Warsaw, 29 April 1947. [Judge] Halina Wereńko, member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed the person specified below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the contents of Art. 107 and Art. 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Władysław Pec |
| Names of parents | Michał and Tekla née Gmitrzak |
| Date of birth | 23 January 1900 in Warsaw |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Płocka Street 31 |
| Education | seven years of elementary school |
| Profession | ticket inspector for Warsaw Public Transport |
During the Warsaw Uprising, I lived at Płocka Street 25.
On 2 August, very early in the morning, people erected a large barricade at the corner of Wolska Street and Płocka Street under orders from the insurgents. Already around 11 a.m. German tanks were driving out of Bema Street, attacking the barricade. Afterwards, the tank crews, wearing airmen clothes, chased out all the men from the large house at the corner of Płocka Street and Wolska Street and forced them to disassemble the barricade, and later on, the neighbouring barricades near Chłodna Street and Żelazna Street. Teofil Dleopolczyk (residing in Warsaw at Płocka Street 31) was taken as part of that group.
On August 3, Gendarmerie and Kalmuk units rolled out onto Płocka Street. They chased the men out from the houses at [Płocka] 23, 25 and 31, taking them away to disassemble barricades; they drove the women and children to Saint Adalbert church.
Not everyone came out at that point: I, for one, managed to hide. The women in the church were not under guard and they mostly came home by evening. A Wehrmacht unit took up positions at Płocka and stayed there until 10 a.m. on 4 August. Before the soldiers left, they herded people into Saint Adalbert church, but they did not put much effort into it.
At 10 a.m., the Wehrmacht units withdrew, and the Gendarmerie and Kalmuk units entered Płocka again. Shouts of “ raus” could be heard everywhere, followed by machine gun [rozpylacz] bursts. I, being in the basement of the house at Płocka 25, and realizing that mass executions were taking place in the houses at 25, 23 and 31, managed to escape to the macaroni factory at Wolska Street 60 thanks to the fact that it was adjacent to our house. In the factory basement I met a crowd of civilians, mostly women with children.
On August 5, around 12 a.m., the Germans set fire to the macaroni factory. The basement became too hot; the civilians, numbering 57 men and a few more than that of women with children, left. I remained in hiding with ten other men, but a moment later the gendarmes searching the basement found us with the help of a dog and dragged us out into the yard.
I saw a crowd standing in the middle of the yard, with the Germans snooping around the grounds, bringing any people they could find hiding out to join it. Near the gate there was a machine gun on a stand. The officer of the gendarmerie in charge of the unit ordered the men and the women separated. A higher-ranking officer of the gendarmerie arrived and talked to the group commander for ten minutes, after which the women were told to go out to Wolska Street and walk to Saint Adalbert church.
My wife, who, ordered by the Wehrmacht, had left for the church on 4 August before 10.30 a.m. (thanks to which she survived), was there at the time. I know from her that the women from the macaroni factory never made it to the church and no-one from that group has been found since.
I learned from the Poles hired by the Gestapo to burn corpses in Wola that the women and children from the macaroni factory (more than 60 people) were shot on the same day opposite Saint Adalbert church in the square, where there is a cross now.
After the women had left the yard, we, the men, were told to stand in front of a brick fence with our arms up; then there were volleys from the machine gun. The shooter aimed for the heads.
I was shot in my right arm, near the wrist. (The witness has demonstrated that he has a scar on his right arm, near the hand, about 15 cm long and up to 5 cm wide.) Blood from my raised arm spilled on me and I fell. When the volleys and moans went quiet, I heard some single shots. The gendarmes were walking amongst the dead, nudging them with their feet, checking who was still alive; then they finished them off with single shots.
The square was surrounded by gendarmes, and some five of them performed the executions, one of whom manned the machine gun.
After some time, lying down with my face covered by my bloodied arm, I heard a commotion from the street, then volleys, moans, people begging for mercy and single shots. I realised that a new group had arrived to be shot.
Later on five more groups were brought in to be shot; two corpses fell on top of me. The executions lasted until 6 p.m., with breaks for finishing off [the wounded] and bringing in new groups.
Because I was lying down covered with my own arm and by the dead bodies, I did not notice where the new victims came from. By the amount of gunfire I would guess that each time they brought in no fewer than 25 people.
I lay down beneath the dead bodies, unmoving (for fear of being shot), until 12 p.m. Then, as there was silence, I crawled out of the macaroni factory to the house at Płocka Street 25, which was on fire. Crawling around, I saw that there were only male corpses at the site of the execution.
Another survivor was a young boy, Szymański, who now lives somewhere in Wola. Szymański was not wounded; he was saved by his short stature, as the gendarme aimed for the heads. The next day I saw in the yard of our house four or five corpses of the house’s residents. The rest were shot in the square in front of the [Wolska] 23 house, together with the tenants of that house.
On 6 and 7 August 1944, a column of workers from Sokołowska Street cleaned up the corpses from Płocka Street and the macaroni factory, burning them in the factory grounds.
Later I heard that they collected some four thousand corpses from that area.
I was hiding with some men (who had managed to avoid execution) in Płocka Street until 12 September, when we had to go out into the street because of the lack of water. At that point we were captured by the Germans and taken to Saint Adalbert church, from where we were sent to the Pruszków transit camp.