MIECZYSŁAW MIAŁAN

Warsaw, 27 May 1950. Janusz Gumkowski, acting as a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, heard the person named below as a witness. The witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Mieczysław Miałan
Date and place of birth 14 November 1908 in Warsaw
Parents’ names Jan and Zofia née Kamińska
Occupation of the father founder
State affiliation Polish
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Education 3-year vocational school
Occupation metal turner
Place of residence Rudzka Street 2
Criminal record none

During all of the Warsaw Uprising I was at Łomiańska Street 9. Our area was occupied by insurgents. German troops controlled the Central Institute of Physical Education, the so-called Cioty – a large elementary school building behind the Meteorological Institute, the Blaszanka on the Vistula, the Gas School and the school on Kolektorska Street. All the neighborhoods in Marymont were under constant fire, so it was almost impossible to walk the streets. On 28 August in the early morning, a German car with a loudspeaker drove through our district, announcing that people had to leave it via Marymoncka Street in the direction of the Central Institute of Physical Education by 8.00 a.m. When that hour had passed, German soldiers started setting the entire district on fire with gasoline-filled bottles.

The Germans led the inhabitants of our district past the Central Institute of Physical Education to Wawrzyszew, and then to Powązki and the Pionier park. After a short rest in the park, we continued down Tatarska and Młynarska streets to the church on Wolska Street. There, the women were separated from the men. In two groups, we were marched to the Western Railway Station and from there we were transported to Pruszków.

I returned to Warsaw on 18 January 1945 and went straight to my mother’s house at Rudzka Street 2. After my return, I saw the corpses of ten men in one of the basements in the then not yet finished house of Zawadzki, situated at some distance from Rudzka Street, currently at Rajszewska Street 12. At the entrance to the basement was the corpse of a young girl sitting. Four corpses, of two men and of two young girls, were buried by the path, near the house and behind it.

In the spring, six men came, allegedly from the municipal council, and buried all the corpses, without examining their papers, in a lime pit.

I uncovered these corpses a few weeks later with the families of some of the executed. We identified them with the help of a certain major’s wife, who got a letter from Auschwitz from an eyewitness of the German crime, which said that her son was injured there. The major’s wife submitted a list of names of the identified victims to the Polish Red Cross. Maybe they would know her address and name. I know that she lives somewhere in Żoliborz and that every year on All Souls’ Day she comes with flowers to the execution site. Moreover, I suppose that she might know the address and name of the eyewitness who sent the above-mentioned letter to her.

I haven’t heard of any other mass crimes committed by the Germans during the Uprising on Rudzka Street, Łomiańska Street and Leśna Street.

At that the report was concluded and read out.