BARBARA WIŚNIEWSKA

Warsaw, 30 November 1945. Investigating Judge [Alicja Germasz] heard the person named below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the significance of the oath, the witness was sworn and testified as follows:


Name and surname Barbara Wiśniewska
Age 27 years old
Names of parents Adam and Franciszka
Place of residence Warsaw, Jaworzyńska Street 13, flat 11
Occupation office worker
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Criminal record none

During the uprising I lived in Warsaw at Marszałkowska Street 21. From the first day of the uprising there were ferocious fights in the district, and for the entire time I spent there the district was in the hands of the Germans. I was staying in my flat, which I had rented from Mr. Szejhing and which was located on the ground floor from the side of Oleandrów Street.

On the morning of 4 August a fire broke out in a flat on the first floor; it was said that the Germans had thrown incendiary bombs into it. The residents of the house put out the fire. Half an hour later the G. Anca pharmacy, located in the same house, also began to burn. The men from the house again put out the fire. But when immediately afterwards a third fire broke out on the premises of the G. Anca pharmacy, we understood that putting it out did not make any sense, especially as heavy fire was aimed at our house from a machine gun placed at the corner of Litewska and Marszałkowska streets. The fire was spreading upwards, and then the residents of the house and all the people who were hiding in the shelter decided to flee. It was impossible to exit to Oleandrów Street, as it was manned by Germans and “Ukrainians”. As a result we used wooden boards to make a passage between the window on the third floor of our house and the rooftop of the adjacent “Motor” factory, and about a hundred of us used it for escape. Later I was in the house at Marszałkowska Street 25, where I had come with a group of people through an inner passage between houses, and eventually I got to the Savior church. When I was in the church, I heard from many people whose surnames I cannot provide that in front of the house at Marszałkowska Street 21, the Germans had carried out mass executions that evening (4 August), executing men taken from the houses on Marszałkowska Street and [no name] Street and then throwing their bodies into the burning G. Anca pharmacy.

From the Savior Church I got to Lwowska Street.

The report was read out.