Warsaw, 2 March 1946. Judge St. Rybiński, 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 swore the witness.
The witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Teofila Koch |
| Date of birth | 20 December 1888 |
| Names of parents | Paweł and Karolina née Barie |
| Occupation | household duties |
| Education | 4 years of private boarding school |
| Place of residence | Ursus, Mickiewicza Street 2, flat 8 |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
I have lived in the same flat for over ten years. Until 20 November 1943, my husband Konstanty Koch (born 7 March 1891) also lived there. My husband was a metal turner by profession and worked at the Ursus factory.
I don’t know if my husband had ever joined a political organization hostile to the occupiers. My husband didn’t tell me anything about it. However, I believe that he did belong to an organization because he spent a lot of time away from home.
On the night of 21 November 1943, I was home alone because my husband had gone to the factory for a night shift. Suddenly, at 3:00 in the morning, I was woken up by loud banging on the door of our apartment. I opened the door and three figures dressed in civilian clothes entered, accompanied by two gendarmes in uniforms, armed with rifles. Those dressed as civilians had pistols in their hands. One of them turned to me and asked in Polish where my husband, Konstanty Koch, was. I said that he had gone to work. Then all of them left my flat and went upstairs. Soon after, shots sounded from there. As it turned out later, someone had escaped from these police agents and was hiding at my neighbor’s, Jan Szwagrzyk’s. Nevertheless, they did not find Szwagrzyk, whom they also wanted to arrest, at home. However, they managed to capture him in his workshop in another house. Szwagrzyk was a hatter.
My husband was arrested that same night in the same fashion by the same German policemen at the factory. In the morning I managed to see him at the blue police station in Ursus. I brought him food. He was particularly reticent. Himself, Szwagrzyk, and two other workers of the factory (whose surnames I don’t know) who had been arrested along with them, were supposed to be deported to Pruszków that day at 10:00 a.m. My husband told me to confer with our neighbor, Holankowa.
After the German police came for my husband, Szwagrzyk and their two companions, I concluded that my husband very likely belonged to an organization and had been arrested for being on a list along with the others. When the next day I went to Pruszków to ask about his fate, I learned that he had been there only a couple of hours and was then taken to Pawiak prison in Warsaw. I subsequently went to Warsaw with my husband’s brother Antoni Koch, bringing packages for my husband. Altogether, they accepted two of my packages [with food] and a third one with clothes, which was returned to me some time after, when I already knew that my husband was dead. Three days [later], on 10 December 1943, I learned that my husband had been executed in Pruszków that day, together with Szwagrzyk and the other two men arrested at the factory.
I had made attempts to get my husband released from prison, I talked with Holankowa, but she didn’t promise me anything. She only said that my husband had been very seriously charged. She probably didn’t know anything about my husband’s case. Volksdeutsch Lufery, a foreman at the Ursus factory, to whom I also turned, assured me that my husband would be safe and sound. Lufery spoke personally over the phone with a Gestapo man named Korsch, a Gestapo delegate at the Ursus factory. Lufery assured me that nothing would happen to my husband, supposedly based on what Korsch had said.
Only in the spring of 1944 did I receive a certificate from the Gestapo via the Patronat stating that my husband had died on 10 December 1943.
My husband was executed in a group of 20 or 22 people.
The report was read out.
I am adding that Szwagrzyk’s wife left for Łódź. I don’t know her address.