Warsaw, 4 May 1948. Judge Halina Wereńko, a member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed the person named below as a witness, without taking an oath. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Jan Szewczyk |
| Date of birth | 15 January 1900, Łukowy, district of Maków |
| Parents’ names | Hipolit and Rozalia, née Seweryn |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Education | four classes of vocational school |
| Profession | paver, municipal employee |
| Citizenship and nationality | Polish |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Hoża Street 7, flat 41 |
In the first half of September 1944 (I don’t remember the exact date) I was taken from my home at Wilanowska Street 4 along with a group of some 500 civilians by a detachment of SS men. At this time the insurrectionists were moving towards Czerniakowska Street, and the uprising was still being carried on. The group that I was with included a priest from Holy Trinity Church at Solec Street. I don’t know that priest’s surname.
We were led to the PPS Housing Cooperative at Solec Street, near the Poniatowskiego viaduct. The next day we were attached to another group, and from there I was taken to work. We were located near the hospital, in the building of the Citroen factory at the corner of Czerniakowska and Zagórna streets. Then, in the backyard of an ironmonger’s at Zagórna Street (I don’t remember the number, but it was between 6 and 12), I saw the bodies of male civilians. At a guess, there were some 150 corpses. They had gunshot wounds, and they lay on their backs facing in one direction. I had the impression that the group had been shot simultaneously. The bodies were not yet decomposing, and I think that they had been killed a few days before. One of the men from my group recognised a hairdresser who had lived in the house where the ironmonger’s was.
I don’t know the surname of the hairdresser, nor of the man who recognised him.
After a few days, along with three of the men with whom I worked, I was taken by the SS soldiers to the Gestapo offices at aleja Szucha 25. From there we were sent to the camp at Litewska Street 14. This was still in September 1944, but I don’t remember the exact date.
In the camp I heard that throughout August and in the beginning of September mass murders of civilians had taken place in the open-air kindergarten. Clothes were lying around the camp, and the prisoners told me that they had been taken from the groups of people marched off to be executed on the premises of the Chief Inspectorate of the Armed Forces. I don’t know any specific facts of the case.
I don’t remember the date, but after the capitulation of the Śródmieście district I was one of a group of prisoners who were used to bury bodies in the Powiśle district.
In the factory at Solec Street 53 – the paint factory as the prisoners said – we took down the bodies of a priest, three men, and one woman who had been hanged from transmission belts. I don’t know their surnames. In addition, we collected some 15 bodies from the factory premises and neighbouring areas. Other prisoners found documents in the priest’s clothes, and they told us that he was from Ołtarzew. They didn’t mention his surname.
At Idzikowskiego Street we collected bodies from the roadway, from the side of Wilanowska Street, approximately 20 bodies of men and women. Some of the corpses had their legs in splints. Thereafter we collected bodies lying in ones and twos, some 50 in total.
Before the capitulation of the Śródmieście district, I don’t remember the date, I was sent to work for the detachment that burned down houses in Warsaw after the uprising had been put down. I therefore know that Krüger, a sectional commander of the destroyers of Warsaw, had his headquarters at Natolińska Street, I don’t remember the number, more or less in the middle of the street. He was subordinate to a higher-ranking officer whose headquarters were at the corner of Oczki and Chałubińskiego streets, opposite the Collegium Anatomicum.
I don’t know this officer’s surname. Maybe Stanisław Sikorski does.