FELIKS STROIWĄS

Warsaw, 29 April 1949. A member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Norbert Szuman (MA), interviewed the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Feliks Stroiwąs
Parents’ names Franciszek and Katarzyna, née Brzezińska
Date of birth 20 July 1900 in Warsaw
Religion Roman Catholic
Education one class of elementary school
Citizenship and nationality Polish
Place of residence Warsaw, Puławska Street 56, flat 2c
Occupation bricklayer

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, I was in my flat at Puławska Street 73/75. I did not see any Germans during the first two days of the Uprising, but the area around our house was fired upon. The insurgents had taken up positions in Boryszewska Street.

All of the residents of our large house, with two courtyards, had gathered in the basement under the side annex. On the third of August in the afternoon, at around 5.00 p.m., when I was on the third floor in my flat, the windows of which opened onto the first courtyard, Germans burst into this courtyard through the gate, which they had torn off its hinges using grenades. From this moment on I observed what went on in the courtyard from the windows of my flat. The soldiers in the courtyard started shouting for all the residents to come out of the basement into the courtyard. The residents of our house, exiting one after another, were executed on the spot, next to the wall of the house, irrespective of their age and sex. I saw, for example, how the Germans shot a small child lying on a pillow. Among others, they shot dead my wife and two children – my 7-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter.

After the execution the Germans threw a few more grenades into one of the basements, set fire to the house, and left.

Since the building was ablaze, I was forced to escape, jumping from the corridor onto the stable adjacent to our house.

I took refuge at Boryszewska Street 17.

On the next day I returned to the site of the execution. There were a few dozen bodies in the courtyard, and some of them had been charred by fragments of burning tarpaper falling from the house. Amongst the pile of bodies I found my daughter, who still showed some faint signs of life; she was seriously wounded in the head and had suffered burns. I carried her to the Hospital of the Sisters of St. Elizabeth, where however she died some days later. After a few days the victims of the execution were buried in the courtyard of the house at Puławska Street 73/75, which had already been burned down. As I recall, we buried more than sixty people in the courtyard at the time. A few people were buried separately.

I think that Marcinkiewicz also witnessed the crime that I have just described; he currently resides at Idzikowskiego Street 3.

I remained in Mokotów until the district fell, after which I was taken away through the racetrack to the transit camp in Pruszków.

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