On 6 March 1969 in Warsaw, the assistant prosecutor of the District Prosecutor’s Office for Warsaw-Żoliborz heard the person named below as a witness, without an oath. After informing the witness about the criminal liability for false testimony, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Jadwiga Czerniakowska née Zarzycka |
| Age | 40 |
| Parents’ names | Ludwik, Maria née Kwiatkowska |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Racławicka Street 46 flat 83 |
| Occupation | clerical worker, Zakładu Materiałów Magnetycznych |
| Criminal record | none |
| Relation to the parties | none |
Having been cautioned about the criminal liability [for false testimony] under Art. 140, I hereby testify:
Throughout the occupation and the Warsaw Uprising, I lived in Warsaw in Wawrzyszewo. I was deported from Warsaw after the Uprising in late September or early October 1944.
I know that between Marymoncka and Żeromskiego Street, where the bus station is now, there was a sawmill, which was guarded by the Germans. In 1943, prisoners from Pawiak were transported to this sawmill on the train that was running at the time. They were semi- open wagons. The prisoners were employed in processing trees. In the spring of 1942, through a friend of mine named Ryszarda Brylak, who is now dead, I met a young 19-year- old girl named Maria. She was known as Black Mańka. What her last name was, where she had come to the area of Żoliborz from, and where she actually lived, I don’t know. I learned from Ryśka that Mańka had a fiancé among the prisoners brought to the sawmill, and that she brought him food. Out of childish curiosity, we went there with Mańka. She approached the sawmill from Żeromskiego Street, to the place where sawdust was dumped. She would signal that she was coming by blowing smoke from a cigarette through a crack in the fence. Mańka talked to the prisoners, but on what topic, I don’t know, because I didn’t hear. Before that, in the sawdust, she would hide the sack of food she had brought. When and under what circumstances the prisoners took these parcels, I don’t know.
In April 1943, before or after Easter, we met with Ryśka and Mańka and during the conversation she told us that she was going to the ghetto, and if we wanted to see how it was done then we could go with her. We went along with her on Bonifraterska Street and there, Mańka told us to wait, and she walked up to the ghetto fence alone. At the moment when she tried to jump over the fence, shots were fired from the other side of the wall and Mańka was killed, and her body was flung over the wall. We were terrified by this event and without waiting to see what happened to Mańka’s body, we returned to Bielany. On the second day we went to the sawmill, and Ryśka, signaling with cigarette smoke, contacted the prisoners and told them about Mańka’s death. We still brought food packages, but for three days the prisoners didn’t take these parcels; then they began to take them, but they didn’t try to make any contact with us.
In June 1943, an operation was taken to get the prisoners out of the sawmill. As far as I know, the organizer of this operation was a 25- to 26-year-old man who lived on the corner of Kolektorska and another street, I don’t know its name, it was at the back of Marymoncka Street. I think that the man was called Lutomski, but I don’t know his first name. As a result of this operation, on the night of Saturday to Sunday, 26–27 June 1943, one Latvian was killed from among those who were guarding the sawmill and the prisoners. The operation failed, and the following night from 27–28 June 1943, the prisoners were loaded into wagons, driven to the area known as the Piaski [Sands] where all of them were executed. Shots were heard. When, after the liberation, in 1947, I was talking to my ex mother-in-law, Maria Zalewska, who lived on the corner of Podczaszyńskiego and Marymoncka Street, and she told me that she had seen prisoners being loaded from the sawmill, transported to the Piaski, unloaded, and then she saw them digging pits that were very deep. From what my mother-in-law told me, I concluded that she must have seen the execution as well. My mother-in-law is now dead, but maybe my ex-husband, Aleksander Zalewski, currently residing at Złotopolska Street 5 flat 2, might be able to say something about it.
In addition, I know that during the occupation, up until the Uprising itself, the Germans would transport people by car to the area of the current terminus for tram lines 11 and 33, and there, after digging pits, these people would be shot. The Germans had skulls on their uniforms. I myself watched— from the top floor of the children’s home on Przybyszewskiego Street, or actually on Zjednoczenia Avenue—with binoculars as they brought in a car with people who were then shot. I didn’t see the moment of execution, which took place before the Uprising.
A man named Czesław, who was a doctor, often spent time in the orphanage. I don’t know his surname. He came from Nowy Sacz and probably lives there now. I suppose he was in the organization because he kept in touch with the partisans in the Kampinos Forest, he picked up medicines and people that were dropped off in the area of Żoliborz.
I know that he contacted Adela Miłość, who lived in our apartment about eight months before the Uprising. After the liberation, I learned that she was a Jew. [During] the Uprising in September 1944, she brought a child aged five–six to our apartment, who—as it later turned out—was her child. She was with him until the deportation itself. I know that after the liberation, Adela left for America and I have had no news from her to this day. She worked in a sewing shop, but where I don’t know.
Czesław, who I mentioned above, was a surgeon, because during the Uprising he carried out a leg amputation on a man who had been shot. To what organization he belonged, I don’t know, but it might be determined based on the inscription on Jerzy Zwierzchowski’s grave, who is buried in the cemetery in Laski. Zwierzchowski was in touch with Czesław and he was shot in Żyrardów at the Linen Works.
The report was read out.