ANTONI PODGÓRSKI

On 3 January 1946 in Rawa Mazowiecka, Judge A. Miernik 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 Antoni Podgórski
Date of birth 10 February 1890
Parents’ names Grzegorz and Józefa née Dziewulska
Place of residence Warsaw, Chmielna Street 25
Place of birth Rawa Mazowiecka
Occupation manual worker
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Criminal record none
Relationship to the parties none

I lived at aleja Szucha 25 in Warsaw, in a house belonging to the Ministry of Education, since the house was finished until 1 September 1944. If I remember correctly, the house was finished in 1938. In other words, I was living there during the whole period of the German occupation.

During that time I could see those arrested being brought by the Gestapo men, a few people at a time or a few dozen. They were bringing the arrestees in trucks. They would take them away about 12.00 a.m., and bring them in at 1.00–2.00 p.m., sometimes later. It was like this almost every day, twice a day, with one or two cars.

I could hear screams and groans from the corridor, but I did not see for myself how the interrogations of the arrestees looked and what methods were being used. In Polish times, I occupied the post of caretaker at the entrance to the building, and during the German times I was working as a manual worker.

I saw many people who entered the building in good health and left it looking quite differently. Very often people were crawling on their knees down the stairs. When some tortured person could not walk down the stairs quickly, he or she would be beaten with whips and kicked by the Gestapo men. The tortures were so inhumane that one could hardly bear the screams coming out of there. It is impossible to tell or describe what was happening in there.

People were being tortured both in corridors and in rooms, wherever the opportunity arose. The torture chamber was in the basement. They were using Jews to take out those killed, usually Poles.

Whether some special executions were taking place in the Gestapo, I cannot tell for certain, as Polish people were not admitted everywhere. I didn’t see such executions, but, as I already said, executions of particular people took place quite frequently in various parts of the building. I saw one man with his hands handcuffed jump from the second floor into the basin which was in the yard. I also saw a postman jump out of the window on the second floor onto the yard, and die on the spot. I witnessed, in a corridor, a fight between some Polish man I didn’t know and three Gestapo men, who took him later into a room to beat him. Due to pain, that man jumped out of the window on the second floor onto thez yard, but he didn’t die. He was taken away in I don’t know which direction, in the car of the Gestapo commander. I never saw any people being brought to the Gestapo at aleja Szucha with their mouths covered. They would take the executed away in cars, usually at night. What they were doing with the belongings of the executed, I do not know.

I remember that during the first year of the war, when some Gestapo officer was killed, they announced to us, the Polish and Ukrainian people, that they were going to kill one thousand Poles for this one officer. During the uprising in 1944, the Gestapo was bringing people caught in the streets and taking them to the house at aleja Szucha 14, where mass executions were taking place. They were dousing the corpses of those who were executed there and setting them on fire. I didn’t see it for myself, but I heard about it from my friends, who were incarcerated in a prison in that house.

I declare that the things and the crimes that were taking place in the German Gestapo building were such that it is impossible to recount them.

The report was read out.