16 November 1948, Magistrates’ Court in Zwoleń
Present: Judge Żowicki, reporter Urkienek.
The following failed to appear at the session: witness Marianna Piekarska, summons undelivered.
Witness Aleksander Barzycki, 54 years old, son of Ignacy, commandant of the Factory Guard, sworn in, has testified as follows: on 4 June 1942 I was an eyewitness to how a Volksdeutscher from the village of Władysławów, whom I knew by sight, although I don’t remember his surname, shot and killed Symelia Flanembaum in the ghetto in Garbatka. I don’t know what caused him to do this, but I think it highly probable that he was motivated by sadism, because after committing the act he turned to those who were watching on and said: "Now I can go and have dinner".
On 12 July 1942 the Germans – army personnel and Gestapo men – conducted mass arrests. The Germans had lists of intended victims. When they arrived at my flat, they read out my name and those of my 2 sons. My sons escaped, but I was detained. At the time, the Germans arrested 963 people. Of these, more than 900 were immediately loaded onto wagons and sent to Oświęcim. They left 50 or so, myself among them.
The arrests and loading into railcars were accompanied by savage ill-treatment. I and the others, for example, were forced to lie in the mud for some length of time, while next, after I had climbed into a truck, the Germans pushed me under the bench and hit me repeatedly with rifle butts. The 50 people whom they had left behind were locked up in the school and interrogated for more or less two weeks – the Germans were adamant that an uprising was about to break out in Garbatka and they wanted to learn the details. After two weeks of beatings and maltreatment, they released 14 prisoners, while the rest were sent to Oświęcim.