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.
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