ALINA BAILL

Warsaw, 10 October 1947. Member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Warsaw, Acting Judge Halina Wereńko, interviewed the person named below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the obligation to speak the truth, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Alina Eleonora Baill
Parents’ names Henryk and Kazimiera, née Pergen
Date of birth 2 February 1934, Warsaw
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Education elementary school
Occupation student, first grade of secondary school
Citizenship and nationality Polish
Place of residence Warsaw, Mokotowska Street 45

Following an order by the German authorities, according to which civilians were to leave Warsaw, on 2 October 1944, together with my father and other residents of our building, I left the house at Złota Street 41 in Warsaw.

We were sent on foot to a transit camp in Ursus, where I stayed for two days. More and more groups of civilians arrived at the camp. Germans dressed in civilian clothes segregated the detainees and sent the sick and the elderly by transport to the General Government (GG), while healthy men, women, and even children were sent to the Reich to work.

The transport I was in left on 4 October 1944, through Szczekociny to Erfurt, where I was placed again in a transit camp. This was where a segregation took place, and then groups of workers were sent to factories and workplaces.

After a few weeks’ stay in Erfurt, my father and I were sent to Zella-Mehlis, a factory town with a number of weapons factories. I was employed in the Walter arms factory, my father was sent to work in a branch of the same factory in Mehlis, three kilometers from Zella- Mehlis.

My father, I, and the other people brought from Warsaw did not sign any work contract, but were brought there and employed under duress. We were accommodated in a barrack located about a hundred meters from the factory where I worked. A group of fifty men, women and two children lived in a single room. Apart from myself, there was also a 13-year- old boy in the barrack. He came from near Warsaw, but I don’t know his surname. We both worked at the Walter factory. Initially, my task was to check typewriters, then I dealt with machines in the factory halls where I installed gun parts near the butt.

I don’t know what kind of machines they were.

I worked ten hours a day with a 15-minute break for breakfast and half an hour for dinner. My work was not hard; the only thing that tired me was that it took so long.

After work, I had free time. I never worked on Sundays, but I was not allowed to go to church because it was clearly prohibited by the authorities. A boy – a minor – from a town near Warsaw worked like an adult worker, 11.5 [hours] per day; every week he had a night shift where the work lasted 12.5 hours.

From our barrack, the boy I have mentioned and I were the only children who were employed. I don’t know if there were more children working in the factory.

Medical assistance in the factory was provided by a German doctor and nurse, also German. Doctors could grant a sick leave provided that you had a fever of 39 degrees. For failures at work, the foremen gave workers penal work on Sundays. Once, when I was working in the factory (I don’t remember the date), a Polish worker was sent to a concentration camp for a month for falsifying a food stamp, and then he returned to the factory. The Werkschutz camp guards treated the workers brutally and often used offensive expressions like “Polish swine.” As a minor, I was treated more mildly, it was easier for me to get a sick leave, but the boy from the town near Warsaw was treated like an adult.

At this point, the report was concluded and read out.