TADEUSZ BIELEC

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


Name and surname Tadeusz Bielec
Date and place of birth 22 March 1920 in Lwów
Names of parents Michał and Tekla, née Piskosz
Occupation of the father city hall clerk
State affiliation Polish
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Education secondary technical
Occupation technician/ mechanic
Place of residence Wilsona square 4, flat 57
Criminal record none

During the Warsaw Uprising, until 30 September 1944, I was in the house at Wilsona square 4. For the entire time, our area was occupied by the insurgents.

There were several sanitary posts in our house: one in the basements of the third staircase, the second one in the boiler house – this was the central sanitary post in Fenix (the name was taken from the cooperative to which our house belonged). The third sanitary post was located in the flat of my parents-in-law, the Oskresowis, on the ground floor of the seventh staircase. The insurgent quarters were also situated on the premises of our house.

The Germans occupied the Chemical Institute at Łączności Street 8, the Citadel, and the “Blaszanka” factory on the bank of the Vistula, where the “Ukrainian” units were stationed (I know this, as it was general knowledge at the time. The “Ukrainians” were making sorties to the neighboring areas, murdering civilians). Heavy artillery was located in Buraków.

On the late evening of 29 September, at about 11.00 p.m., the insurgents from Marymont arrived at Fenix. They brought several gravely wounded friends with them. They were placed in the boiler house.

On the following day, before noon on 30 September, the Germans captured Fenix after an overnight assault on our area, and emptied staircase after staircase beginning from the side of Słowackiego Street. The residents were taken to Płońska Street (now Próchnika Street), and then in the direction of the Chemical Institute, without crossing Krasińskiego Street. On the way, the Wehrmacht soldiers robbed the civilians.

When the Germans had thrown the residents out from the sixth staircase, in the basements of which were gravely wounded insurgents, they murdered the latter. Through the windows of the basement in the seventh staircase, where I was staying at the time, I heard a volley of shots, but I cannot tell what kind of weapons were being fired. Then the Germans proceeded to throw people out from the next two staircases. All residents from the seventh and eighth staircases had to pass by the bodies of the executed people lying on the stairs. There were some five corpses. Together with one more man whose surname I don’t know, but whose nom de guerre was “Kot,” I was the last to leave. The Germans stopped us by the corpses. After some time, during which we were fearing for our lives, the Germans ordered us to make a stretcher and carry a wounded liaison, who was lying in the basement of the eighth staircase, to a German sanitary post situated in the tents behind the Chemical Institute. I do not know what happened to that wounded woman afterwards.

Together with the rest of the civilians from our area, we were marched in the direction of Wola. At Okopowa Street, in the vicinity of some garden, the Germans carried out the so-called selection. They picked out young men and also young women from the crowd. I don’t know where they were taken. The rest continued along Wolska Street. In front of the church at Wolska Street, the Germans again picked men and some women, but only a few this time. I proceeded with the crowd in the direction of the Western Railway Station. We passed by the barracks in which the “Ukrainians” in German service were stationed. These soldiers were picking young women from among us, to which the escorting SD units, with skull and crossbones on their hats, paid no heed. Around midnight we left in a transport of open wagons to the Pruszków transit camp.

I did not hear about any other crimes committed by the Germans in Żoliborz during the uprising in 1944.

More details pertaining to the crime committed on 30 September 1944 on five or six wounded insurgents in the house at Wilsona square 4 could be probably provided by stoker Szymon Nazar, currently residing at Wilsona square 4, staircase six.

At this the report was concluded and read out.