ANNA WACH

In Karolin on this day, 9 April 1948, at 5.00 p.m., I, Zenon Wilk from the Criminal Investigation Section of the Citizens’ Militia Station in Kozienice, acting under Article 20 of the provisions introducing the Code of Criminal Procedure, following instructions from the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Radom issued on 31 March 1948 (L. 532/48/2) under Article 20 of the provisions introducing the Code of Criminal Procedure, observing the formal requirements set forward in Articles 235–240, 258 and 259 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, with the participation of a reporter, a Militia functionary from Zwoleń, Władysław Adamczyk, whom I have informed of his obligation to attest to the conformity of the report with the actual course of the procedure by his own signature, have heard the person named below as a witness. Having been advised of the right to refuse to testify for the reasons set forward in Article 104 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and of the criminal liability for making false declarations, this pursuant to the provisions of Article 140 of the Penal Code, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Anna Wach
Parents’ names Franciszek and Józefa, née Wiśniewska
Age 55 years old
Place of birth Tezów, Kozienice district
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Occupation housewife
Place of residence Karolin, commune of Grabów nad Wisłą
Relationship to the parties none

With regard to the matter at hand, I know the following: the events of which I am giving an account took place on the morning of 18 March 1942. A few Gestapo men, accompanied by gendarmes, arrived at my place in the village of Pcinolas, the Ciepielów commune, and arrested my husband, Tomasz, and two sons, Stefan and Tadeusz. All three were taken to the village of Karolin. After the execution my husband and my son Tadeusz returned home, while Stefan was detained and executed in Karolin.

Apart from my husband and my sons, the Germans arrested the following men: Józef Pawlik, Józef Mucha, Władysław Ziembakowski, Antoni Gorczyca, Bronisław Gorczyca, Roman Gorczyca, Antoni Heda, Józef Maziarz, Antoni Kapciak. Five other men were killed in their courtyards in Pcinolas. These were: Marcin Rudny, Władysław Rudny, Stanisław Rudny, Jan Wawrzak and Władysław Wawrzak, Jan’s son. All the men mentioned above lived in Pcinolas, in the Ciepielów commune. The families of the victims live in Pcinolas, in the Ciepielów commune. I don’t know the names of the other people who were killed by the Germans. Except for myself, all of them worked on their farms. They were all good, hard-working Poles whom the Germans – the Gestapo, the gendarmerie and German colonists from Karolin – killed for their involvement in underground activity.

I wish to add that once the execution was over, the local population was summoned again to thank the Germans for the crimes they had committed in Karolin. My husband, who was detained and put in a room next to the one in which the prisoners were placed, reported that he had heard the moans and screams of the men beaten by the Germans with rifle butts and sticks. They were so severely beaten that my husband, who was standing by the pit, failed to recognize his own son Stefan. After the execution the people who were gathered around were ordered to fill the pit, level the ground and cover everything with snow. However, the soil became soaked with blood and the traces remained. In arresting their victims, the Gestapo relied on a list drawn up by German colonists from Karolin and the surrounding villages. I wish to stress that in February 1944, the Gestapo and German gendarmerie arrived in cars and set up machine guns all over the village. The residents were ordered to screen their windows and remain inside their houses. The Germans sealed off the area of the tomb with some makeshift fence and began to burn the bodies of the men whom they had murdered.

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