The Holocaust Historiography Project

Translation of document 3844-PS

Before me, Paul C. Guth, 2nd Lt. AUS, being authorized to administer
oaths, personally appeared Josef Niedermayer, who, being by me first
duly sworn in German, made and subscribed the following statement in his
own handwriting:

I, Josef Niedermayer born 11 April 1920 in Salzburg declare herewith the
following:

1. From the fall of 1942 until May 1945 the so-called cell-
barracks of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp were under my supervision.

2. During the beginning of December 1944 the so-called “bullet” orders
were shown to me in the political department of the Mauthausen
Concentration Camp. Those were two orders each of which bore the
signature of Kaltenbrunner. I saw both of these signatures myself. One
of these orders stated that foreign civilian workers who had repeatedly
escaped from work camps were to be sent to the Mauthausen Concentration
Camp under the “bullet” action in case of recapture.

The second order stated that the same procedure was to be followed with
officers and noncommissioned officers who were prisoners of war with the
exception of British and Americans if they repeatedly escaped from
prisoner of war camps. These prisoners of war were also to be brought to
the Mauthausen Concentration Camp.

3. On the basis of this “bullet” order and the oral instruction of
Kaltenbrunner which went with it 1,800 foreign civilian workers,
officers, and noncommissioned officers were brought to the Mauthausen
Concentration Camp. There they were lodged in block number 20, and fed
badly according to orders so that they had to starve. Eight hundred of
them died from hunger and illness. The bad food and the lack of medical
care resulted from the personal oral orders of Kaltenbrunner.

'This statement was written by me on 7 March 1946 in Dachau, Germany in
my own handwriting of my own free will and without compulsion. I swear
before God that it is the truth.

                                              (signed] Niedermayer Josef

Subscribed and sworn to before me at Dachau, Germany, this 7th day of
March 1946.

[signed]  Paul C. Guth, 2nd Lt. AUS
Investigating officer