Warsaw, 16 May 1946. Judge Halina Wereńko interviewed the person specified below as a witness. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the gravity of the oath, the judge swore the witness in accordance with Art. 109 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
| Name and surname | Jan Piekarek |
| Names of parents | Ignacy and Elżbieta née Lubiak |
| Date of birth | 12 June 1906 in Warsaw |
| Occupation | worker at a carpentry shop |
| Education | five years of elementary school |
| Place of residence | Górczewska Street 15, flat 16 |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
During the Warsaw Uprising I took part in the actions of the unit commanded by “We[...]”, I don’t know his name. I lived then, as now, at Górczewska Street 15.
On 5 August, I went home to bury a few things. Around 4 p.m. an acquaintance, whose name I cannot recall, ran to me and shouted that the Germans were in our house. Having checked that this was indeed the case, I took my wife and children and we went to the yard. The SS-men were already there, as well as all the house’s residents. There was a lot of commotion, the Germans were shooting.
I saw the dead bodies of Kowalski (the Air Defence commander of our house) and Zofia Adamska, my wife’s sister. She was wounded, and an SS-man killed her with a pistol shot. Apart from them, there were dead bodies of some fifteen people whose names I don’t remember.
The Germans chased people through a hole in the wall adjacent to [Górczewska] 17, and from there to Działdowska Street. At Działdowska, they arranged women and men separately, in threes. On the barricade at Działdowska, in the direction of Wolska Street, I saw the corpses of about seven people.
After being arranged in threes, we were driven to Wolski Hospital, men first, then women.
As I learned later, Wolski Hospital had been evacuated a few hours before.
In the hospital yard there were five stretchers with wounded people. The Germans told us to carry the wounded. We were driven through the fields to Moczydło Street, where there was an old locomotive factory.
Walking under the tunnel through Górczewska Street, I noticed people from Płocka Street standing under the bridge.
The men, women and the wounded were herded into the old locomotive factory. We took the wounded to a shed where the medical personnel and the sick from Wolski Hospital were. Soon after our arrival, I heard the Germans call for men from those assembled near the shed to come out in groups of 20, 24, 30, 50, supposedly for work.
Later on, I found out that the people called out to the yard were set up in groups of twelve, which were sent to Górczewska Street 46, across the railway ground, by the single- story building.
After each party was assembled, I could hear bursts of machine gun [rozpylacz] and light machine gun fire. I counted that some 500 men were called out. There were about 60 of us left – doctors, paramedics, priests, and wounded people.
After a while, the Germans called that last group out into the yard and split it into twelves. The first twelve were told to strip and put on striped hospital coats. I was in the second twelve. After another while the Germans attached two priests to that twelve, one of whom was wounded. I was in the first pair. We were led up Moczydło Street, to the house at Moczydło 46, which was burning from the top story.
Walking down towards the house, I noticed dead and wounded people lying by the house at Górczewska Street 46, and SS-men were killing them off before my eyes. I noticed four SS-men engaged in the killing.
We were led to the execution by German gendarmes, who also took part in the shooting once there.
When our group was arriving [there], the Germans told us to walk onto the dead. At that point a barber (then living at Działdowska Street 17 with a business sign saying “Kazimierz”) ran into the basement of the burning house. The Germans fired off a burst towards the fugitive, and at that moment I fell onto the corpses and I felt myself being pressed under the bodies of a few dead. I heard a volley at the same moment.
After the volley, the SS men finished off anyone who moved. A short time later a group of doctors arrived with hospital staff, wearing white coats. They were the last group to be shot.
After that group was shot, I was still lying motionless, and when the gunshots and moans quieted down, I stood up and ran into the below-ground floor of the burning house.
There were some 16 women and children there. The fire was getting into the below-ground floor, I tried to extinguish it.
It was late in the evening when I looked out the window and saw that the entire pile of human bodies left after the executions was on fire. I heard the terrible screams of the wounded being burned alive. In the night, the fire among the dead started to die down; I walked out with two young girls, their mother, and a 15 years old boy, whose names I don’t know. I noticed that not all the bodies were charred. We got over the pile of dead bodies towards an outhouse; there were no German sentries near the execution site. A tall, stout man stood on a ladder near the toilet, I think he was a doctor from Wolski Hospital. When the women and I came near the outhouse, a shot rang out, I don’t know where from, and the man fell off the ladder.
I went on and saw another pile of dead bodies on the other side of the house, where half of them were already charred. About half were on fire. The pile of bodies behind the house was smaller than where I fell. (The witness has made a sketch of the execution site. The sketch is an attachment to the present testimony report.) Together with the women accompanying me I got across the fence to the neighbouring house, from where the women went to Jelonki, while I went towards the village of Górce.
Out of the people who survived the execution, I can list: Koper (whose first name and address I don’t know), whose child was murdered while he held it in his arms, a priest (I don’t know his name), a barber from Górczewska Street (I don’t know his name). What happened to the wounded we had brought from Wolski Hospital to the shed at Moczydło Street on stretchers, I don’t know.
The Germans didn’t lead the women to the execution. I found out later that they were sent to Wola Fort and on 6 August some of them were released and some deported to Germany.
I don’t know the names of the gendarmes and SS-men who carried out the executions.
I also don’t know who had ordered the executions.
During my stay in Górce, around 12 August, I don’t remember the exact date, I witnessed German gendarmes coming in the evening, flashing their torches, picking out six young girls from a school where the women who had escaped from Warsaw were staying, and taking them away. The girls came back the next day and said they had been raped.
I don’t know the names of those girls.
At that the report was concluded and read out.