Room in Block 11, the prison within the camp, was used to hear cases against prisoners. The man with his chair turned toward us and is arm over it, is SS second lieutenant Maximilian Grabner, Director of the Political Department (camp Gestapo), and Criminal Clerk. Others are not known. He was responsible for the deaths of many thousands of people and was convicted of war crimes in Krakow in 1947 and executed.
In this scene, a man is being questioned. Almost all who cam before this <court> were soon taken to a hold room and then out to the courtyard of Block 11 and shot against the killing wall, shot in the back of the head or in the neck. People were sometimes executed for minor infractions like stealing bread, or clothes.

Photo: Alan Jacobs

Room in Block 11, the prison within the camp, was used to hear cases against prisoners. The man with his chair turned toward us and is arm over it, is SS second lieutenant Maximilian Grabner, Director of the Political Department (camp Gestapo), and Criminal Clerk. Others are not known. He was responsible for the deaths of many thousands of people and was convicted of war crimes in Krakow in 1947 and executed.
In this scene, a man is being questioned. Almost all who cam before this <court> were soon taken to a hold room and then out to the courtyard of Block 11 and shot against the killing wall, shot in the back of the head or in the neck. People were sometimes executed for minor infractions like stealing bread, or clothes.

Watercolor: Wladyslaw Siwek
Reproduction courtesy of Auschwitz Museum Archive, 1980