HELENA BATOR

Warsaw, 19 June 1946. Investigating Judge Halina Wereńko, delegated to the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed the person named below as a witness. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the significance of the oath, the Judge took an oath therefrom, following which the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Helena Bator, née Milewska
Parents’ names Wojciech and Józefa, née Piotrowska
Date and place of birth 3 March 1904, Wilanów
Occupation lives with her daughter
Education three classes of elementary school
Place of residence the orphanage on the state-owned estate of Wilanów
Religion Roman Catholic
Criminal record none

During the German occupation I lived in the village of Wilanów, in the house that used to belong to my late mother, to whose assets I and my siblings are successors. The streets in Wilanów do not have names, nor do I remember the number of the said property in the land and mortgage register. The house stood by the side of the road leading to the village of Zawada, near the Vistula embankment and close to the lake. It is now burnt down, and I live in the orphanage. The German authorities set up a camp for Soviet prisoners of war, and later on for Jews, between the embankment and the lake. After deporting, and in part shooting the Jews dead on the spot – I do not remember the date, but I think it was in the beginning of 1944 – the German authorities took down the barracks and carried them away in trucks. The Jewish graves have not been exhumed to date. I do not know the exact locations of these graves.

Having four children to support, I was forced to look for work and therefore spent little time at home, so I am not knowledgeable about what went on in the neighborhood. I do not remember the date, but a few times in 1944, before the Uprising (the children told me this), some Germans – I do not know their unit – brought in truckloads of people whom they executed behind the embankment, by the lake. The graves were near the lake.

In actual fact, the area was razed to the ground and I am unable to say where the graves are located. Neither do I know how many people were executed, nor whom exactly the Germans were executing. On a few occasions after these killings, which were carried out at night, I saw blood on the meadow by the lake. The menfolk from Wilanów, whom the Germans forced to bury the murdered victims, could probably give fuller testimony.

I think that one Grzelec, whose name I do not know, took part in burying the bodies. Piotr Owczarek and Henryk Drewniak, the latter currently resident on his property in a barn (the house was burned down), lived near the place where the executions were carried out. Piotr Owczarek lives close to the site of the killings, in his own house. I have no more to testify.