ANTONI WOŹNICZKA

On 16 November 1948 the Magistrates’ Court in Zwoleń, with Judge M. Łowicki presiding and with the participation of a reporter, P. Mikulski, interviewed the person mentioned hereunder as a witness, having first taken an oath therefrom. After advising 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 Antoni Woźniczka
Age 41 years old
Parents’ names Szczepan and Katarzyna
Place of residence Kulczyn, commune of Grabów nad Wisłą
Occupation farmer
Criminal record none
Relationship to the parties brother-in-law of the murdered victims

I would like to testify as follows: in January 1943 four German gendarmes from the station in Zwoleń, accompanied by one Stankiewicz, a Blue Policeman from Zwoleń, arrived in the village of Kulczyn, commune of Grabów nad Wisłą, and proceeded to the house of Katarzyna Woźniczka. I do not know the surnames of these men. One of the gendarmes was a “lieutenant”. The gendarmes detained Katarzyna Woźniczka and Marianna Woźniczka (mother and daughter-in-law), whom they then shot dead just behind the farmyard, in the field, and ordered that they be buried there; this instruction was complied with.

In the spring of 1943, Katarzyna Woźniczka’s sons recovered the bodies, placed them in coffins, and reinterred them at the same location, putting up a fence around the spot. The bodies are buried there to date. Katarzyna Woźniczka’s sons and the husband of Marianna Woźniczka, that is: Stanisław, Władysław and Jan Woźniczka, were members of partisan units. It was they whom the gendarmes wanted to arrest, but finding them absent, they killed the women instead.

The placement of the bodies indicated that Katarzyna Woźniczka had been killed on the spot with a shot to the back of the head, while Marianna Woźniczka had in all probability tried to flee, for she had a bullet wound to the leg – clearly, this was the first shot fired at her, and other marks indicated that she had run for a distance of some 100 meters before receiving another shot – fatal – to the back of the head.