On 24 April 1948 in Warsaw, Judge Halina Wereńko, a member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, 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:
My name is Władysław Tarkowski, son of Ignacy and Władysława née Wyspiańska, born on
23 June 1885 in the village of Olsa, Bobrujsk county, of Roman Catholic faith and of Polish nationality and citizenship, a medical doctor and a surgeon by trade, residing in Płock, Sienkiewicza Street 41.
On 2 August 1944, around 8 a.m., the SS unit stationed at the Stauferkaserne on Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw forced civilians out from the houses on Rakowiecka Street, Narbutta Street parts of Fałata Street, Kazimierzowska Street and the neighborhood, as well as the area all the way up to Madalińskiego Street. I and my paralyzed wife Antonina were taken from our house at Narbutta Street 39. The SS-men forced us out in a brutal fashion. They were shouting […]. We ended up in the courtyard of the barracks together with a few thousand civilians. Women and children were released and returned to their homes. A rumor among the men had it that we would be kept as hostages. Suddenly, they started to fire above our heads; I do not know where from. I was sure we were about to be executed, but this was only to scare us. Some of the men had their documents checked and were eventually taken away in groups. Quite by chance, I ended up in a room with professors, engineers and rather affluent people. The room was located in the first wing of the building from the direction of the City Center [Śródmieście]. I was the only practicing doctor in the barracks. Over the first few days of my stay there, there were rumors that the Germans were selecting men to be executed.
I do not know anything concrete about it.
Around 9 August (I do not remember the exact date) at noon, all the prisoners from the second wing of the barracks complex were forced out. I ended up in the crowd of those who had been removed. From among the prisoners, a German wearing civilian clothes, whom everybody called “the Gestapo man from aleja Szucha 25,” picked out a group of around 30 men (I do not know their names). He would typically choose members of the intelligentsia and young people. The group was taken to vans and none of its members has since returned. The families of those taken away said that they were not allowed to bring food to aleja Szucha.
In August, it happened that groups of a couple of dozen people were brought to the courtyard of the barracks and then taken away from the grounds, after which they disappeared.
To be precise, I remember that in the middle of August, the residents of the house located at the junction of Narbutta Street and Kwiatowa Street were brought in. I suspect that they were taken to the Gestapo on aleja Szucha.
During my first day, on the wall of the first wing of the barracks building, I noticed traces of bullets at a height corresponding to the height of a human being and spanning a dozen or so meters, while below there were dark spots covered with sand. I suspect those were traces of blood. I do not know who was executed and when.
The commandant of the unit stationed in the barracks was SS-Lieutenant Patz. Additionally, there was a “commissar” who held some unspecified positions and who, I suspect, had political command; his first name was Rudolf and people called him the Baumeister. I do not know his surname. He was a fat man of average height and wore civilian clothes. The Baumeister was a thief. He stole from the prisoners and took items from flats. I saw him beat a man, whose head was bandaged. The Baumeister wrongly suspected him of being an insurgent.
An SS-man by the name of Aleksander Liedke had a friendly attitude towards the Poles.
After a week in the barracks, a prisoner by the name of Wierzbicki (a former inspector of the Poznań Red Cross) asked me to become a doctor at a first-aid station, to provide medical help to civilians still in their flats, but we would operate under the pretext of burying the dead. The evacuation of the civilians from the streets in the area only began on 15 August and finished at the end of August. The first-aid station was granted permission to bury corpses in the area of Narbutta Street, aleja Niepodległości, Rakowiecka Street and Wiśniowa Street. Then, this area was extended to include Andrzeja Boboli Street and Puławska Street. The insurgents were in Madalińskiego Street. Whilst searching the area that we were assigned, apart from the bodies of those killed accidentally, at two other locations I found the corpses of people who seemed, due to their head wounds, to have been executed intentionally. In the courtyard of the house at Narbutta Street 42, I found the bodies of two women who had apparently been executed. In the courtyard of the house at Narbutta Street 47 (at its junction with Kwiatowa Street), I found four or five bodies of men and the body of a woman in a pit formerly filled with lime. My impression was that these were the corpses of people who had been executed. The team compiled reports and took down names, as long as there were documents on the bodies.
Wierzbicki filed his report on our activities with the Red Cross in Warsaw.
Starting in mid-August 1944, scores of civilians removed from Czerniaków and lower Mokotów passed by the barracks every day; they were being rushed to the Western Train Station [Dworzec Zachodni]. Our first-aid station provided help. We distributed bread and medication.
In the second half of September, the whole sanitation team was locked up in the house at the junction of Kazimierzowska Street and Rakowiecka Street. We were employed as laborers. Around 15 September (I do not remember the exact date), after loading items taken from civilians’ flats for the commissar onto vans, we were ordered to go to Nadarzyn, where we unloaded these items.
Then I managed to leave the group.
At that the report was concluded and read out.