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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />During the Holocaust, Auschwitz was the only location where concentration camp prisoners received tattoos. <br />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. <br />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. <br />As the block leader at blocks 10 and 22, Paul Szczurek enjoyed organizing roll calls. <br />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. <br /><br />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...
