Ebensee, May 14, 1945.

Concentration camp Ebensee.

At the request of my fellow inmates, as a former camp recorder of the concentration camp Mauthausen, Melk Branch Camp, I make the following statements.

I swear under oath that the following remarks constitute the full truth.

On April 21, 1944, I came with a transport of 500 inmates from the concentration camp Mauthausen to the newly-established concentration camp Melk.

The then-camp leader was SS Untersturmführer Toni Streitwieser. After about 14 days, at the beginning of May 1944, the camp leadership was taken over by SS - Obersturmführer Julius Ludolph. Ludolph was a native of Hamburg and by profession, according to his own statements, a taxi driver.

In his behavior towards the inmates he did not differ from his predecessor SS - Untersturmführer Streitwieser. About five days after taking over the camp, Ludolph made me a camp recorder for the Melk camp.

General information about Ludolph!

At the expense of the inmates Ludolph led a high life, which can hardly be described in words.

From the kitchen of the inmates, as well as from the SS troops’ kitchen, he took the best meat and other food every day. From the inmates’ canteen he stole cigarettes in large quantities. He could not use all these quantities of food and cigarettes himself. He sold this product to civilians in order to obtain wine and other alcoholic beverages. Even poultry and other things, only ration cards and dress cards he exchanged for things stolen from the inmates.

The extent of his extravagant lifestyle with different women every day sometimes led me to believe that I was dealing with an ill person. But time and again, I came to realize that Ludolph is fully responsible for his actions. Even though some of his brutalities against inmates were committed while drunk, he proved, as I later record, that essentially everything he did was utterly premeditated.

In detail, I will describe a number of cases that are fresh in my memory that prove that Ludolph is certainly responsible for the brutality of his atrocities. I just want to mention in passing that he repeatedly beat me over my head and face with a stick and broke my upper jaw.

The entire camp, which had meanwhile grown to more than 10,000 inmates, trembled when Ludolph came to the camp. There was a Order Regarding Prisoners, according to which the beating of inmates in labour camps /Melk had been declared a labour camp/ was forbidden. Ludolph ignored this rule without a thought.

He left the whole camp to stand at roll call in the worst weather /rain and frost/ for hours on the Appellplatz. The inmates could find no rest this way. No sooner had they received their food, barren even for prison food, then he drove the inmates to work with a bru-

tality that was certainly responsible for the majority of the deceased inmates. Inmates who reported that they were ill at roll call were beaten by him and his accomplice SS - Scharführer Musikant 1Note 1: Muzikant. Repeatedly, inmates who reported that they were ill were beaten by Ludolph and were delivered to the camp hospital dead.

People were systematically exterminated!!!

I remember the following case: Bratislava was cleared, the inmates held by the Gestapo in Bratislava were transported by lorry and were to be taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp. According to the detainees, the proceedings against them were by no means complete. Not one inmate had received a court order or an order of protective custody from the Gestapo in Bratislava. The transport of the inmates from Bratislava took place by lorry. This lorry operation was attacked by low-flying aircraft in the Melk area, probably on the assumption that it was a military transport. The detainees were strictly forbidden to jump off the vehicle and seek shelter in the ditches. On this occasion, 31 inmates were shot and brought to the Melk camp in this wounded condition. Besides these wounded there were also some dead and more than 160 who had remained intact and were delivered to the camp. The dead were then immediately burned in the camp crematorium. Those who were not injured were transported on to Mauthausen by lorry the same evening. The then-Luftwaffe camp physician, commanded against his will to work at the Melk camp, whom all inmates have much to thank, oversaw the situation and put 16 of the 31 wounded inmates on the transport to Mauthausen. The following night, Ludolph [ordered] the SS - Scharführer Muzikant, who had been deployed in the area, to kill the 15 remaining wounded inmates from the Pressburg transport after roll call. The murderer Musikant 2Note 2: Muzikant carried out this order with deliberation and joy. The next morning, when the camp physician came into the area, Musikant 2Note 2: Muzikant informed him that the 15 inmates had died. The camp physician came to me in the writing office and told me about the incident. Disgust and revulsion overcame him and again and again he asked how he got out of having been commandeered as camp physician. I thought it is my duty to ask the camp physician Dr. Sora to do nothing that could lead to his removal from the camp. How right I was in this is proved by the following incident:

In April of this year, when the Russians had already taken Vienna and were on the march towards St. Pölten, the Melk camp was to be evacuated. The Lagerführer Ludolph wanted to thwart the evacuation of the camp. He intended, as he announced at an SS leaders meeting, to drive all the inmates to workplaces in the tunnels located there and then to blow the tunnels and the 1,000 inmates into the air. Blasting devices were already installed and ready. I learned of this criminal attack through the aforementioned camp physician Dr. Sora as well as by the Sturmmann employed in the inmate kitchen Toni Hefner.

All inmates were informed by me and told to not enter the tunnels in the next few days. I discussed the situation with the camp physician Dr. Sora and asked him to inform the district administrator in his capacity as a police authority and request that his superiors be instructed to forbid Ludolph to carry out his criminal attack. Ludolph did indeed receive the telegraphic order not to blow up the tunnel.

