Warsaw, 6 February 1948. Judge Halina Wereńko, a member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed 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 | Dominik Feliks Balias |
| Names of parents | Józef and Władysława, née Bluns |
| Date of birth | 12 August 1906 in Warsaw |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Chmielna Street 104, flat 14 |
| State affiliation and nationality | Polish |
| Education | four classes of secondary school, Konarski Mechanical School, also two courses at the Technical Courses Society |
| Occupation | electrician |
When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, I was at Focha Street 6. On 6 August 1944 the Germans threw out the civilian residents of houses at Focha Street 2 and 4. These were SS units, and among the soldiers I saw “Mongols” and “Ukrainians” in SS uniforms. Some of them had some kind of yellow insignia on their arms. On 9 August, around dinner time, these same SS units entered the houses at Focha Street 6, 8 and 10, and ordered the residents to gather in the courtyard. They also entered the house at Focha Street 5. The majority of residents escaped through a hole in the ruins of the houses at no. 8, via Kozia Street 5, and only a very small number of people remained in the courtyard. An hour later, these same SS units set fire to the houses at Focha Street 6, 8 and 10, taking the remaining residents with them.
At around 6.00 a.m. on 10 August these same SS units appeared, and I recognized the commanders and some of the soldiers. They threw the residents of the house at Kozia Street 5 into the courtyard. The women and children were taken to the Opera House, to Teatralny Square, where they were used as human shields for tanks.
We witnessed this with our own eyes from the fourth floor of the house at Trębacka Street 4.
The men were arranged in a line three people deep near the wall of the annex in the house at Kozia Street 5. These were residents of houses at Focha Street 1, 6, 8 and 10, and Kozia Street 5 and 3, amounting to some one thousand people in total, including approximately 300 men. The SS-men ordered the men to raise their arms and searched them, taking their valuables. Next, they told the doctors to step forward. There was only one doctor in the group, Lucjan Mikowski, but he did not obey but instead remained with his father. Thegroup of men in which I found myself included my brothers-in-law, Czesław Stańczyk and Kazimierz Michalski, his father Adam Michalski, and Zygmunt Jaworski. The commander of the SS unit counted out ten men from the group standing beside the wall and sent them together with an escort of SS-men into the house in order to check whether anyone had stayed behind. The men were executed on the third and final floor. Successive groups numbering ten men each were executed in the two entrance halls, from the side of Kozia Street and in neighboring flats. While the men were entering the entrance halls, German soldiers would move in behind them and shoot them in the back. Together with Zygmunt Jaworski I found myself in the final group of ten. We were led to the first entrance hall from the side of Kozia Street. I was shot between the sixth and seventh rib, and fell. The pharmacist Manduk fell upon me, dead. One of thesoldiers shot at me, hitting my left knee joint.
Once the execution was over, the soldiers set the bodies on fire. After some time had passed, maybe half an hour, when everything became quiet, I crawled out of the burning building into the courtyard, where I met two other men who had been wounded during the execution: Jan Wujkowski, currently working in Gdynia for some state-owned printing house, and Stanisław, whose surname I do not know (currently resident in Piaseczno near Warsaw). Some time later, we were joined by my brother-in-law, Zygmunt Jaworski (currently resident in Warsaw at Chmielna Street 104, flat 14), and Stefan Gajewski, who presently lives in Warsaw (I do not know his exact address). During the course of the execution, Jaworski had managed to flee to the third floor where he stumbled upon the men who had been led up there in the first group of ten. Eight of them were dead. Gajewski and the son of the caretaker of the house at Kozia Street 3 (I do not know his surname) were not even wounded. We were joined by the following: Barański (I do not know his present address or whereabouts) and Władysław Hochedlinger, currently working in Szczecin for “Orbis”, so that in total 12 men (and one woman who had blundered her way to us) had managed to survive the execution. The healthy helped the wounded, and we all moved to the house at Trębacka Street 4, which had burnt down in 1939. We took refuge on the second floor, where we found Szajkowski, who had managed to flee from the Opera House.
At the beginning of September 1944, I heard the voices of Germans in our house, accompanied by those of two women whom they were tormenting; the German soldiers shot one of them dead. In the middle of September a German patrol found the people who were hiding at Focha Street 4, Wanda Miłaszewska and her husband; both were executed.
I saw their bodies.
I was found on 10 December 1944 by Wehrmacht soldiers, who took us to the buildings at Sokołowska Street, near St. Adalbert’s Church in the Wola district. From there, through Włochy and Ursus (where I was hospitalized), I eventually reached Kraków, where I was put in St. Lazarus Hospital which had been set up in a Jesuit monastery in Kopernika Street.
I herewith enclose (copies of) certificates issued by St. Lazarus Hospital on 28 May 1945 and a certificate made out by Dr Tarnowski, director of the Ujazdowski Hospital, on 23 April 1945.
At this point the report was concluded and read out.