Execution of Paul Szczurek - Brutal Nazi Guard at Auschwitz Concentration Camp - Holocaust - WW2
Execution of Paul Szczurek - Brutal Nazi Guard at Auschwitz Concentration Camp - Holocaust - WW2
Execution of Paul Szczurek - Brutal Nazi Guard at Auschwitz Concentration Camp - Holocaust - WW2. Paul Szczurek was born on the 26th of June 1908 in Königshütte, then part of the German Empire. The Second World War began on the 1st of September, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Until this moment Szczurek, a Polish citizen of German nationality, felt Polish. This changed however with the outbreak of the war. To justify the action, Nazi propagandists accused Poland of persecuting ethnic Germans who were living in Poland. They also falsely claimed that Poland was planning, with its allies Great Britain and France, to encircle and dismember Germany. After the SS, in collusion with the German military, staged a phony attack on a German radio station, the Germans accused the Poles. Hitler then used the action to launch a “retaliatory” campaign against Poland. In May 1940, around 60 km west of Krakow, the Germans established Auschwitz concentration camp. The direct reason for the establishment of the camp was the fact that mass arrests of Poles were increasing beyond the capacity of existing “local” prisons. During the Holocaust, Auschwitz was the only location where concentration camp prisoners received tattoos. Incoming prisoners were assigned a camp serial number which was sewn into their uniforms. However, only those prisoners selected for work were issued with serial numbers. Those prisoners sent directly to the gas chambers were not registered and received no tattoos. 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.
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Content
0.48 -> The 22nd of December 1947, Krakow, Poland. The
former staff of Auschwitz - the deadliest German
8.28 -> Nazi concentration camp – hears their sentences
read. After a month of gruesome testimonies, it is
14.28 -> revealed that the many SS officers were involved
in the acts of inhumane torture and the mass
18.96 -> murder of prisoners often for pleasure, and that
their cruelty went far beyond what their superiors
24.18 -> ordered them to do. One of the perpetrators
of this criminal Nazi regime is Paul Szczurek.
31.02 -> Paul Szczurek was born on the
26th of June 1908 in Königshütte,
36 -> then part of the German Empire. In
1922, the eastern part of Silesia,
41.16 -> including Königshütte, was separated
from Germany and awarded to Poland.
45.3 -> Szczurek, after graduating from elementary
school, became a steelworker by profession.
50.16 -> The Second World War began on the 1st
of September, 1939 when Germany invaded
55.56 -> Poland. Until this moment Szczurek, a
Polish citizen of German nationality,
60.18 -> felt Polish. This changed however
with the outbreak of the war.
64.14 -> To justify the action, Nazi propagandists accused
Poland of persecuting ethnic Germans who were
69.48 -> living in Poland. They also falsely claimed that
Poland was planning, with its allies Great Britain
74.34 -> and France, to encircle and dismember Germany.
After the SS, in collusion with the German
79.86 -> military, staged a phony attack on a German
radio station, the Germans accused the Poles.
85.44 -> Hitler then used the action to launch a
“retaliatory” campaign against Poland.
90.12 -> Nazi Germany possessed overwhelming
military superiority over Poland.
95.1 -> Germany launched the unprovoked attack at dawn
on the 1st of September with an advance force
99.78 -> consisting of more than 2,000 tanks supported
by nearly 900 bombers and over 400 fighter
105.24 -> planes. In all, Germany deployed 60 divisions
and nearly 1.5 million men in the invasion.
111.9 -> The assault on Poland demonstrated Germany’s
ability to combine air power and armor in a new
117.3 -> kind of mobile warfare. The world adopted a new
term to describe Germany’s successful war tactic:
123.36 -> Blitzkrieg, or “lightning war.”
Britain and France stood by their
128.16 -> guarantee of Poland's border and declared war on
Germany on the 3rd of September, 1939. However,
134.34 -> Poland found itself fighting a two front war when
the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east on
139.8 -> the 17th of September, sealing Poland’s fate. The
Polish government fled the country that same day.
145.8 -> The last operational Polish unit surrendered
on the 6th of October. After Poland’s defeat
151.14 -> in early October 1939, Nazi Germany and the
Soviet Union divided the country in accordance
156.48 -> with a secret protocol to the German-Soviet
Non-Aggression Pact. This agreement became
161.58 -> known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and was
signed one week before the start of the WW2 on
166.44 -> the 23rd of August 1939 in Moscow by German
Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and
172.26 -> Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.
The demarcation line was along the Bug River.
178.68 -> The German occupation of Poland
was exceptionally brutal. The
182.7 -> Nazis considered Poles to be racially
inferior and they launched a campaign
186.6 -> of terror intended to destroy the Polish
nation and culture and to reduce the Poles
191.04 -> to a leaderless population of peasants
and workers laboring for German masters.
