Warsaw, 29 April 1947. Member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, [Judge] Halina Wereńko, interviewed the following person as an unsworn witness. Having been instructed of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the wording of Art. 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Edward Soboni |
| Names of parents | Tomasz and Paulina née Jasińska |
| Date of birth | 7 October 1898 in Sochaczew |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Place of residence | Nowe Górce settlement […] |
| Education | three grades of elementary school |
| Occupation | hairdresser |
During the Warsaw Uprising I lived, as I do still, in Ulrychów.
On 17 August 1944, the Gestapo stationed in Warsaw, in the vicarage of St Lawrence church, surrounded the house where I lived, as well as the neighbouring houses, and herded the civilians to St Adalbert church. As a hairdresser, having my tools with me, I was taken by the Gestapo from the front of the church and put in a group of workers employed by the Gestapo, quartered in the house on Sokołowska Street, opposite the vicarage.
The divisions intended for burning corpses were quartered on the second floor of that house, the divisions intended for physical work demolishing barricades were quartered on the first and partially on the third floor. In total, there were five hundred and forty Polish workers.
The transit camp in St Adalbert church and the workers were commanded by the Warsaw Gestapo and by the Gestapo men who had arrived from Poznań, who occupied the vicarage building.
I believe that the man in charge there was an officer of the Warsaw Gestapo, Sturmbahnführer (if I remember correctly) Szpilke [Spilker?]. He was a tall, blond man with a bony face. An officer from the Poznań Gestapo came by car every day.
I don’t know his name and I don’t know where he came from.
Poles fished out from among the civilians were interviewed on the first floor of the vicarage. I also saw that Poles who were standing in the corridor and waiting to be interviewed were beaten by Gestapo men with bludgeons.
I once saw a Gestapo man hit a man waiting to be interviewed across the face with a bludgeon, shattering his glasses. The blow pushed glass shards into this man’s eyes.
I was employed by the Gestapo men as a hairdresser for three months. During that time I saw almost every day Poles brought from St Adalbert church to be interviewed.
It seemed to me that a Gestapo man, dark-haired, tall, bony (I don’t know his name) picked his victims by sight from among the people brought out of the interview, usually ordered them into a black car and took them to Franaszek’s factory or other ruins, where – as I know from the corpse-burning group – these people were executed.
Few came back to St Adalbert church from an interview to go with a transport to the camp in Pruszków.
Szpilke’s deputy or subordinate was a non-commissioned Gestapo officer, Bem – brown- haired, of average height, with a swarthy face, coming, as I was told, from the Poznań area. Bem was energetic, drove a car a lot, and was a man of importance. Apart from Szpilke, I saw and shaved many Gestapo men, but I no longer remember their names.
At that the report was concluded and read out.