BRONISŁAWA ZIELIŃSKA

Warsaw, 22 February 1950. Janusz Gumkowski, 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 Bronisława Zielińska, née Miszczak
Date and place of birth 12 December 1904, Warsaw
Parents’ names Jan and Katarzyna, née Szymaniak
Father’s occupation laborer
Citizenship and nationality Polish
Religion Roman Catholic
Education elementary school
Occupation administrative employee of the Warsaw Technical University
Place of residence Warsaw, Bagatela Street 15, flat 82
Criminal record none

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, I was in the building of the Institute of Aerodynamics of the Warsaw Technical University at Nowowiejska Street 24. On 19 August at around 3.00 a.m., Germans – SS-men – launched an assault on the Technical University from the direction of aleja Niepodległości. The building of the Institute of Aerodynamics was located exactly at the corner of aleja Niepodległości and Nowowiejska Street. After two hours or so of fighting (the insurgents were in the building of the Physics Department and in the professors’ dormitory) the Germans threw grenades into the basements of the Institute of Aerodynamics. At the time, the personnel of the Institute were gathered in the bunkers. Two people were wounded, myself included – I was hit in the right arm above the elbow. Next, the Germans ordered all of us to leave the bunker. Only 22 of us came out, for two gentlemen – Józef Wysocki (I think that he is currently a lecturer at the Gdańsk Technical University) and Antoniuk (I don’t remember his name), presently an assistant to Professor Wolski, hid in the boiler room.

The Germans took seven men from our group – my husband Stanisław, my husband’s brother Wincenty, my brother-in-law Stanisław Woźniak, his son Janusz (a 16-year-old boy), Zbyszek Zieliński (son of Wincenty, a 15-year-old boy), Konstanty Grzelak (the caretaker of the Institute of Aerodynamics), and Adam Boguszewski (the son-in-law of Professor Witoszyński).

They led them to the other side of aleja Niepodległości, to the so-called Kraftpark. Shortly after that the Germans marched all of us to the Kraftpark and put us in one of the ground- floor rooms. We stayed there for one day, after which time, together with the families of Polish officers who were living in this house, we were taken in motorcars to Włochy.

Well after the Uprising, on 1 April 1945, by which date I had returned to Warsaw, I learned from the daughter of one of the officers (I know neither her current address, nor her name), who was an eyewitness of the execution, that on 19 August 1944 the Germans shot the seven men whom they had previously taken from the building of the Institute of Aerodynamics, near the cottage of the gardener, who in all probability continues to live there (it was recently forbidden to enter the premises of the Ministry of National Defense). The exhumation of this grave, conducted on 12 April 1945 by the Polish Red Cross, resulted in the recovery of eight bodies of people who had been shot dead. The eighth body was that of one Lewandowski, who during the Uprising was a liaison officer at the Technical University. I am unable to draw the location of this crime. The gardener’s cottage next to which we found the grave is located to the rear of the Ministry building.

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