Warszawa, 24 April 1947. Member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, Halina Wereńko, interviewed the person specified below as an unsworn witness. Having been instructed of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the wording of Art. 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Marianna Smolińska |
| Names of parents | Bronisław and Anna née Płoska |
| Date of birth | 10 May 1895 in Romany Karcze village |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, […] |
| Education | the witness can read and write |
| Occupation | household worker |
For ten years I worked as a housekeeper for Father Krygier, who was the parson in the parish of St Lawrence Church in Warsaw (Wola). We lived in the parish house, near the church, at Wolska Street 140a. During the Warsaw Uprising, the bishop of the Pińsk diocese, Niemira, and Father Dąbrowski, working as a vicar in St Lawrence parish, were staying with father Krygier.
During the first days of the uprising I stayed at home, not knowing much about what was happening on the outside. On 5 August 1944, I was in the safety shelter, and around 9 a.m. I went to the vicarage. I found Father Krygier speaking – in Polish even – with German officers, whose names or divisions I do not know. The officers politely informed Father Krygier that they were leaving with their troops, but that new troops were coming; I did not figure, however, who these troops would be.
After the officers had left, Father Krygier, together with sacristan Wójcicki, went to the church to celebrate Holy Mass. I don’t know who was in the church at that time (apart from the painters, who were renovating the church when the uprising broke out). After Father Krygier had gone, I left the vicarage for the safety shelter, since I had heard shooting from afar. That was around 9 in the morning. After some time we heard raus being yelled in the safety shelter. Bishop Niemira and parish secretary Goszkowski climbed the stairs, but came back after a while – Goszkowski with a mortal wound to his abdomen (he died three hours later) and the bishop with a hole shot through his cassock. The bishop, still hearing raus being yelled, told the women to come out, since maybe this could prevent people being shot at.
Then the Germans started to throw grenades into the basements from the front. At that, Mrs Franaszek with a child and a nanny, the sister of sacristan Wójcicki, and one more young woman went out. I was following this group at a certain distance, and while on the stairs, I heard Mrs Franaszek cry out: “You killed the child, kill me as well”; I then retreated to the basement, and others did too, around thirty people in total.
Around 7 p.m. German soldiers in full gear burst into the basement. I don’t know what the division of these soldiers was. We were ordered to go out, our group was brought into the yard where I saw the corpses of Mrs Franaszek, her child, and the three women who had gone out with her. The Germans kept us for around ten minutes in front of a positioned machine gun, but then for reasons unknown to me, they abandoned the execution and herded our group to St Lawrence Church.
Before being taken to the church, Bishop Niemira and I were led to the vicarage, where we were ordered to open all the locks. I don’t know what else they asked the bishop, since I was very scared. In the church, I found groups of civilians already there, many of them lying wounded on the floor. I saw puddles of blood in several places. At some point a painter who had been renovating the church before the uprising (I don’t know his name) approached me and he told me that Father Krygier, sacristan Wójcicki, and the second painter in the church had been murdered by the Germans in the morning. I have never learned the details of this incident.
On the following day (6 August 1944) in the evening, together with other civilians, I was taken out from the church and we joined a transport of civilians from St Adalbert church. A group of around eight thousand women, children, and men was herded on foot to the transit camp in Pruszków. I later heard that the vicarage had been burnt down only thirteen days later, and that during the period of 5–8 August 1944 the Germans had carried out mass executions in the vicarage and the garden.
At that the report was concluded and read out.