station, the Germans accused the Poles.
01:31Hitler then used the action to launch a retaliatory campaign against Poland.
01:36Nazi Germany possessed overwhelming military superiority over Poland.
01:41Germany launched the unprovoked attack at dawn on the 1st of September, with an advance
01:44force consisting of more than 2,000 tanks, supported by nearly 900 bombers and over 400
01:50fighter planes.
01:51In all, Germany deployed 60 divisions and nearly 1.5 million men in the invasion.
01:57The assault on Poland demonstrated Germany's ability to combine air power and armour in
02:02a new kind of mobile warfare.
02:05The world adopted a new term to describe Germany's successful war tactic, Blitzkrieg, or lightning
02:11war.
02:12Britain and France stood by their guarantee of Poland's border and declared war on Germany
02:16on the 3rd of September, 1939.
02:19Poland found itself fighting a two-front war when the Soviet Union invaded Poland from
02:24the east on the 17th of September, sealing Poland's fate.
02:28The Polish government fled the country that same day.
02:31The last operational Polish unit surrendered on the 6th of October.
02:35After Poland's defeat in early October 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union divided
02:40the country in accordance with a secret protocol to the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.
02:45This agreement became known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and was signed one week before the start
02:50of World War II, on the 23rd of August, 1939, in Moscow by German Foreign Minister Joachim
02:56von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.
03:00The demarcation line was along the Bug River.
03:04The German occupation of Poland was exceptionally brutal.
03:07The Nazis considered Poles to be racially inferior and they launched a campaign of terror
03:12intended to destroy the Polish nation and culture, and to reduce the Poles to a leaderless
03:17population of peasants and workers, laboring for German masters.
03:21Ethnic cleansing was to be conducted systematically against the Polish people.
03:25In the first three months of war, from the fall of 1939 until the spring of 1940, some
03:3160,000 former government officials, military officers in reserve, landowners, clergy,
03:37and members of the Polish intelligentsia such as scientists, teachers, lawyers and doctors
03:42were executed region by region in the so-called intelligentsia action, including over 1,000
03:47prisoners of war.
03:49In the spring of 1940, the German occupation authorities launched the AB Action, which
03:54was the second stage of the Nazi German campaign of violence during World War II aimed to eliminate
03:59Poles considered to be members of the leadership class.
04:02The aim was to remove those Poles seen as most capable of organizing resistance to the
04:07German rule and to terrorize the Polish population into submission.
04:11The Germans shot thousands of teachers, priests, and other intellectuals in mass killings.
04:18In May 1940, around 60 kilometers west of Krakow, the Germans established Auschwitz
04:22Concentration Camp.
04:24The direct reason for the establishment of the camp was the fact that the mass arrest
04:28of Poles were increasing beyond the capacity of existing local prisons.
04:32The first 30 prisoners, the German criminals with green badges, arrived in Auschwitz on
04:37the 20th of May 1940 from the Sachsenhausen camp.
04:41These mandatory colorful badges of shame, primarily triangles, were used to identify
04:45why the inmates had been placed in the camp.
04:48Green badges were set for convicted criminals who were likely of a tough temperament suitable
04:52for kapo duty.
04:54The kapos were prisoners in Nazi camps who were selected by the SS to supervise the other
04:59camp's inmates in exchange for better food, clothing, and housing, and they were often
05:03as brutal as their SS supervisors.
05:07The greens, as these 30 German prisoners were called, did much to establish the sadism of
05:12early camp life, which was directed particularly at Polish inmates.
05:16The first transport of Polish male prisoners, including Catholic priests and Jews, arrived
05:21in Auschwitz on the 14th of June 1940 from Tarnów in Poland.
05:26They were given serial numbers 31 to 758.
05:30In the beginning, as with most German concentration camps, Auschwitz served three purposes.
05:35To incarcerate real and perceived enemies of the Nazi regime, to provide a supply of
05:39forced laborers for deployment to NSS-owned construction-related enterprises, and to kill
05:44small targeted groups of the population.
05:47It was only in 1942, when Auschwitz also became the largest of the extermination centers,
05:52where the final solution to the Jewish question, which referred to the Nazi plan to murder
05:56European Jews, was carried out.
05:59During the Holocaust, Auschwitz was the only location where concentration camp prisoners
06:03received tattoos.
06:05German prisoners were assigned a camp serial number, which was sewn into their uniforms.
06:09However, only those prisoners selected for work were issued with serial numbers.
06:14Those prisoners sent directly to the gas chambers were not registered and received no tattoos.
06:20Paul Sturek arrived in Auschwitz in October 1940.
06:23He held various positions within the camp, and worked not only at the censorship office
06:27for letters and parcels for prisoners, but also as a guard and block leader.
06:31At Auschwitz, Sturek turned into a sadist, who beat and tormented prisoners, regardless
06:36of their gender and age.
06:38On one occasion, when counting pairs of female prisoners leaving for work, Sturek beat them
06:43with a stick or with his hands about the head, or blindly all over the body, paying no heed
06:48to the effects of his blows.
06:50He would do it either for no reason at all, or because some prisoner fell out of step
06:54or failed to keep pace.
06:56Paul Sturek was also a sexual deviant.