195.06 -> Ethnic cleansing was to be conducted
systematically against the Polish people.
200.7 -> In the first three months of war, from the fall
of 1939 until the spring of 1940, some 60,000
207.12 -> former government officials, military officers
in reserve, landowners, clergy, and members of
212.64 -> the Polish intelligentsia such as scientists,
teachers, lawyers and doctors were executed
217.98 -> region by region in the so-called Intelligentsia
action, including over 1,000 prisoners of war.
223.74 -> In the spring of 1940, the German occupation
authorities launched the AB-Action,
228.84 -> which was a second stage of the Nazi German
campaign of violence during World War II
233.16 -> aimed to eliminate Poles considered to
be members of the “leadership class.”
236.88 -> The aim was to remove those Poles seen
as most capable of organizing resistance
241.62 -> to the German rule and to terrorize the
Polish population into submission. The
246.54 -> Germans shot thousands of teachers, priests,
and other intellectuals in mass killings.
252.24 -> In May 1940, around 60 km west of Krakow, the
Germans established Auschwitz concentration
258.06 -> camp. The direct reason for the establishment
of the camp was the fact that mass arrests
262.56 -> of Poles were increasing beyond the
capacity of existing "local" prisons.
267.24 -> The first 30 prisoners, the German criminals
with green badges, arrived in Auschwitz on the
271.8 -> 20th of May 1940 from the Sachsenhausen camp.
These mandatory colorful badges of shame,
277.62 -> primarily triangles, were used to
identify why the inmates had been
281.58 -> placed in the camp. Green badges were set
for convicted criminals who were likely of
286.02 -> a tough temperament suitable for kapo duty.
The kapos were prisoners in Nazi camps who
291.72 -> were selected by the SS to supervise the other
camp’s inmates in exchange for better food,
295.98 -> clothing and housing and they were
often as brutal as their SS supervisors.
301.38 -> The greens, as these 30 German prisoners
were called, did much to establish the
305.88 -> sadism of early camp life, which was
directed particularly at Polish inmates.
310.92 -> The first transport of Polish male prisoners,
including Catholic priests and Jews, arrived in
315.96 -> Auschwitz on the 14th of June 1940 from Tarnów in
Poland. They were given serial numbers 31 to 758.
323.82 -> In the beginning, as with most
German concentration camps,
327.36 -> Auschwitz I served three purposes: to incarcerate
real and perceived enemies of the Nazi regime;
332.7 -> to provide a supply of forced laborers for
deployment in SS-owned construction-related
336.96 -> enterprises and to kill small, targeted groups of
the population. It was only in 1942 when Auschwitz
344.22 -> also became the largest of the extermination
centers where the final solution to the Jewish
348.6 -> question – which referred to the Nazi plan
to murder European Jews - was carried out.
353.4 -> During the Holocaust, Auschwitz was
the only location where concentration
356.88 -> camp prisoners received tattoos.
Incoming prisoners were assigned
361.02 -> a camp serial number which was
sewn into their uniforms. However,
364.5 -> only those prisoners selected for work were
issued with serial numbers. Those prisoners
369.3 -> sent directly to the gas chambers were
not registered and received no tattoos.
374.34 -> Paul Szczurek arrived in Auschwitz in
October 1940. He held various positions
379.26 -> within the camp and worked not only
at censorship office for letters and
382.62 -> parcels for prisoners but also as a guard
and block leader. At Auschwitz Szczurek
387.48 -> turned into a sadist who beat and tormented
prisoners regardless of their gender and age.
393 -> On one occasion, when counting pairs
of female prisoners leaving for work,
396.6 -> Szczurek beat them with a stick or with his hands
about the head or blindly all over the body,
401.4 -> paying no heed to the effect of his
blows. He would do it either for no
405.96 -> reason at all or because some prisoner
fell out of step or failed to keep pace.
410.52 -> Paul Szczurek was also a sexual deviant.
He was infamous for beating the female
415.8 -> inmates with a stick on the buttocks and breasts
and when the prisoners went stark naked to the
420.3 -> bathhouse for delousing, Paul Szczurek would
prod them with the stick in their genitals.
424.68 -> He used to beat and kick prisoners
sometimes for no reason whatsoever or,
429 -> for instance, for failure to take
off their hats upon seeing him.
432.3 -> Beating prisoners with his hands or
any other object that he chanced upon,
435.84 -> he never paid any heed to whether his blows landed
on the head, neck, chest or any other body part.
442.56 -> Szczurek was notorious for beating prisoners from
behind, with a stick on the nape of the neck.
447.6 -> Another Szczurek’s specialty was whipping with
a stick either on buttocks or about the kidneys.