When, after a few days, the camp was evacuated and we inmates were transported to the Ebensee camp in various transports, Ludolph was there again, and with his accomplice Musikant.4Note 4: Muzikant

He wanted to kill, aka murder, inmates who were in the infirmary and suffering from a slight infectious disease /Eresypela/, who were inconvenient to him to evacuate. With the help of the inmates working in the camp hospital, we were able to rescue 5 of these ill inmates by exchanging 5 inmates who had died of general injuries against 5 infectious inmates. As we tried to rescue the last two inmates, both of them had been hung by nooses in their beds by Musikant 5Note 5: Muzikant on Ludolph’s orders.

Another case of the systematic annihilation or extermination of the inmates:

SS - Scharführer Musikant 6Note 6: Muzikant mistakenly reported an inmate as dead to the main camp Mauthausen. During the evacuation of the camp, I discovered this error on the basis of the existing personnel cards. I reported this to the Rapportführer SS - Oberscharführer Curt Jansson 6Note 6: Jansen, who presented it to camp leader Ludolph and asked for advice and instructions. Then Ludolph tells Jansson 6Note 6: Jansen to tell Musikant 6Note 6: Muzikant to just kill the inmate, who was still alive and in the camp hospital, /a Frenchman named Blankart/ so that no further correspondence with Mauthausen would be necessary. Jansson 6Note 6: Jansen whispered this into Musikant’s 6Note 6: Muzikant ear in my presence, but he said it loudly enough that I could hear it. I immediately discussed what I had heard with the inmate who worked with me in the writing office Antonius Pichon /Frenchman/. Pichon and I then hid the Frenchman Blankart in the writing office and then later in our living quarters, and then, early in the morning, sent him on a transport to Ebensee. We explained to Ludolph and Musikant 6Note 6: Muzikant that Blankart had passed away, which pleased and satisfied both of them. In order to systematically document all of the bestialities that were systematically carried out under the leadership of Ludolph and his criminal satellites, I would need so much paper that a book could be filled with it. I have to mention, however, that it was the order of the day to chastise inmates who had been accused of trivialities and not been proven guilty of anything with blows. Chastisement was carried out by attaching the inmate to a specially made block of wood and then, at Ludolph’s discretion or when he was absent, through one of his ragged satellites, beating the inmate with 25 blows or more, up to 100 blows, over the buttocks, back and head. Many inmates died as a result of these beatings.

Inmates who collapsed unconscious as a result of general body weakness during labour commandos were kicked in the meanest way. I have seen inmates who died as a result of this treatment, and continued to be kicked and beaten when they were already dead.

Before concluding my report, which contains only a small selection of what occurred under the camp leadership of and with the fullest agreement of Ludolph, I do not want to forget the following incident:

When the concentration camp Auschwitz was evacuated, it was more than 20°C below and the inmates were transported in open train cars, 10 days without food. Several hundred inmates died in this transport as a result of the cold and food. Various inmates took the opportunity to escape from the transport. Some of these inmates were picked up by the police and taken to the Melk camp. Completely exhausted, the inmates arrived at the camp. The camp physician ordered their immediate admission to the camp hospital. He personally ensured that the inmates were in the camp hospital and prescribed the necessary treatments for their physical condition. After the camp physician had left the camp, the most notorious SS -Scharführer Musikant 13Note 13: Muzikant put these 3 physically weak inmates into the camp hospital’s corpse cellar, on top of the dead inmates already stored there. He then took a large hypodermic syringe,

filled it with petrol, and stabbed the syringe into each of the three inmates’ hearts, resulting in immediate death. The next morning, with friends, he reported his shameful act to the Lagerführer, who in turn congratulated Musikant 14Note 14: Muzikant on the act. In my capacity as a camp recorder, I had the opportunity to be present for all these conversations.

I am not a judge, I just establish the facts and leave it up to the competent authority to pass judgment on the hopefully soon-to-be-captured SS members of the Melk camp. The following SS members treated the defenseless inmates in the camp Melk with particular inhumanity.

1. / SS - Obersturmführer Julius Ludolph, born in Hamburg

2. / SS-Scharführer Musikant 15Note 15: Muzikant, a Sudeten German

3. / SS-Oberscharführer Ernst Schindler, born in Westfalen

4. / SS-Oberscharführer Häuser, born in Westfalen

5. / SS-Oberscharführer Curt Jansson 16Note 16: Jansen, born in Wuppertal

I have buried other records in the Melk camp, including the death certificates of inmates who died in the camp.

At the order of the Lagerführers SS - Obersturmführer Ludolph I was to burn the above-mentioned death certificates. Ludolph claimed to have received the order from the camp Mauthausen. I want to record this as true, but I must note that Ludolph, when I pointed out that the inmates’ relatives certainly had an interest in knowing where their family members ended up, did not opt to decline to carry out this order.

With the help of the aforementioned fellow-inmate, the Frenchman Antonius Pichon, I was then able to conceal these death certificates at various locations in the camp, in order to send them to the Red Cross /Missing Persons Unit/ or competent authority.

The correctness of the testimony above can be confirmed by every inmate who was in the Melk camp.

I swear to you under oath that this is the pure truth and only a fraction of the bestialities committed under Ludolph’s camp leadership.

Herrmann Hofstädt.

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Opis: R. Brammerová

Praha, dne 5. února 1946.