ALINA GŁUCHOWSKA

Warsaw, 26 March 1946. Judge Halina Wereńko, 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, who then testified as follows:


Name and surname Alina Głuchowska née Zaleska
Names of parents Marcin and Bronisława
Date of birth 2 February 1912
Occupation tailor
Education 3-year industrial-trading school
Place of residence Pruszków, Stalowa Street 6, flat 5
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Criminal record none

I am a resident of Pruszków, where I live permanently and lived during the war, with a break from 1938 to March 1941. My whole family lives in Pruszków.

From March 1941, I lived at Stalowa Street 6, with my brother Eugeniusz Zaleski (born on 25 May 1914), a construction technician employed in Warsaw at the Rota company on Koszykowa Street, and my husband Czesław Bogdan Głuchowski (born on 12 January 1909), a technician mechanic, in 1941 employed in the Lech company on Brukowa Street in Warsaw.

My brother was an officer in the Polish Army reserve in the rank of second lieutenant and belonged to an underground organization fighting the Germans during the occupation. He never told me that he belonged to an underground organization, but I easily guessed that was the case, because he would often leave, without saying where he was going, he would receive mysterious people, and had once said that he had weapons hidden in Warsaw. I don’t know if my husband worked in the underground.

On the night from 12 to 13 December 1943, eight Gestapo men in uniforms arrived in our flat, four in plainclothes. They had very good knowledge of the area. They rang three times, as had been arranged in our family. Having entered the flat, where my husband and my brother were present in addition to the rest of the family, they walked around and asked my brother where the five officers hiding at our place were. We all answered that there were no strangers there. Then the Gestapo men asked my brother and husband for their names and surnames, told them to stand by the wall and, when facing it, asked if they had served in the military, in what rank etc. I have to stress that my brother had registered as an officer twice.

Next, the Germans took both my husband and my brother. Firstly, to the gendarmerie in Brwinów, later, after three days, to Pawiak prison. I did not learn anything about the cause of the arrest anywhere. My husband was employed in Brwinów setting up the telephone wire and I could talk to him through a fence while he worked. He told me that my brother had been taken for interrogation.

I must add that when my husband and brother [were arrested], Lewy, an official of the magistrate in Pruszków; Bąkiewicz; Holke, the deputy head of the power station in Pruszków; the two Lewandowski brothers – nurses at the hospital in Tworki; and a few others whose surnames I don’t remember, were arrested in Pruszków. Altogether ten people including my husband and brother. During the conversation with me, my husband told me that in Brwinów they had interrogated my brother, Lewy, the Lewandowski brothers, and of them, my brother had been least beaten, although – my husband said – he had complained of a backache when they returned from the interrogation. To my question about the outlook of the case, he replied that he hoped to be released because they could not charge him with anything, but my brother, as an officer, was accused of a political crime.

My husband then asked me to bring a food package the next day, in which I was to deliver a cigarette with potassium cyanide among other cigarettes. He said that my brother had to have poison in case they tortured him too grievously. On that day, all of the arrestees were transported to the Pawiak. I didn’t have the strength to deliver the promised cigarette, I was not able to anyway. I met one man, arrested at the same time in Brwinów for being out after curfew when my husband and brother were there under arrest. That man told me after he left the prison, that my brother, who had beautiful lush hair, had had whole strands of hair pulled out during the interrogation.

I could not learn anything about my husband and brother until I saw their surnames among those of hostages on a notice. A few days later a notice announced an execution on 31 December 1943. The execution had taken place, as I heard and as the notice stated, on Towarowa Street, next to the station. I received no official notice of their death.

Bąkiewicz, a young man imprisoned in the Pawiak for sabotage at the same time as my brother, my husband, and others from Pruszków, later told me that on 31 December, my brother; Bąkiewicz – the young man’s cousin; Lewy; and a fourth man arrested in Pruszków whose surname I don’t remember, had been called out and taken from the cell in underwear and shoes, without clothes. Bąkiewicz (whose cousin they also took) saw all them being loaded into a car. Currently, Bąkiewicz (I don’t know his first name), who told me all this, is dead. He was executed by the Germans. He didn’t know anything about my husband because he was in a different cell than my brother and Lewy.

The report was read out.