Warsaw, 12 February 1946. Judge of the Appellate Court in Warsaw, St. Rybiński, delegated to the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed the person named below as a witness. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the significance of the oath, the judge swore the witness in accordance with Art. 109 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Anna Dutkiewicz née Zasada |
| Date of birth | 26 July 1887 |
| Names of parents | Jan and Katarzyna née Chomutenek |
| Occupation | housekeeping |
| Education | can read and write |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Ząbkowska Street 30, flat 46 |
| Religious affiliation | Orthodox |
| Criminal record | none |
I have come the office of the Commission following an announcement in the daily press. To confirm my identity, I am presenting my identity card N 6275 (shown).
In 1941, having been expelled from Czerniakowska Street (as a German district) by the German authorities, my husband Zdzisław Dutkiewicz and I moved into Mularska Street 3, on the corner of Furmańska Street. My husband worked as a turner in the workshops at the Polytechnic. Before the war, these were metallurgy and material science workshops.
I do not know exactly what functions my husband had in the political organization. At any rate, he warned me I should be ready he might be arrested by the Germans. He had patriotic beliefs and did not acquaint me with the political actions he conducted.
From May 1943, he was forced to remain in hiding, as Gestapo agents came for him to the workshop he was employed in. My husband was in the workshop at the time, but having learned that Gestapo men had come to arrest him, fled. From that time on, he was in hiding.
He stopped working in the workshop and did not live at home either. He only managed to let me know that he had to stay in hiding. For a long time we met secretly. To make sure we were not discovered, I would leave the city and meet my husband there. This continued until November 1943, when my husband – believing he was not being tracked anymore – returned home and lived with me again.
However, after two weeks, Gestapo men in green uniforms and skulls on their hats appeared at 2:30 a.m. Two of them had such hats, the third had a so-called pierożek [side-cap] on his head, and the two others wore helmets. The Gestapo men asked my husband several times for his name to make sure he was the one they were looking for, and told him to get dressed.
They behaved calmly, did not insult us, nor did they beat my husband. The older one in the pierożek cap did not enter our room, but haughtily sat down in the kitchen, wrote something down and others later read it. Only one Gestapo man came into the room, the one in the helmet, and another one – also wearing a helmet – stood at the door. These two were armed with rozpylacze [machine guns]. Others did not seem to have weapons.
The Gestapo men allowed my husband to say goodbye to me and even take a few cigarettes with him. Then they led him out of the house, put him into a buda [lit. kennel] lorry, and drove off with him. I didn’t know where they were taking him. They only said that I could find out more at the Gestapo HQ on aleja Szucha.
Two days later I went to the Gestapo office to learn about the fate of my husband. An agent there, carrying himself in a military manner, told me in Polish: “You want to learn about your husband so quickly, so quickly,” and they assured me they had to examine him first and only later would allow him to return home. Only with the help of Prof. Szaflarski from the Polytechnic did I manage to find out that my husband was at Pawiak prison.
I learned at the Patronat society what I could deliver to my husband in prison and on 3 December 1943 at 10 a.m. I left two packages for him at Krochmalna Street 7. There were clothes and underwear in one and food in the other. The Patronat accepted the packages. However, the next day, on 4 December, on Saturday, I found my husband’s surname on notices put up on walls throughout the city with lists of people executed the previous day.
As I learned later, on 3 December 1943, in the afternoon, there had been two public executions on Puławska Street. One by the tram depot at the beginning of the street and the other in the backyard of the house at no. 21, opposite the turn into Rakowiecka Street. One hundred men were executed at that time in those two places, and it was supposedly the German reaction to an organized assault on a German gendarmerie vehicle on Puławska Street the previous day. The corpses of those executed, I learned, were taken away by the Germans to the ghetto and burned there.
Of the packages I had left for my husband I only got back the one containing clothes. On 12 December 1943, I received a postcard written in my husband’s hand, because the Germans allowed prisoners to send postcards from prison once a month. It was dated 1 December 1943.
I would like to rectify that the card was not written by my husband. It was written in German. My husband reported that he was healthy and asked for a package with warm clothes and food, and I was supposed to receive money for this from Prof. Szaflarski, the head of the workshop where my husband worked before he had to hide from the Gestapo.
I don’t know the surnames of the Germans who arrested my husband or of those who made the decision to execute him.
As a result of my request submitted at the Patronat, I received this certificate in German via the post, stating that my husband had died on 3 December 1943 (the witness produced a certificate dated 12 April 1944, issued by Polizeipräsident Warschau Abteilung V).
My husband was a firm supporter of Polish independence and a member of the Polish Socialist Party since 1909, he received the Medal of Independence.
On the day of his death, my husband, Zdzisław Dutkiewicz, was 56 years old.
The report was read out.