ALEKSANDER KRAMAREW

Warsaw, 21 September 1949. A member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Irena Skonieczna (MA), heard the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Aleksander Kramarew
Date and place of birth 27 August 1895, Turłak settlement (Romania)
Names of parents Mikołaj and Maria, née Iwanicka
Occupation of the father agronomist
State affiliation and nationality Polish
Religious affiliation Orthodox Church
Education secondary
Occupation civil servant
Place of residence Warsaw, Marszałkowska Street 17, flat 26
Criminal record none

Since the first day of the Warsaw Uprising I was in the house at Marszałkowska Street 17. For the first two days the gate of our house was closed. On 3 August at about noon the Germans began to hammer on it. As an air-raid warden commander I ordered the caretaker to open the gate. A German unit composed of some 10 men entered our premises. They immediately went to the first floor, to the flat of Mr. Ossowiecki; its windows looked out to Litewska Street. The Germans went through all the rooms. They found only an old servant of Mr. Ossowiecki. They threw him out and then they threw a grenade into one of the rooms that had its windows looking out to the courtyard. It began to burn. The Germans went downstairs to the empty courtyard: the majority of residents were gathered in the basements. In the courtyard, the Germans fired a salvo from machine guns and then left, ordering that the gate be left open. As soon as they left, I organized a fire prevention action. We wanted to contain the fire within this one room. An hour later, when we were still putting out the fire (I was upstairs at the time), the Germans stormed into the courtyard again. The people who were putting out the fire dispersed immediately. Only one man stayed in the courtyard and the caretaker, who was standing on a ladder at the level of the first floor. The Germans fired another salvo in the courtyard. They killed the man who had remained there. Apparently they did not notice the caretaker. They left our house again. Under such circumstances further action was impossible. Fearing that the fire would spread to the entire building, I went upstairs to my flat to pack up some indispensable things and take them to the shelter. At the time when I was in my flat I heard that the Germans came to our courtyard once again. A short conversation took place there, some shots were fired again and then I heard groaning. I looked out of the window. A neighbor of mine, Mrs. Kawelin, who lived on the floor below, was lying in the courtyard. Shortly afterwards I heard that the Germans entered the staircase. Smoke began to pour into the flat through the window. The Germans had set fire to Mrs. Kawelin’s flat. When I determined that they had left our house, I went downstairs and put out the fire. Then I went to the courtyard, where I saw my neighbor, Aleksander Karnicki, who was also dead. I spent the night in the basement, together with other residents. In our basement, there were also many residents from the houses situated on the odd-numbered side of Marszałkowska Street, the ones with low numbers. Those people told us that the Germans had set fire to their houses as well, and that in some they had immediately executed the residents in the courtyards.

On the morning of 4 August 1944, the Germans shot a director from the Bosch company, Sobecki, who entered the courtyard at the same time as the Germans and talked to them for a while in a quite loud voice. Until the evening of that day the Germans would storm into our courtyard from time to time and then one could hear explosions and volleys of shots. In the evening, a German unit came to our premises again. We heard footsteps on the stairs leading to the basement. Some time later the basement was filled with the boom of an exploding grenade. No one, however, was as much as seriously wounded. The Germans, or rather one "Ukrainian", began to shout in Russian that all people were to leave. Nobody complied. Another grenade was thrown into the basement. After its explosion, the servant of engineer Karolkow, who had “friends” among the soldiers from the unit of Kamiński (if I am not mistaken this unit was stationed on Litewska Street), having learnt that one of her friends was among the soldiers who had entered our courtyard, decided to come out. After some time she shouted that we could leave as nothing untoward would happen to us. We left the basement. The Germans robbed us of all valuables and ordered us to go with our hands raised to the other side of Marszałkowska Street, to the corner of Litewska Street. There they ordered us to lie down with our faces to the pavement. Some residents had already been lying on the corner of these streets. As far as I could tell, they were from the houses on the odd-numbered side of Marszałkowska Street, from the house number 7 or 9 up to aleja Piłsudskiego. I think that a few people were also from Oleandrów Street.

The Germans separated the young men from this group. From among the residents of our house they took Mr. Biliński and his friend from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry whose surname I do not know. The Germans led the young men to aleja Szucha, from where none of them has ever returned.

The Germans sent the rest of residents in groups in the direction of Zbawiciela Square. They told us to go on the non-built up side of the street. The majority, however, did not obey the order and ran along the other side of the street, under the cover of houses. I, however, and two other men walked on the prescribed side. In the square we found ourselves under fire from heavy machine guns: the Germans opened fire at us from the ruins of the ministry. Fortunately I was not hit. My two companions, however, were killed. I saw many corpses in the square. Apparently this incident was not an isolated one.

Apart from the above-described cases, I heard that the Germans murdered the residents of the house at Marszałkowska Street 21, on the corner with Oleandrów Street, throwing the bodies to the basement under the Anca pharmacy. Furthermore, I learned that on the morning of 5 August the group of people whom on 4 August 1944 the Germans had sent in the direction of Zbawiciela Square, comprising also Mr. Ossowiecki, was taken along with the parish priest to aleja Szucha. The priest was released. Mr. Ossowiecki, in turn, was seen in the group of men who were marched to the General Inspectorate of the Armed Forces building.

When I returned to Warsaw at the end of January or at the beginning of February 1945, I found three half-charred corpses of women in the basement of a separate house on our premises, in which Mrs. Stefania Poszepna, her daughter Romana and servant Franciszka Głogowska had lived. A discovery of Mrs. Poszepna’s wig testified to the fact that these were the corpses of these three women.

At this point, the report was concluded and read out.