Preliminary Report of Visual Inspection
On 16 January 1946 in Warsaw, Halina Wereńko, acting as district investigative judge of the 2nd region of the District Court in Warsaw, together with Władysław Kosakiewicz, residing at Bema Street 54, visited the grounds at Bema Street 54 where, pursuant to Article 123 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, she conducted a visual inspection and description of the property located at Bema Street 54, indicated in the reports of testimonies by witnesses Anna Hołdakowa and Władysław Kosakiewicz as a place where Poles had been executed in the first half of August 1944. During the inspection, the following was asserted:
The property at Bema Street 54 is an unfenced yard from the side of Bema Street. There is visible rubble from the burnt-down, demolished building, and from the Bema Street side there is rubble mixed with ash. From the opposite side, the yard is covered in bricks. At the spot marked with the letter “F” on the orientation sketch, there is a shed built of bricks, where the property’s owner, Kosakiewicz, present during the visual inspection, currently resides. Kosakiewicz indicates that the building entrance was at the spot marked with the letter “G” on the sketch. At the spot marked with the letter “D” on the sketch, there was a well. It was a timber two-story building, there were nine single-chamber flats downstairs, and just as many upstairs. There were cells at the point marked with the letter “E” on the sketch. At the moment of the inspection, the premises was under a dusting of snow up to half a centimeter high. After brushing aside the snow at the place marked with the letter “C” on the sketch, alongside of it revealed ash and half-burnt fragments of bone, from a half centimeter to ten centimeters in size. Traces of ash and half-burnt bones are more abundant in the part of the burnt-down building situated closer to Bema Street, half-marked on the sketch with the letter “C” as ground buried under bricks. Part of the rubble on the Bema Street side has been thrown back onto the courtyard, marked with the letter “G” on the sketch, and traces of ash are visible there as well. In addition, witness Kosakiewicz showed the judge vessels the size of a bucket containing larger bones picked up from the courtyard of the property in question. Among these bones, there is among other things a human skull.
The report of the visual inspection was concluded at this point.