JÓZEF RDZANEK

On 11 January 1946 in Radom, the investigating judge from the 2nd Region of the District Court in Radom, Judge Kazimierz Borys, heard the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Józef Rdzanek
Age 22 years old
Parents’ names Jan and Wiktoria
Place of residence Wólka Klwatecka, Wielogóra commune
Occupation farmer
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Criminal record none
Relationship to the parties none

From the spring of 1940, I saw trucks turning from the Warsaw road to the Firlej sands. At first they were a rare sight, then they came more frequently, and from the summer of 1943 through 1944 rarely did a day pass without people being brought to Firlej. It also happened that people were brought to Firlej several times a day.

After each such transport we could hear machine gun fire.

In the summer of 1943, I was forced by the Germans to bury the bodies of the people whom they had executed in Firlej. When I arrived with the others at Firlej, I saw two large pits that had been dug in the sands, each about 10 meters long, two and a half meters wide, and about one and a half meters deep. We were ordered to dig two more such pits. When we had already dug them, we were ordered to go beyond a hillock and lie down behind the bushes. Then the Germans brought people from the trucks parked nearby and executed them with machine or automatic guns. I say this because we heard bursts of gunfire.

Some time later we were ordered to fill the pits into which the Germans – with some helpers – had previously thrown the bodies of the murdered men and covered them with a thin layer of sand. While we were burying the murdered, we could see hands, legs, and sometimes even faces or fragments of faces of the murdered people.

From autumn 1943 to spring 1944, the Germans – having first expelled the local residents – burned the bodies of the murdered victims under the cover of straw mats. I don’t know how it looked. However, I saw flames and smoke over the sands, and I could also smell the stench of decomposing bodies.

While the corpses were being burned, trucks were still going between Radom and Firlej and we could still hear shooting from the direction of the sands. The executions, then, were still underway. They were being carried out until January 1945. The last execution took place a few days before the Red Army entered Radom.

The report was read out.