Józefa Kryfko, resident in Anin at Kościelna Street
The mother of the murdered Kazimierz Kryfko
On 26 February 1942, my son Kazimierz was in Falędzki’s house, where he was hiding from the Gestapo.
Next day I learned about the nightly ambush at the “Wioletta” villa and the house in which my son was staying. When I got there, I saw Kopalińska – whom I had known as a model Pole, the widow of a colonel of the Polish Army – lying dead on the stairs of the house at VIII Poprzeczna Street 13, with a bullet wound to her head. The body of her son, Leszek, was lying some 50 meters from the house.
My son Kazimierz, who had managed to escape from the Falędzkis’ flat, went into hiding in Warsaw, but on 16 April 1942 he was captured in Saska Kępa.
On 29 April 1942, while I was walking to the shop, a gendarmerie truck drove by. My son leaned out of it and shouted: – Mother, I am going to my execution! I ran after the car and saw it stop in front of the “Wioletta” villa, and then at the end of VIII Poprzeczna Street.
The door of the truck opened and Rajmund Górski, the cripple without one leg, was pushed out. One of the gendarmes grabbed Górski from behind and shot him in the back of the head.
Five other people were then led out, my son among them, and murdered in the same way. The rest were forcibly dragged out of the vehicle and shot down like dogs.
The Germans pilfered the bodies for anything of value, tearing off their shoes and breaking their fingers to strip them of rings.
The blue policemen who buried the corpses kept repeating that the executed men were bandits, but I think that they were instructed to do so by the Germans.