Warsaw, 31 December 1945. Judge Halina Wereńko, delegated to the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed the person specified below as a witness. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the gravity 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 | Stanisław Smolik |
| Age | 55 |
| Names of parents | Stanisław and Franciszka |
| Place of residence | Warszawa, Noakowskiego Street 16, flat 42 |
| Occupation | employee of the magistrate of the Capital City of Warsaw |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
On 12 November 1943, my son, Bernadyn Marian Smolik (born on 20 May 1922), was arrested by the Gestapo and transported to Pawiak prison. On 14 November 1943, my son’s name was on the list of captives posted all over the city; this list included 40 names.
With the help of my friends I undertook efforts to get my only son out of prison, and the person who was helping me established that on 17 November 1943 he was no longer in Pawiak prison.
However, from Sawicki (residing at Nowogrodzka Street 2), who is also employed in the Municipal Purification Centre [Zakład Oczyszczania Miasta], I learned that my son had been shot during an execution on 17 November 1943, which had taken place in the morning on the embankment near the Western Railway Station [Dworzec Zachodni].
Presently there is a plate put up by the Museum of National Remembrance [Muzeum Pamięci Narodowej] and a cross in that location. Railwaymen have installed an electrical lamp there.
From what Sawicki and then Bałęda (residing at Noakowskiego Street 12, flat 35) told me, twenty men had been shot on 17 November 1943 by the embankment near the Western Railway Station. I heard that another execution had been carried out in Praga, in Białołęcka Street, at the same time, during which another twenty persons were executed.
I don’t know the details of that execution, since I was particularly interested in the execution carried out near the Western Railway Station.
Stefan Zarzycki, whose mother Bałęda – I don’t know her first name – is employed in the hospital at Sierpnia Street 6, I have provided her address above, was shot together with my son.
I learnt from Sawicki that he had talked to a railwayman, whose name unfortunately I don’t know, but who had been a first-hand witness of the execution, since the Germans had taken him to Bema Street to show them the way. That railwayman said that twenty men had been executed. One of those men – whose description matches my son’s appearance – flung himself at the Germans three times. They were executed in fives, my son was in the first five, and that is why he flung himself three times at the Germans and did not have his hands tied. The men who followed had their hands tied on the back with a rope, and the Gestapo men filled their mouths with plaster right away, while getting them out of the car.
After the execution, the bodies of the victims were loaded onto a truck and taken in an unknown direction. I assume that they were taken to the ghetto to be burnt.
In aleja Szucha I and other families of the victims, including Bałęda, Zarzycki’s stepfather, who presently remains abroad, demanded death certificates for our children. Eventually, the gendarmerie issued to me the certificate which I hereby present.
(Witness presented a certificate in German from which it follows that Bernadyn Marian Smolik died on 17 November 1943, dated 20 March 1944. The following print is on the top: der Polizeipräsident in Warschau Abteilung V with a round seal reading Generalgouvernement der Polizeipräsident in Warschau and the German emblem in the rim.
The report was read out.