MARIA GRUBERT

Warsaw, 20 May 1949. A member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Norbert Szuman (MA), interviewed the person named below as a witness, without taking an oath. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Maria Grubert, née Krysińska
Date and place of birth 24 September 1909 in Struga, county of Warsaw
Parents’ names Jan and Karolina, née Pokrzywnicka
Father’s occupation laborer
Citizenship and nationality Polish
Religion Roman Catholic
Education elementary school
Occupation bottle filler at a brewery
Place of residence Warsaw, Szustra Street 15, flat 9
Criminal record one week in jail for trading in moonshine, sentenced in 1949

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, I was in my flat at Puławska Street 69. On 2 or 3 August, in the evening (I don’t remember exactly), German tanks drove up Puławska Street from the direction of Unii Square. One of them stopped at the corner of Belgijska Street. After some time a young girl from the house at Belgijska Street 11 ran up to our house and said that the Germans were murdering the people there, and that in all certainty they would soon come to our house, so that we should hide somewhere as quickly as possible. And indeed, a short while later we heard a banging at the closed gate. At the time I was standing on the stairs to the basement, where the majority of the residents of our house had hid.

I grabbed my son and husband, and together with the caretaker of the house, Edmund Cielecki, we ran to my flat on the fourth floor. When we got there, my husband told me that the Germans had dragged some 15 people (among them women, children and men) from the basement and led them out into the street.

I also heard shots, but I don’t know whether they were fired at our residents or not.

A short time later, a suffocating smoke appeared in the flat. The Germans had set fire to the shop that exited onto Puławska Street, a flat on the ground floor, and the stairs. I immediately ran into the flat and looked out of the window into the courtyard, in order to see whether the Germans had left. I saw that the Germans had set up machine guns on the other side of the fence dividing our courtyard from the courtyard of Magiera’s house at Puławska Street 71, and were shooting at the people who had been led down into the courtyard. Since it had become unbearable on the top floor, I went downstairs with my husband and children, Mr Cielecki, Mr Wacław Urban – a carpenter (currently residing at the corner of Narbutta and Puławska streets), and Zygmunt Resau (currently residing somewhere in western Poland). There, looking through the gate, I saw the bodies of tenants from our house scattered in Puławska Street. Some were lying on the other side of the roadway, at the corner of Odolańska Street. In all probability, these people had tried to flee.

We put out the fire using a rubber hose.

I remained there together with a few people from our house until 27 September, that is, until the day of the capitulation. On the morning of that day the Germans ordered us to come out of the house and, together with the residents of houses from Puławska, Belgijska, and other nearby streets, they led us along Szustra Street, aleja Niepodległości, and through the fields to Służewiec Race Track, from where – at night – we were transported to the transit camp in Pruszków.

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