Warsaw, 12 January 1948. The member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, Judge Halina Wereńko, interviewed the person specified below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
Name and surname | Stanisław Rasławicki |
Names of parents | Jan and Katarzyna née Nowakowska |
Date of birth | 9 April 1909 |
Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
State and national affiliation | Polish |
Education | three years of elementary school |
Place of residence | Warsaw, Wawelska Street 78, flat 5 |
Occupation | hairdresser |
At the moment of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, on 1 August 1944, I moved to a house at Grójecka Street 40 in Warsaw. On 5 August, around 2.00 p.m., the Germans with a unit of the gendarmerie, which was stationed in the academic house, came into the area of our house. They threw all the residents into the yard and started throwing grenades into the basements. Next, we were led through to the academic house, [where] they joined to us a group of people from the house at Barska Street 3 and priests from St. James church. All together, there were around 300 people. We were led to a big hall, in which five German corpses were lying. The commander of the gendarmes announced to us that we had become hostages, and that for every German killed, ten Poles would be killed. We were also immediately ordered to bury the killed Germans.
On 7 or 8 August (I don’t remember the exact date), in the morning hours, seven men were called out, among others myself, and we were told to dig a hole in the garden in front of the academic house. We heard at night that insurgents had killed one German in circumstances unknown to us. While we were digging the hole, men were chosen from the civilian population, among others Łaciński, residing at Grójecka Street 40a. Digging the hole, we saw how the gendarmes ordered that group to stand by the fence in the corner of the yard by the southern wall, facing the yard, and they were executed. A gendarme carried out the execution with a submachine gun. Next, our group was ordered to put to the corpses on a cart and take them to the hole we had dug before.
On 11 August 1944, our group was led to Zieleniak.
At this the report was concluded and read out.