Stadt-Nachrichten

Nov. 23, 1966

Victims were selected for the "death tango”

10th day in the Lemberg trial: SS rifleman Kolonko considers customs in the Janowska camp to be abominable

The fact that the thousands of Jewish prisoners who vegetated in the notorious Lviv forced labour camp "An der Janowskastraße" until their liquidation had to endure horrific things became clear during the interrogation of the defendant Kolonko. The construction fitter from Osnabrück, now 58 years old, who was appropriately baptized Adolf, but had only made it to the rank of SS rifleman, found the treatment of the Jewish prisoners mean and abominable as early as the years 1941 to 1944. He described SS customs to the Stuttgart jury court that would not even be found in the most macabre "black stories." For example, the SS came up with the idea of picking death candidates from columns marching to work to the sound of tango, were immediately shot, thrown into a pit, covered with sand and sprinkled with chlorinated lime. This pit behind the camp's kitchen was never closed…

"That the poor people had to march out every morning to the music of a Jewish orchestra, and that the camp director singled out only weak people to the sounds of the death tango, was outright mockery. That was abominable to me. It was a really big wickedness!!" These words of the former SS Schütze Kolonko sounded indignant. But the man, who himself was heavily incriminated, described other things, which were commented on by the listeners with loud murmurs: For example, the pit behind the kitchen, which for the sake of simplicity was always left open for the daily victims, was "used" by "murderers from outside the company," as Senate President Dr. Pracht put it. "Sometimes the security police also came to kill people there..." So Kolonko, who saw this himself several times.

With about 20 so-called Askaris – they were Russian aid workers – Kolonko had come to Lemberg at the latest in May 1942 to guard the Jews, who until then had still worked as relatively free people for the Deutsche Ausrüstungs-Werke and were now locked up in barracks. At that time, the later camp leader Willhaus began to build what was to become the Janowska camp on the orders of SS and police leader Katzmann It began with a large barn, which was initially "occupied" by 100 to 150 people – as Kolonko recounted. This beginning turned into a huge, tightly organized camp with four manned watchtowers, searchlights, and 50 SS personnel. In addition, Askaris and Ukrainians were added as guard crews. Despite this effort, Kolonko estimated the highest occupancy at 2000 Jews. First Public Prosecutor Sichting reproached him with the fact that according to historical documents and witness statements about 8000 prisoners are supposed to have lived in the Janowska camp at the same time; lived, however, only until some SS man liked to shoot, or at the latest until the liquidation of the entire camp in November 1943!

In Kolonko's eyes, camp leader Gustav Willhaus was not only a strict superior who accepted no contradiction to his inhuman orders, but also a fanatical Jew-hater. "Prisoners, such as doctors, who were really smarter than him after all, to them he gave expressions that I do not want to repeat in public," Kolonko said on this subject. Willhaus not only shot Jews at his whim, he also tortured them. Kolonko described how one prisoner was tied to a post for an entire day, how Willhaus made prisoners run during the morning Apell to test whether they were still fit for work. "Test drive, they called it in the camp!" Accompanied by music, this "test drive" became the last journey for some of the prisoners, who could not walk fast enough. "Willhaus and Katzmann could shake hands – they were both murderers," said the former SS Schütze.

The defendant Kolonko is the first one in the whole Galicia trial (Tarnopol and Lemberg trial), who admitted to having a whip and to having "sometimes" beaten Jewish prisoners with it. "Almost all of us had such whips – short whips made by Jews!" He also could not imagine that among SS people in the Janowska camp anyone could have avoided killing a Jew. Kolonko admitted to having killed Jews himself. However, so far he admitted this only in one case in which he had had direct orders. With the words "Go Adolf, kill him!" an SS-Hauptsturmführer Fichtner would have ordered him one day in front of the eyes of the camp leader Willhaus to shoot a sick prisoner in the neck.

Kolonko strongly denied the numerous "private murders" that he was accused of according to the indictment. He never wanted to have whipped a prisoner to death, trampled him to death or shot him on his own initiative. "I was not a sadist," he asserted. And he argued in his defense that otherwise barely 15 prisoners would have volunteered from the Janowska camp when workers were selected for a small subcamp in nearby Grodek, which he ran for some time.Kolonko reported that he had often talked with the Jews and could come up with various names of prisoners whom he had come to know as "swell guys." Until the liquidation of the camp he ran in Grodek, only one Jew had died there, and not from a pistol bullet, but from typhus. The trial will continue today with further interrogations. a–z