Wieslar Kielar recalled the aftermath of the first mass gassing of Russian Prisoners of War which took place in the bunkers of Block 11, during September 1941, overseen by Lagerfuhrer Karl Fritzsch:
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The heavy wooden door to the yard of the penal colony opened. We pushed the trucks into the yard and turned them round, facing the gate. Waiting in the yard was the entire SS retinue, with Lagerfuhrer Fritzsch and the camp doctor Entress at the head.
We stood expectantly while the SS men conferred for a time, after which they summoned Gienek and Teofil. They were handed gas masks, Palitzsch and several Blockfuhrers also put on their gas masks. Together they approached the entrance to the block cellars. They stayed down there for rather a long time. We waited in silence. Night fell, in the yard it was now quite dark. Only above the entrance to the bunker a naked bulb cast a feeble gleam of light over the group of SS men waiting by the steps.
Palitzsch was first to reappear, behind him the rest of the SS men. They had taken off their gas masks which meant the gas was already diffusing, after a while Obojski and Teofil returned as well. Now we were divided into groups each with its own special task. Some went down into the bunkers in order to fetch the corpses out of the cells, others carried them up the stairs where yet another group of nursing orderlies undressed them. The rest were ordered to haul the naked corpses a little farther into the yard, ready for loading onto the waiting trucks.
I managed to get into the first group because I wanted to be as far away as possible from the SS and, in particular from Palitzsch of whom I was very much afraid. Downstairs it was stifling and reeked of dead bodies. All the cells were open, and in them we saw the corpses of the gassed, crowded together and standing up. It was a little less crowded where the sick had been.
A few corpses lay in a heap directly behind the door. We began with them. It was difficult to pry apart the bodies that were clinging together. One by one we dragged them into the corridor, from where the others carried them up stairs. The deeper we penetrated into the cells, the harder it became to fetch out the corpses. Pressed together in the small cells they stood, although they were dead, with the same countenance they had had presumably two days earlier. Their faces were blue, almost purplish. Wide open eyes, threatened to pop out of their sockets; their tongues protruded between their open lips, their bared teeth gave an eerie appearance to their faces.
To begin with, two of us carried one corpse. As a result there was confusion on the narrow stairs, people getting in each other's way. We made only slow progress; we began to work singly. Instead of carrying the corpses, we each dragged them behind us by a hand or foot. Now our work progressed much faster and more smoothly. The whole bunker was disinfected with chlorine, which made our labours easier still. True, the strong smell of chlorine made one's eyes smart, but at least it reduced the stench of the putrefying corpses. The greatest problem was getting the bodies up the stairs. Their heavy heads bumped against each step with a dull thud; their limp extremities caught on protruding steps and thresholds.