Warsaw, 13 September 1945. The investigating judge Mikołaj Halfter heard as a witness the person specified below. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the importance of the oath the witness was sworn and testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Maria Małecka née Miler |
| Age | 38 years old |
| Parents’ names | Franciszek and Maria |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Marszałkowska Street 6, flat 5 |
| Occupation | caretaker |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
| Relationship to the parties | none |
Before the war, my husband, Marian Małecki (killed in January 1945 by a stray bullet), had worked in the Ministry of Education at aleja Szucha 25 as a caretaker and later as a janitor and stoker. When Warsaw was taken over by the Germans, some troops were barracked in the Ministry building (where we had a company flat), and later the building was taken over by the Gestapo (I don’t remember the exact date). My husband was ordered by the Germans (the military men) to continue working, and when the building was taken over by the Gestapo, he had to stay, as the Germans threatened to kill him for leaving his post. When the evacuation of Warsaw began at the end of July 1944, my husband obtained permission to resign and then we took up residence in my sister’s flat at Sandomierska Street 21 in Warsaw.
At the time when the Gestapo occupied the house at aleja Szucha 25, my husband was working only as a stoker, and I was working as a janitor, so it was usually I who would open and close the gate when the cars were bringing the arrested to the Gestapo and then taking them away.
As the cars were passing me and entering another yard, I could not see any of the people whom they were leading out of the car or putting into it when they were leaving with the arrested.
During the period when I worked in this building, when the weather was fine and the office windows were open, I could very often, every day, hear the groans and screams of the interrogated and the sounds of them being beaten. When the interrogated person began screaming too much, the Gestapo men would close the window of the room where the interrogation was taking place.
I don’t remember the year, but once I encountered some people in the building carrying a stretcher. They were taking some covered-up person out on it.
I didn’t see where they went. I have not seen it for myself, but I heard from other janitors – Staszkiewicz, Sokołowski, and Ćwikłowski – that it happened several times that the arrestees tried to commit suicide by jumping out of the windows during interrogation.
I know that in 1943 or 1944 (I don’t remember the exact date) there was a shack near the Gestapo building where the Jewish workers lived. I heard that the Germans were beating them as well, and that some were even killed there. I heard from other janitors that these Jews were being punished by standing on the coke in the yard, when the weather was freezing cold.
The chief, Serafin, did not live in the house at aleja Szucha 25 during the time of German rule. I heard he lives there now.
Once when someone had not closed the gate, one of the Gestapo men beat me about the face and threatened that if it happened again he would kill me.
Apart from my job as a janitor, I was cleaning the flat of the Gestapo interpreter, Waldemar Czogala.
I don’t know the nationality of this Czogala. He was not married. During the uprising, when I was taken to the Gestapo along with other women from Sandomierska Street, I heard from the Germans that Czogala was killed.
We, the women from Sandomierska Street, were driven by the Germans to the Gestapo in August, I think it was on 6 August. When I was led into the yard, some women who worked in the kitchens (of the Gestapo) noticed me and called me to them. Then I started working there, and I remained there until 20 August 1944, when the Gestapo men told us to go where we pleased.
During that time I neither saw nor heard that the Gestapo was executing people on its premises. I saw for myself that the Germans were stripping the arrested Poles of their belongings, identity papers, and money, and were leading them somewhere. I heard that they were taking them to the Sportplatz at aleja Szucha 12 or 14. People were saying that the arrestees were probably being executed there. Whether it was so or whether the Germans were carrying out executions somewhere else, I don’t know. Women, as I heard, were also being taken to that Sportplatz (formerly the Jordan garden).
When the Germans had left Warsaw I met a woman I didn’t know, who told me that she had lived at Flora Street on the corner of Bagatela Street during the uprising and had seen from her windows that on this platz (in the Jordan garden), the Germans were carrying out mass executions of women and were burying them in the ground of the said platz. I heard the same between 6 and 20 August 1944 from the Jews employed by the Gestapo. They told me that they were burying the executed in the Jordan garden. As those Jews told me, sometimes they had to bury the wounded alive.
There were 12 of those Jews, and they were sleeping in the boiler room. They were, among other things, helping in the kitchen: they were washing the floors, bringing in coke, or peeling potatoes.
What happened to them afterwards, I do not know. When I left the Gestapo on 20 August 1944, some Polish female workers remained there. The Jews were still alive then.
From 6 to 20 August 1944 I saw that the Gestapo men would make a pile of the worst of those things taken away from the arrested Polish people, douse it with kerosene and set it on fire.
I know one more name of a Gestapo man, he was called “Czorny” [black], but I don’t know his [real] name. He was German. I don’t know the names of the other Gestapo men.
During my entire stay at aleja Szucha 25, from 6 to 20 August 1944, they would bring thedetained Polish men and women, with children, to the Gestapo. They were making them wait for several hours in the yard, and at that time they would take away their belongings and identity papers. One group was kept in the yard the entire night, and we could not give them anything to eat or drink. I saw those people through the window. I think that during that period they brought at least a few thousand people (not all at once) a day to the Gestapo yard, and then took them somewhere else. It was so during almost my entire stay at the Gestapo building in August 1944.
Recently I have met several women who were brought to the Gestapo then. I don’t know their names. I will try to find it out and submit those names to the citizen judge.
The report was read out.