Warsaw, 10 March 1948. Judge Halina Wereńko, a member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Warsaw, interviewed the person named below as a witness, without administering an oath. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false statements and of the obligation to tell the truth, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Helena Heliczer, née Mester |
| Parents’ names | Michał and Zofia, née Mester |
| Date of birth | 27 July 1890 Jezierno, Tarnopol district |
| Religious affiliation | Jewish |
| Education | elementary school |
| Place of residence | Ząbkowice Śląskie, Rynek Street 4 |
| Occupation | lives with her daughter Zofia Andeska |
| State affiliation | Polish, Jewish nationality |
I confirm the testimony submitted by my daughter Cecylia Cajmer and today I wish to add the following: My cousin Józef Heliczer (now deceased) told me that in September 1942 he saw Dyga personally shoot a prisoner near his house, after another prisoner had escaped from the prison in Czortków.
I do not know the name of the man who was shot.
Before my daughter Cecylia Cajmer’s departure from Jezierno on 10 October 1942, an order (Anordnung) signed by the head of the SD [Sicherheitsdienst – Security Service] in Tarnopol was posted up around the area. It required the Jews to take their belongings and move to the ghetto in Zborów under pain of death. The Jews who went into hiding and the people who helped them were to be shot. As we didn’t want to move to the ghetto, my husband and I went to the labor camp administered by the local SS. The camp was run by a Jewish kapo, who supervised a group tasked with construction work. At that time Dyga and his camp were moved to a different location near Tarnopol.
In Novemeber 1942, upon his return, Dyga rushed into our camp, beat the kapo and took all the men, me and another woman named Lonferowa to his camp, depriving us of our belongings. In the camp, under the threat of being shot we were forced give up our gold. He even took the shoes away from the men and placed them in his group. Lonferowa and I were ordered to go to the ghetto. He threatened that if he saw us again, we would be shot dead.
In October 1942, after sending the Jews to the ghetto, Dyga established a camp for women attached to the camp which he was already running. In order to be closer to my husband after I learnt that he had fallen ill with typhus, I managed to get from the ghetto to the camp for women.
On 1 January 1943 I got to a separate building which housed the sick. There were several dozens of them, lying on the bunks and on the floor. The place was filthy. The sick were being looked after by two nurses and Dr. Tenenbaum, a camp doctor, whose sister unofficially prepared meals for the sick. There were no drugs in the infirmary. My husband died on 2 January. Later I learnt that about ten of the patients who were lying there with my husband managed to recover.
I remained in the camp for women. Dyga came to us every day and beat female prisoners for the most trivial offences and sometimes for no reason at all. On my way to work, in the garden I often saw the bodies of the Jews who had been hanged.
When my husband was still alive, on 1 or 2 January 1943, (I don’t remember the exact date) an old man about 80 years old, the pharmacist’s father, was brought to the camp from Kozłów. I was told that all of the druggist’s family members had fled and gone into hiding except for the old man who got caught. On Dyga’s order, the old man was left in the camp’s gateway with his coat off, and no one was allowed to come near him. He stood there the entire day. I heard him groan. He froze to death at night.
In the spring of 1943 (I don’t remember the exact date) I heard that during a party which was taking place in his house, Dyga went out to the camp, selected three Jewish prisoners and shot them. The victims were Bernard Heliczer, my husband’s brother, and two other prisoners whom I don’t know. I was told this by Leżańska (residing in Świebodzice, district of Świdnica, Lower Silesia, Rynek Street 13, pharmacy, the house of Stefania Torska’s daughter).
On 23 February 1943, with the permission from the camp’s authorities, I moved to the ghetto in Czortków, where my other daughter was staying. In April 1944, having returned to Jezierno, I went to the Jewish cemetery. The gravedigger’s wife, with whom I struck up conversation (I don’t know her surname), showed me where the bodies of the Jews shot by Dyga had been burnt.
I did not find my husband’s grave. The cemetery was destroyed and the graves were unmarked, because the Germans used the tombstones from the Jewish cemetery for the construction of the road.
At this point the report was brought to a close and read out.