452.52 -> On one occasion, when a prisoner was
in one of the blocks in the women’s
456.12 -> camp and talked to some woman, Szczurek
noticed it, approached the prisoner and,
460.62 -> shouting in German, demanded an explanation
of why the prisoner was talking to that female
464.58 -> inmate. When the prisoner responded that
he did not understand what he was saying,
468.6 -> Szczurek beat him forcefully with
his hand in the face and stomach,
471.9 -> kicked the prisoner and then told him in Polish,
“Now you can speak Polish, you son of a bitch”.
477.66 -> As the block leader at blocks 10 and 22,
Paul Szczurek enjoyed organizing roll calls.
483.96 -> During roll calls the prisoners were lined up in
rows of ten and then counted, which sometimes took
489.6 -> hours and could be especially tormenting for the
prisoners, particularly in the bad weather. Some
494.94 -> SS guards organized roll calls which lasted from
5.00 a.m. to the late in the evening hours. Due
500.64 -> to freezing weather and exhaustion, many prisoners
collapsed and were then taken to the gas chambers.
506.1 -> Szczurek also took part in selections on the
rail ramp, The process of selection and murder
510.84 -> was carefully planned and organized.
When a train stopped at the platform,
514.5 -> the arrivals were lined up into two columns
– men and boys in one, women and girls in the
519.3 -> other. The SS physicians such as Josef Mengele
performed a selection. The only criterion was
525.6 -> the appearance of the prisoners, whose fate,
for labor or for death, was determined at will.
531.18 -> Szczurek – when supervising with other SS men the
loading of prisoners who were to be transported in
536.34 -> cars to the gas chambers – behaved inhumanly,
and tortured the inmates in a cruel way,
540.9 -> beating the women, the men and the children with a
stick or a cane while forcing them into the cars.
547.08 -> The SS men kept the people fated to
die unaware of what awaited them.
552.48 -> They were told that they were being sent to the
camp where work was waiting for them, but first
556.5 -> they had to undergo disinfection and bathe.
They were then told politely to hang their
561.72 -> clothes on the hooks, take a shower and were even
promised they would be provided with soup and tea
566.64 -> or coffee. However they were taken into the gas
chambers, locked in, and killed with Zyklon B gas.
574.44 -> After the victims were murdered, their gold
teeth were extracted, and women’s hair was
579 -> shorn by the Sonderkommando which were groups
of Jews forced to work in the crematorium.
583.26 -> The bodies were hauled to the
crematorium furnaces for incineration,
586.8 -> the bones were pulverized and the
ashes were scattered in the fields.
591.3 -> Szczurek also took active part
in executions carried out both
594.9 -> by shooting at the Death Wall of the
infamous Block 11, and by hanging.
599.46 -> Between 1942 and 1944, more
than 40 Auschwitz sub-camps,
604.32 -> exploiting the prisoners as slave laborers,
were founded, mainly at various sorts of German
608.16 -> industrial plants and farms. In one of them,
Monowitz-Buna, Paul Szczurek was also deployed.
615 -> Monowitz-Buna held around 12,000 prisoners, the
great majority of whom were Jews, in addition to
620.82 -> non-Jewish criminals and political prisoners.
The SS charged IG Farben, which build its
626.7 -> factories here to produce synthetic rubber, three
Reichsmarks (RM) per day for unskilled workers,
630.96 -> four (RM) per hour for skilled workers,
and one and one-half (RM) for children.
635.88 -> Paul Szczurek remained in the camp until December
1944 or January 1945 when Soviet forces approached
642.84 -> the Auschwitz concentration camp complex and the
SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps.
648.3 -> These forced marches of concentration camp
prisoners became known as the death marches.
652.86 -> The prisoners had to march over long distances
under guard and in extremely harsh conditions.
659.46 -> After the end of the war, Szczurek was tried
at the Auschwitz Trial which began on the
663.96 -> 24th of November 1947 and lasted one month.
Numerous witnesses provided their testimonies.
670.32 -> One witness named Sosnowski testified how in
November 1942, while he was walking to fetch some
676.86 -> pipes from the warehouse, he met Szczurek along
the way with his dog. Without any reason, Szczurek
682.68 -> set the animal on him which bit the man’s thigh,
causing him to bleed. Sosnowski also testified how
689.4 -> in February 1943 during roll call one of the sick
inmates could not stand and therefore sat down.
695.4 -> Szczurek proceeded to beat him
until he was unconscious. The
699.36 -> man was transferred to the sick bay
only after the roll call had ended.
703.8 -> Szczurek declared that everything the
witnesses had testified was untrue. However,
708.18 -> his lies did not help him escape justice.
711.3 -> On the 22nd of December 1947, the Polish Supreme
National Tribunal in Krakow sentenced Szczurek
718.08 -> to death by hanging. He was 39 years old when
he was executed on the 24th of January 1948.
726.42 -> There were no tears shed for Paul Szczurek.
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