On 21 May 1946 in Warsaw, judge of the municipal court Antoni Knoll, delegated to the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, in the presence of Janina Gruszkowa, a reporter, heard as a witness the person specified below. The witness testified as follows:
Janina Kozakówna
daughter of Jan and Helena
born in Warsaw on 10 September 1906
Religious affiliation: Roman Catholic
Criminal record: none
Occupation: clerk
Place of residence: Warsaw, Emilii Plater Street 8, flat 14
On 4 October 1939 I was summoned to the Gestapo at aleja Szucha, where I was interrogated for the first time about the functioning of the border guard. The interrogation was absolutely peaceful and I was later released. The interrogation lasted for two days.
On 18 November I was arrested by the Gestapo and brought to Pawiak. I was incarcerated in a solitary cell, and after two weeks, after the first interrogation, I was moved to a permanent cell, no. 3.
I occupied it with Halina Koźmińska, Zofia Żochowska, Krystyna Kolczyńska, Wacława Siwanowicz, and two Jewish women whose names I don’t remember. Of the above mentioned, Wacława Siwanowicz was executed on 7 December 1939, allegedly for tearing down a poster with a swastika, but in reality for being a medical corpsman in 1939.
During my stay in the cell the daily schedule was as follows: wake-up at 5.30 a.m., roll call at 6.00 a.m. in the cells; between these there was time to dress, wash oneself and clean the cell. After the roll call we had breakfast of unsweetened black coffee and 350 grams of stale bread, often mouldy. Then a 15 minute – half an hour’s walk, sometimes instead of in the morning the walk was after dinner. At 11.00 a.m. we had a dinner of black pea soup without any fat. For supper we had a soup or some coffee, sometimes rice, also without fat.
Once a week one could borrow a book from the library. During my entire stay in Pawiak books were being lent. Until 25 December 1939, one could receive packages from home even every day. At that time the prisoners were allowed to smoke cigarettes.
From 25 December 1939, the packages were prohibited. This prohibition was in force until August 1940, and after that packages were allowed only for the most hardworking prisoners.
Just before Christmas I was moved to the hospital, due to a blind gut inflammation. Doctor Baczyński petitioned the Gestapo to transfer me to an outside hospital for surgery. The Gestapo denied his request and did not allow the surgery. Instead, a commission came to examine all patients and, on the basis of their state of health, allowed some of them (including myself) to receive food from home. I spent six to seven weeks in the hospital.
At that time food in the hospital was the same as in the wards of Pawiak. When my health improved, I was moved to my former cell upon my own request. I stayed in Pawiak until 23 December 1940.
During my stay in 1939 the former president of Warsaw, Stefan Starzyński, was in Pawiak – strictly speaking in Serbia [the female ward], as the future male ward was not ready yet, He was kept in absolute isolation, and his cell was guarded by Gestapo men. He was getting the same food as other prisoners. He went out to the yard every day at 8.00 a.m., accompanied by two Gestapo men, to shovel snow on his own volition. On 22 or 23 December he was deported, as I heard, to Dachau.
During the first period of my stay in Pawiak, in 1939, the first execution from Pawiak occurred, of a student named Zahorska. She was executed allegedly for tearing down a poster and writing some comments on it. I don’t know where the execution took place.
I recall that when I was being taken from my cell to the hospital, I saw one man being taken from one of the cells; as I learned later from the female guard who was escorting me to the hospital, he was the co-owner of the Światowid cinema, named Lejtman. The Gestapo men told him to uncover his stomach and began to whack him on it and on the small of his back, with a rubber police truncheon.
What happened to him afterwards, I don’t know. Anyway, he was not brought to the hospital.
Since my arrest and during my stay in Pawiak, every Thursday in November and every Wednesday in December, the Gestapo would choose two or three men and take them from Pawiak (I have heard about this) to execute them in the Sejm ’s gardens [i.e. the gardens of the parliament building complex].
During my stay in the prison hospital, in January 1940, seven women were executed on the orders of the Gestapo court. Among them there was a clerk of the PKO [General Savings Bank] named Maria, who was taken to court from the hospital with a temperature of more than 38 degrees Celsius.
I also remember that during my stay in the hospital, some severely beaten men were brought there straight from interrogations at aleja Szucha. One of them was so beaten that he had black ears and a black neck, and hands so swollen that he could not hold anything in his hand.
Also during my presence there, the corpse of some man, a teacher, was brought; the Gestapo claimed that he had jumped out of the window, but he had bullet wounds. As I heard, he was murdered for attacking a Gestapo man during interrogation.
At the end of April 1940, I don’t remember the exact date, Pawiak was visited by Himmler. All prisoners, herded into the Pawiak yard, had to stand there for about two hours. Men were standing on the side of Pawia Street, and women on the side of Dzielna Street. Himmler walked down the line and then began asking prisoners what they were doing time for. I didn’t see what was happening in that part of the yard where the men were standing. As for the women, Himmler treated them indifferently.
