On 4 May 1946, the Municipal Court in Opatów, represented by Judge Al. Zalewski, with the participation of reporter J. Kwiatkowski, interviewed the person named below as a witness. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations, of the wording of Article 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and of the significance of the oath, the judge swore the witness in accordance with Article 108 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, whereupon the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Maria Pawlicka |
| Age | 50 |
| Parents’ names | Franciszek and Ewa |
| Place of residence | Opatów, Kierkucka Street 3 |
| Occupation | housewife |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
| During the German occupation a | Volksdeutsche couple, Maria and Józef Kuźniewski, lived |
at my house for one year. One time – I can’t remember the exact date – my husband Leon, as the owner of the house, pointed out to her [Maria] that she should respect the house rules. Offended by this, she sent her son to get the police, and as a result the former Blue Police officer Szymczak came to our house. Without a word, Szymczak started beating my husband with a long, thick rubber baton, and when my older daughter, Jadwiga, grabbed her father’s neck, trying to protect him from the blows, the policeman grabbed her and pushed her away. He then took my husband into custody. As a result of the beating, my husband suffered a number of injuries and bloody bruises.
Because my husband was involved in livestock slaughter, which was illegal at the time, we were constantly blackmailed by former Blue Police officers, especially by Jan Krowiński, notorious for those kinds of practices, whom we very often needed to bribe by offering products of various kinds. At the same time, during the German occupation, a former Blue Police officer, Witold Ślęzak, lived at my house. I’ve heard that he was responsible for the deaths of several people, including one man who was sentenced by a German court and attempted to run for his life while he was being escorted into a local detention center. Ślęzak arrived to my house destitute, but as he was leaving, he had trouble fitting his belongings into three cars. My whole family can confirm that both while the ghetto existed and after the Jews were deported, Ślęzak stole from the ghetto and forced the few remaining Jews to bring him all sorts of precious gifts, mainly leather and textiles. Regardless of the above, he managed to gather a lot of gold from the ghetto. I overheard him bragging to my sister-in- law that not only him, but his children are set for life.