ŁUCJA SKIBIŃSKA

Warsaw, 4 April 1945


Name and surname Łucja Skibińska
Date of birth 13 December 1874
Place of residence Kamionkowska Street 52a, flat 1

During the Uprising I was at Księcia Janusza Street, and I saw the following. From 6 August, Wola was being systemically burned. People were saying then that mass executions of civilians were taking place by Wolska Street.

I was told about the course of such an execution in the beginning of August 1944 at Wolska Street 143, by a tenant of that building, citizen Stopiński. He told me the following: SS men bursted into the courtyard of building [no.] 143 on Wolska Street, surrounded the courtyard in a semi-circle, and then ordered the civilians out of their flats and the shelters (because there were no insurgents there). And everybody who showed up at the exit to a stairwell was killed with a pistol by the German executioners. Several dozen men, women, and children died in that way.

The first person shot was the air defense commander, who went out to find out what the murderers wanted. Two people, a man and a woman, saved themselves by escaping through an exit in the garden. I can’t remember their surnames. I know that, among others, the Staszewski family died there.

When they’d finished the execution the Germans searched the flats, shooting dead those remaining. The Balzam family, of two people, died in that manner. Stopiński managed to survive, because he hid under a bed, where he wasn’t found. When the SS men had gone away, he withdrew and saw how the building was burning. About one thousand people were murdered in a similar way at the Hankiewicz building on Wolska Street.

On 17 August, I was evacuated from Księcia Janusza Street. When walking along Górczewska Street to the evacuation point for the people of Wola, I saw the corpses of murdered women on the street. I must point out that earlier on, young girls had been removed from the flats by “Ukrainians”.

On 2 April I was on the rubble of building no. 143 on Wolska Street, and I could see burnt human heads, arms and ribs in the basements. I saw a child’s leg.

I testify in truth. I read before signing.