PIOTR TOMASZEWSKI

Włocławek, 28 February 1948. Associate Judge K. Olszewska 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 Piotr Franciszek Tomaszewski
Date of birth 10 November 1908
Names of parents Andrzej and Anna, née Więckowska
Place of residence Warsaw, Seminaryjska Street 3
Occupation professor at the seminary and head of a secondary school for adults
Criminal record none
Relationship to the parties none

At the very beginning of the Uprising, before 7 August 1944, when I was at Father Boduen Center (Nowogrodzka Street 75), as dusk fell I looked through a second floor window and saw a group of men and women being led by the Wehrmacht. These were residents of the house at Aleje Jerozolimskie 103. I know this because we received information to this effect from a liaison officer, and also there were a few persons with us who knew those people. First, the women were separated from the men. The women were made to go forward (I cannot say whether under escort), while the men were stood facing the wall of the house at Nowogrodzka Street 80. This was opposite the window in which I was standing, some 60 or 70 meters from me. The soldiers would walk up to the standing men and kill them with a shot to the back of the head. Some of the victims even had to walk up to the soldiers in order to be killed, for I heard them shouting: ‘ Der nächste!’ I could not see clearly, for it was getting dark.

I do not know their unit. I think that this execution had been ordered by the supreme German command in Warsaw or by the section commander who had his headquarters on the upper floors. He was a major, but I do not know his surname. I think that one order had been given to all the troops, for I know that in the first days of the Uprising, the Germans were murdering men everywhere.

The children were with the women, but they had been let go. The executed group comprised some 50 to 60 men.

I do not know what happened to the women, nor did I count them, for they immediately marched off in the direction of Grójecka Street and were obscured by a wall. I assume that they were driven on foot to the so-called Zieleniak. The soldiers threw the bodies of the victims into the house at Nowogrodzka Street 80, which was then set on fire. The house burned down, but the walls did not collapse, and the bodies were not completely incinerated.

In 1945 an exhumation was performed and the families of the victims took their remains to the cemetery.

The following people were probably eyewitnesses, or received information concerning the event: the director of Father Boduen Center, Dr Maria Wierzbowska (resident in Wrocław), and Dr Markert, the head of the Child Jesus Hospital in Warsaw, with whom I talked specifically about the execution immediately after its end. Furthermore, shortly thereafter – two or three days later – I was looking from the same window and in the exact same spot I saw the execution of two men who had been found in one of the houses at Aleje Jerozolimskie by “Ukrainians” in German service (SS Polizei). The “Ukrainians” – a few soldiers in SS uniforms – performed the execution after first torturing them. All of the soldiers shot at the men simultaneously, some with revolvers, and others using short-barrelled rifles.

I do not know the surnames of the victims. I first saw them when they were being brought into the Center, for our buildings housed the command headquarters of the SS Polizei. Those who had carried out the previous execution were Germans, because they were billeted at the Center and subsequently ordered to leave the facility, with the “Ukrainians” arriving in their place. They were commanded by a captain, a “Ukrainian,” whose surname I do not know.

Apart from Dr Wierzbowska, their surnames might be known to a female office worker of the Center, Franciszka Milówka (currently resident in Kraków at Kielecka Street 6, flat 4).