WACŁAW STERNER

Warsaw, 2 April 1946. Judge Stanisław Rybiński, delegated to the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed the person specified below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Wacław Sterner
Parents’ names Józef and Helena
Date of birth 28 November 1908
Occupation and education road and bridge engineer
Place of residence Warsaw, Szustra Street 27.
Religious affiliation Evangelical
Criminal record none

During the German occupation I worked in the German company Schmidt & Münstermann as a construction engineer from 1 June 1942 to 1 June 1943. The company carried out construction on the grounds of the ghetto.

Heinrich Münstermann, the owner and head of the firm was authorized to employ Jews, and he gladly did so, extorting a lot of money in exchange for jobs. He made a fortune doing that. He personally transported the Jews who didn’t want to or couldn’t pay him to the so- called Umschlagplatz [collection point for transports to concentration camps]. During work, he beat people with a bludgeon, a wooden board, or a riding crop, making no distinction between Poles and Jews. He was a fat, about 40-year-old man from Düsseldorf.

Scharführer SS Handtke – a tall, fat, blond-haired man with deformed ears, from Troppau in Bavaria. Together with Brandt and Konrad, he participated in the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. He is one of the bloodiest perpetrators. I was told that he personally shot several thousand people. After the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943, as deputy commandant of the camp in Poniatowa near Opole Lubelskie he supervised the liquidation of that camp on 4 November 1943 (a dozen or so thousand people were shot dead within a few hours). More details about the activities of the aforementioned can be provided by:

Kazimierz Niedzielski, Warsaw, Tobacco Monopoly official;
Tadeusz Domański, Wrocław, Ruska Street 13;
Mieczysław Kłapa, driver at the Polish Radio, Warsaw.