ANTONI PORĘBSKI

Warsaw, 29 March 1950. Judge Janina Skoczyńska, acting as a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, interviewed the person named below, who testified as follows:


Forename and surname Antoni Porębski
Date and place of birth 28 September 1895, Krzykawka, Olkusz county
Names of parents Jan and Ewa, née Krawczyk
Father’s occupation miner
State affiliation Polish
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Education elementary school
Occupation electrician
Place of residence Radzymińska Street 105, flat 10
Criminal record none

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, I was at home at Radzymińska Street 105. Already in the first week of the Uprising the Germans, Wehrmacht soldiers, displaced the men from Targówek, allocating them to various kinds of work. Being a railwayman, I was forced to work on the railroad, together with some 120 other men. Some of the men were taken to Grochów, to the munitions factory at Mińska Street. I learned of this from some friends who had been sent to that facility. Others were taken to the barracks near the Orthodox church.

I worked on the railroad until around 5 September 1944. Throughout August we slept in wagons and were not allowed to go to our homes. Towards the end of August and in the first days of September, we would be taken to the Gdański Railway Station for the night. When the Soviet forces were closing in on Praga, many of us, fearing deportation, escaped home, myself included. I stayed in hiding in the basement of our house until the Soviet forces entered the city. Only a few of the men from our group who had been working on the railroad were deported to Germany. Nearly everyone was deported from the other groups.

I did not hear anything about mass executions committed by the Germans in our area during the Uprising. I only heard that in the first days of the Uprising a Ukrainian killed a young girl at Radzymińska Street 107. I was told it was so because, as he claimed, she had run away from a column of people who were taken from neighboring villages, such as Ząbki, Marki and Zielonka, from where the entire population – both men and women – had been deported.

At this point the report was concluded and read out.