At the end of April or at the beginning of May, there was a large transport of more than one thousand one hundred and fifty men, as I heard, to Mauthausen. Among them I saw general Roja. I was being kept then in the former building of the prison guards’ school, so I could see the entire yard very well. Horrible things were happening during the loading of the cars with prisoners. For instance, a priest whose name I cannot recall, but I think it was Około-Kółak, had his cassock pulled up to be beaten and kicked in a cruel way. Everyone getting into the car was being kicked. Bread was being thrown to prisoners from a car and from sacks on the ground to be caught in the air. At first they were also throwing cigarettes, but then they told prisoners to approach a man who distributed them one by one, bow, and ask for the cigarettes.
In May, June, and July, large transports from round-ups were coming to Pawiak from the town. Some people were released, some stayed in Pawiak, some were sent to Skaryszewska Street.
When we moved from the guards’ school to Serbia (it was in July) they brought the wife of a Polish airman, Stanisława Weinzowa, who had just come back from interrogation, to our cell. A guard named Czechowiczowa told us to give her a bed and lay her down. As she sat on the bed, Weinzowa asked us to help her undress. At first we thought she was some new prisoner with high expectations. When we helped her out of her dress, we saw that her body, from neck to knees, was all black from beating. There was literally no patch of white skin. After several days in our cell, Weinzowa was transferred to the hospital where she spent six weeks.
Another prisoner, Żarcowa, had been beaten so cruelly during interrogation that she lost the use of both legs and did not regain it until the 20–21 June transport to Palmiry for execution. Two men from the hospital, carried out on stretchers, were also included in that transport. The Gestapo rejected the withholding of these prisoners, so they could not stay in the hospital.
During my stay in Serbia, several large transports came there: on 15 August, before 11 November 1940.
In the afternoons in autumn 1940, I was being called to the administrative office of Pawiak (the Gestapo men were already working there) to type out the lists of prisoners who were to be deported to Auschwitz, Mauthausen and other camps. At that time they were bringing men back from interrogation. I remember one who had broken arms, legs, and ribs. I don’t remember his name. As I was later told by Szpicer, a superintendent of the Polish prison guard of Czech descent, that man had not only been beaten, but when he was lying unconscious on the floor, the Gestapo men in heavy boots were jumping on him from the chairs. Szpicer heard this directly from that prisoner.
In September 1940, a woman named Hanka was brought to the male ward of Pawiak and incarcerated there in a dark solitary cell. I learned from a female guard that they were forbidden to give her any food. Anytime, day or night, several times a day, the Gestapo men, including Felhaber, would go to her cell and beat her to force statements from her. The prisoners were secretly making sandwiches for her and throwing them through her window on their way while carrying rubbish from the female ward to the rubbish bin in the male ward.
I know that this woman survived and lives somewhere near Warsaw.
I was not beaten during interrogation, but there was a whip on the table and I had been warned that I would be beaten for telling lies. On the wall in the room where I was being interrogated, marked as no. 295, there was a whole range of equipment for beating: clubs, whips, rubber truncheons and some other things.
At the beginning of 1940, we were confessing in secret, as the Germans prohibited confession and communion. The arrested priests would hear confession; as for communion, a priest [...] would bring communion bread and one of the prisoners, a woman named Mynka, would bring it upstairs where the priests would distribute it. The prison chapel was used for services only in March and April, as later the Germans prohibited them, and after some time they turned the chapel into a room for interrogation.
At the beginning of 1940, they introduced exercise for the male prisoners. They had to run, jump like frogs, fall down. The exercise was for everyone, irrespective of age and state of health. The Gestapo were beating the reluctant or the less fit ones with whips.
I also saw the Gestapo men order the prisoners (usually Jews) to run barefooted over still- hot cinders from the boiler house, which was situated in the Pawiak yard. From the windows of my cell I often saw Jews being called to the cars parked outside of the prison, where they had to bow and clean the cars with their own handkerchiefs, while the Gestapo men were beating them mercilessly.
Upon crossing the street one day, Felhaber saw one of my cellmates standing in the window, as she was closing the oberluft [window vent]. He immediately took out his revolver and fired. The prisoner was not shot only because we managed to pull her from the window. I don’t remember her name.
In the afternoon on 28 August 1940, we were all ordered to leave the cell and go to the yard, where Felhaber and some other Gestapo man began to read out the names of some prisoners. Each one called out had to go quickly upstairs, pack up her belongings and come downstairs with them. I was called out, too. We were all put with our belongings in a large cell, but first Felhaber searched us for cigarettes and pencils. We were asking the Polish guards why we were brought there. Nobody could give us any precise information, we were only told that the list was marked with a T. We spent three nights and two days in that cell, sitting on our bundles. Only after the intervention of the Polish guards were we given special cells, each marked with a T.
While we were still in a common cell, one of the prisoners lit a cigarette. Felhaber noticed it and made a scene, ordering a personal search. Some prisoners, including myself, even had to undress.
In September, new prisoners were taken to the T-marked cells. In the meantime, from September to December, 16 people (including myself) were released from the T cells. Some 200 people, men and women, were released then. A Gestapo man, major Böhm, gave a speech to the released prisoners in the Pawiak yard.
I don’t know anything more.
At this the hearing was closed. The report was read out.