SRUL HOCHBERG

Warsaw, 12 December 1949. Judge Irena Skonieczna (MA), acting as a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, interviewed the person named below, who testified as follows:


Forename and surname Srul Hochberg
Date and place of birth 30 April 1900, Michów, Lublin voivodeship
Names of parents Fawel and Freda, née Laks
Father’s occupation carpenter
State affiliation and nationality Polish, Jewish
Religious affiliation Jewish
Education elementary school
Occupation plumber/fitter
Place of residence Poznańska Street 38, flat 7
Criminal record none

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, I was in the house at the corner of Dobra Street 96 and Nowy Zjazd Street 4. On the second day of the Uprising the Germans, some gendarmes, set fire to the houses at Nowy Zjazd Street and led the residents somewhere, in a direction unknown to me. On 29 July, I escaped from Pawiak Prison to Dobra Street, to a friend of mine, Władysław Żejmo (currently resident at Domeyki Street 18), and therefore when the Germans came I was hidden in the toilet in the courtyard. On the evening of that day, 2 August 1944, I moved to the basements of the by then burnt-out house. I hid there for nearly half a year, until the Soviet troops entered Warsaw.

During the displacement of the residents of Dobra Street 96 on 2 August, the Germans did not carry out a mass execution. They shot but a few people. I only saw one man in a gate who was shot at by a German. He did not kill him, however.

I do not know what happened to him next. While I was hiding in the ruins of Dobra Street 96, I could regularly hear the Germans executing, in the courtyard by the fence, anyone whom they dragged from the ruins. Many people were hiding in the burnt down houses. In the evenings, when I went out in search of water, I saw piles of bodies near the fence. I saw some twenty bodies.

I do not know what the Germans did with the bodies, where they buried them or whether they had them incinerated. Once, when I ventured to the basement where the laundry room was, I saw some six charred bodies lying on the floor. I would say that 20 to 30 people were killed in the courtyard of Dobra Street 96.

At this point the report was concluded and signed.