06:59He was infamous for beating the female inmates with a stick on the buttocks and breasts,
07:04and when prisoners went stark naked to the bathhouse for de-lousing, Paul Sturek would
07:08prod them with a stick in their genitals.
07:10He used to beat and kick prisoners sometimes for no reason whatsoever, or for instance
07:14for failing to take off their hats upon seeing him.
07:18Beating prisoners with his hands or any other object that he chanced upon, he never paid
07:22any heed to whether his blows landed on the head, neck, chest, or any other body part.
07:28Paul Sturek was notorious for beating prisoners from behind with a stick on the nape of the
07:32neck.
07:33Another Sturek specialty was whipping with a stick either on the buttocks or about the
07:37kidneys.
07:38On one occasion, when a prisoner was in one of the blocks in the woman's camp and talked
07:42to some women, Sturek noticed it, approached the prisoner and, shouting in German, demanded
07:47an explanation of why the prisoner was talking to that female inmate.
07:51When the prisoner responded that he did not understand what he was saying, Sturek beat
07:55him forcefully with his hand in the face and stomach, kicked the prisoner and then
07:58told him in Polish,
08:00Now you can speak Polish, you son of a bitch.
08:04As the block leader, at blocks 10 and 22, Paul Sturek enjoyed organizing roll calls.
08:10During roll calls, the prisoners were lined up in rows of ten and then counted, which
08:14sometimes took hours and could be especially tormenting for the prisoners, particularly
08:18in the bad weather.
08:20Some SS guards organized roll calls which lasted from 5am to late in the evening hours.
08:25Due to freezing weather and exhaustion, many prisoners collapsed and were then taken to
08:29the gas chambers.
08:32Sturek also took part in selections on the rail ramp.
08:35The process of selection and murder was carefully planned and organized.
08:38When a train stopped at the platform, the arrivals were lined up into two columns, men
08:42and boys in one, women and girls in the other.
08:45The SS physicians, such as Josef Mengele, performed a selection.
08:49The only criterion was the appearance of the prisoners, whose fate, for labor or for
08:54death, was determined at will.
08:56Sturek, when supervising with the other SS men, the loading of prisoners who were to
09:00be transported in cars to the gas chambers, behaved inhumanely and tortured the inmates
09:05in a cruel way, beating the woman, the men and the children with a stick or cane, while
09:10forcing them into the cars.
09:13The SS men kept the people fated to die unaware of what awaited them.
09:18They were told that they were being sent to the camp where work was waiting for them,
09:21but first they had to undergo disinfection and bathe.
09:25They were then told politely to hang their clothes on hooks, take a shower, and were
09:29even promised that they would be provided with soup and tea or coffee.
09:33However, they were taken into the gas chambers, locked in, and killed with Zyklon B gas.
09:40After the victims were murdered, their gold teeth were extracted and the woman's hair
09:44was shorn by the Sonderkommando, which were groups of Jews forced to work in the crematorium.
09:49The bodies were hauled to the crematorium furnaces for incineration, the bones were
09:53pulverized and the ashes were scattered in the fields.
09:56Sturek also took active part in executions carried out both by shooting at the death
10:01wall of the infamous Block 11 and by hanging.
10:05Between 1942 and 1944, more than 40 Auschwitz sub-camps exploiting prisoners of slave labor
10:11were founded, mainly at various sorts of German industrial plants and farms.
10:15In one of them, Monowitzbuna, Paul Sturek was also deployed.
10:20Monowitzbuna held around 12,000 prisoners, the great majority of whom were Jews, in addition
10:26to non-Jewish criminals and political prisoners.
10:29The SS charged IG Farben, which built its factories here to produce synthetic rubber,
10:34three rice marks per day for unskilled workers, four per hour for skilled workers, and one
10:39and a half for children.
10:41Paul Sturek remained in the camp until December 1944 or January 1945, when Soviet forces approached
10:48the Auschwitz concentration camp complex and the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its
10:52sub-camps.
10:54These forced marches of concentration camp prisoners became known as death marches.
10:59The prisoners had to march over long distances, under guard and in extremely harsh conditions.
11:05At the end of the war, Sturek was tried at the Auschwitz trial, which began on the 24th
11:09of November 1947 and lasted one month.
11:14Numerous witnesses provided their testimonies.
11:16One witness, named Sosnovsky, testified how in November 1942, while he was walking to
11:21fetch some pipes from the warehouse, he met Sturek along the way with his dog.
11:26Without any reason, Sturek set the animal on him, which bit the man's thigh, causing
11:31him to bleed.
11:32Sosnovsky also testified how in February 1943, during roll call one of the sick inmates could
11:38not stand and therefore sat down.
11:41Sturek proceeded to beat him until he was unconscious.
11:44The man was transferred to the sick bay only after the roll call had ended.
11:49Sturek declared that everything the witness had testified was untrue, however his lies
11:54did not help him escape justice.
11:57On the 22nd of December 1947, the Polish Supreme National Tribunal in Kraków sentenced Sturek
12:03to death by hanging.
12:05He was 39 years old when he was executed on the 24th of January 1948.
12:12There were no tears shed for Paul Sturek.