London, 17 January 1947
Professor Engineer W. Ciszewski
Vice-President of ECO
London, W.1.
37 Upper Brook Street
To the Director of the Vindication and Compensation Office [Biuro Rewindykacji i Odszkodowań]
Warsaw
Ref.: a German named Bruno Kurt Lehn
I received your letter, BRO / 01922, on the day before I left Poland, which is why I am writing only now from London.
Around the middle of 1940, Bruno Kurt Lehn was assigned to the “Parowozy” [Steam Locomotives] factory of the Ostrowiec Plants [Zakłady Ostrowieckie] in Warsaw, as the deputy of the Treuhänder in the sales department of our company. He came to the “Parowozy” in Warsaw from the Starachowice Plants [Zakłady Starachowickie], which at that time were part of Stahlwerke Braunschweig AG of the Herman Göring Werke company. The same company ran the Ostrowiec Plants and the steam locomotive factory in Warsaw.
To characterize Lehn, I can mention the following events:
1. In the second half of 1942, Lehn called the head of the technical department, Engineer Kazimierz Forst, Foreman Maciaszek, Engineer Czesław Zawadzki, and two other workers whose names I do not remember, to his office. It turned out to be a trap because the Gestapo were already waiting in Lehn’s office. Apart from Engineer Czesław Zawadzki, who realized what was going on and did not enter Lehn’s office but hid on the roof, all the summoned men were arrested and, after a short stay in the Pawiak prison, transported to different concentration camps. None of the arrested returned and we were later informed that they had been killed in the camps.
Engineer Czesław Zawadzki is alive: he works in Warsaw in, if I am not mistaken, the Energy Union of the Warsaw District [Zjednoczenie Energetyczne Okręgu Warszawskiego].
2. In 1941, just before the outbreak of the war with Russia, the supplies situation in Warsaw, and especially among workers, was desperate. Workers sometimes fainted at work from hunger. I was present during one such incident in the forge and when I was returning from there, I met Lehn in the factory hall. I appealed to him to ask the competent authorities for additional supplies for the workers. Lehn then got irritated and told me something like, “You’re all saboteurs and these people are just pretending.”
3. Around August 1942, I witnessed, from my office window, a certain scene that took place at the factory square. A Jewish work unit sent in from the ghetto (it was the period of the first liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto) was working at the square. Suddenly, Lehn went out into the square and saw the group of Jews resting after work. He threw stones at them.
This may sound unbelievable, but as far as I remember, Lehn did not have a bad reputation among the Poles who worked directly under his supervision. There were much worse men among the Germans who supervised the factory.
Engineer Robert Przybyłowicz, who was directly subordinate to Lehn, as well as Felicjan Kowalski, who worked in the sales department, can provide more information on Lehn.
Engineer Przybyłowicz worked, as far as I know, at the Central Management of the Steel Industry [Centralny Zarząd Przemysłu Hutniczego] as a delegate of the Ostrowiec Plants. Mr. Kowalski worked in the Central Management of the Textile Industry [Centralny Zarząd Przemysłu Włókienniczego] in Łódź.
W. Ciszewski