14 January 1947, Warsaw. The judge assigned to serve on the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Janina Skoczyńska, interviewed the person named below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false statements the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Tadeusz Jan Stępniewski |
| Date of birth | 22 June 1905 |
| Religious affiliation | Catholic |
| State affiliation and nationality | Polish |
| Marital status | Married |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Marszałkowska Street 81, flat 14 |
| Education | Higher |
| Occupation | Doctor |
During the Uprising I served as head of the first-aid station of the Home Army in Mokotów, for the area extending from Królikarnia (the Rabbit House) to Bukowińska Street. It remained in Polish hands until 24 September. On 3 or 4 August 1944 the Germans carried out a raid from the direction of the Grójec commuter train into one of the houses on Bukowińska Street. There was an exclusively civilian population living in that house, either on a permanent or a temporary basis. At the time I was staying at Ikara Street, from where I could hear shots, shouts and groans accompanying the raid in question. The following day I went to the house on Bukowińska Street knowing that the Germans were already gone. In the courtyard I saw 12 evenly laid bodies, 11 men and 1 woman. I concluded that these people had been killed by shots to the head, fired from behind or from the front. In the basement of the house I found a streetcar driver who was wounded in the leg. I don’t know his name.
The streetcar driver told me the following: in the afternoon of the previous day, a group of Germans in green uniforms, supposedly airmen, had burst into the house on Bukowińska Street. They got into the apartments and dragged everybody out – men, women and children. The women and children were taken away, while the men were lined up in groups of three and shot. He too was one of those who were being executed. He survived because, having been shot only in the leg, he fell on the ground and was covered by other bodies. When the Germans left, he managed with great difficulty to scramble out from under the pile of dead bodies and took shelter in the basement. The bodies of these 13 people were buried in the same courtyard, and the task of identifying them fell to Rudnicki, who was in command of the anti-aircraft defense. He now lives in Katowice. We moved the wounded streetcar driver to the Sisters of St. Elizabeth Hospital. All 13 people whom the Germans executed were civilians.
On 24 September 1944 the Germans launched an attack on the airmen’s housing estate from below and from Służewiec. After one hour of fighting the Germans seized control of the area. During their assault I took all the wounded from the hospital at Idzikowskiego Street down into the basement. There were ten wounded people. Two of them were completely unable to walk.
At one point the basement door opened. A German soldier with a grenade in his hand stood in the doorway and shouted Raus! We all came out. A nurse and I carried one of the heavily wounded men on a stretcher and a laborer carried the other, who was unable to walk, in his arms. The rest walked unassisted. I was the only person wearing a red cross arm band. No other person had a badge.
Following orders, we were going through the field, parallel to Puławska Street, in the direction of the Grójec commuter train. All the time we were moving between rows of soldiers. Civilians displaced from the city were streaming both before and behind us. There was a group of officers from the Herman Goring SS division (on the left sleeve they wore a badge with a silver inscription in a black border, “ SS Herman Göring”) in front of one of the houses, including a battalion commander with the rank of major. He waved for me to come. Initially, I pretended I didn’t understand, but the major sent a gendarme to bring me to him. Then he began to ask me, in German and in French, about the location of particular streets and the deployment of insurgent units, showing me a map that contained only the draft of the streets. I explained to him that these streets didn’t exist. After a while we were approached by another German officer, a doctor, who asked me: Sind Sie ein Banditenarzt? To this I replied: Nein, ich bin ein Arzt.
When the doctor, pointing at me, said Banditenartz one more time, the major – pointing me out to one of the gendarmes – said: Erschiessen. I was taken aside and the Germans began to pick men from among the group of people who kept walking past us. In this way they selected ten men, including myself. We were escorted to the other side of the street. One of the gendarmes provided us with a number of shovels and told us to dig: Graben.
They must have given up the idea of shooting us there because they took our shovels away and led us towards the city, to Bukowińska Street. We were escorted by three gendarmes. As we marched, they supplied themselves with grenades. These three gendarmes were joined by another one who spoke Polish.
When we got to one of the small houses on Bukowińska Street, the gendarme who spoke Polish declared: “Now we are going to have a drink, and then we will knock you off”. Indeed, all of the gendarmes got into the house, opening their hip flasks as they approached it, and we were left almost unguarded in the courtyard.
After a while a group of almost 100 laborers with shovels poured into the courtyard. As it turned out, they had been brought from Pruszków to dig trenches. The group supervisor, whom I told that we were waiting to be shot, exchanged a few words with the gendarme who brought them and then gave us a few shovels. Having mingled with other laborers, we went out into Puławska Street where we encountered tanks. The tanks began to push us back in the direction of Warsaw and the insurgent units. Along the way we were ordered to backfill a trench on Puławska Street, near Idzikowskiego Street. After that we were marched further to the barricades at Woronicza Street. The gendarmes who been guarding us before ran out into the street, but they withdrew once they encountered fire from the insurgents in Woronicza. When it was noticed during our march that we were going to try and escape, the Germans from one of the tanks threatened to shoot at us. At one point, when we were on top of the barricade in Woronicza Street, with three tanks behind us, another tank emerged in the field coming from the direction of aleja Niepodległości and began to fire at our group walking in front of the tank. One of the shells exploded in the garden in Królikarnia and another one wounded me heavily. Laborers carried me first to Królikarnia and then took me on a door to the hospital in Okęcie, where I spent a few months receiving treatment.
The laborers informed Germans whom we encountered on our way that they were carrying the dead body of a laborer from Pruszków. They said this because they knew the Germans were finishing off the wounded. As I regained consciousness from time to time, I once heard them give such an explanation to the Germans.
I have read the interview report.