KAROL TCHOREK

Warsaw, 28 November 1949. Irena Skonieczna (MA), 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:


Name and surname Karol Tchorek
Date and place of birth 30 October 1904, Serock
Parents’ names Szczepan and Anna, née Michalczyk
Father’s profession mechanic
Citizenship and nationality Polish
Religion Roman Catholic
Education university
Occupation sculptor
Place of residence Warsaw, Miedzeszyńska Street 108, flat 8
Criminal record none

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, I was in the house at Wiejska Street 1, in the abandoned flat of the building’s owners, the Rachmans. Since the Germans were shooting at every single passer- by from the parliamentary hotel, I was unable to return home to Zajęcza Street in Powiśle. When I attempted to walk out into the street I saw a few dead passers-by in Wiejska Street.

On the third day of the Uprising, at around 1.00 p.m., a group of five Germans from the parliamentary hotel entered the courtyard of house no. 1 at Wiejska Street. Proceeding to the flats looking out onto Piusa Street, they immediately started murdering the people they found there.

When I heard shots and cries on the ground-floor flat of Mr and Ms Chałupczyński, I hid in the kitchen of the Rachman family’s flat, on the mezzanine, covering myself with a blanket and dirty laundry. From my refuge I heard the Germans enter the Piłsudskis’ flat on the first floor, opposite the Rachmans’ flat, and execute the inhabitants. Next they proceeded to the flat in which I was hidden. They looked for me for some time, for they had been made aware of the fact that someone was there by my briefcase and bicycle. I also heard the Germans executing people in the flat above me and the sound of bodies falling to the floor. I lay in my hiding place until maybe 11.00 a.m. the next day. The Germans who had carried out the execution returned yet again in the late evening. Once again I heard shots above me, followed by the sound of objects being thrown out of the window; in my opinion these were the bodies of the murdered victims.

In the morning the Germans came round and set fire to the house, thus forcing me to leave my hiding place. In the basement I met the caretaker of the house at Wiejska Street 1, who told me that he had been forced to walk from flat to flat with the Germans, and – finally – had been shot in the nape of the neck, but somehow, extraordinarily, had managed to survive. The caretaker and I went through a hole smashed in the wall of the basement to the next house in Piusa XI Street.

On the same day, maybe one hour later, the group of arsonists set fire to this house too and the people moved to the unfinished house in the courtyards of the houses standing in the triangle delimited by Matejki Street, Aleje Ujazdowskie and Wiejska Street. The houses all around us had been set on fire. During the night I managed to escape to Powiśle.

I am unable to specify the number of people killed during the execution carried out on 3 August 1944 at Wiejska Street 1.

At this point the report was brought to a close and read out.