Warsaw, 27 June 1946. Judge Antoni Knoll, as a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of Germans Crimes, interviewed the person specified below as a witness, who testified as follows:
My name is Franciszek Stankiewicz, son of Antoni and Marianna, born on 9 March 1897 in Warsaw, of Roman Catholic religious affiliation, forester by profession, residing in the Sękocin Forest House, no criminal record.
I have worked in the Sękocin forest area since 2 May 1940. The entire Sękocin forest was under my supervision, the rangers were my subordinates.
Executions in the Sękocin forests began in May 1942; these were either individual or group executions. They were carried out on persons coming from various areas: Warsaw, Piastów, Włochy.
The largest mass execution took place in May 1942. On 26 May 1942, two uniformed Gestapo officers came to inspect the grounds. No-one from the forest guard was summoned. This piqued my curiosity, so I observed what they were doing. They first inspected the right side of the forest, relative to Warsaw, and then they went to the left side of the forest relative to the road. After inspecting the forest on that side for approximately an hour, they got into a car and drove away in the direction of Warsaw.
On 27 May 1942 at around 10 a.m. a heavy truck with gendarmerie and a passenger’s car, the same one as the day before, arrived and drove to the left side of the forest, facing Warsaw, in the direction of the Magdalenka settlement. I was in the forest at that time, and since I was interested in why they had come, I tried to see what they were doing. I established that a ring of gendarmerie posts was distributed within a fifty-meter radius from the place where the graves are now located.
I should mention that the people they stopped included ranger Jerzy Gajdajenko, who is now in the army and I am unable to provide his address. He was led away by the gendarmes from the perimeter manned by the gendarmerie.
After the outposts had been set, a few gunshots were heard, which were to be camouflage as a purported military exercise. It must be noted that aerial maneuvers had been conducted in the area before, around 3 kilometers from the execution site, so the locals were accustomed to hearing gunfire. Personally, the sound of these single gunshots gave me the impression that these were not maneuvers, but something that was of a specific character.
The outposts that I have mentioned, which constituted a ring around the execution site, were maintained there for the remainder of the day and throughout the night between 27 and 28 May 1942. During the day the soldiers dug up grave pits.
At night, between 27 and 28 May 1942, one car was brining people to be executed. Each time the car came from the direction of Warsaw.
As I heard from people who had been able to establish it, these had been victims from the 7th and 8th pavilion of Pawiak prison. My informant was Adam Jankowski, a forestry engineer, who presently resides somewhere in the West.
Over four hundred people were executed on that date.
I don’t know the names of the victims, but I heard that Colonel Władysław Sarmacki from Warsaw, three brothers Brzeski (the oldest 26 years old, the youngest 16 years old) and General Dreszer’s wife had been executed there.
The execution victims included women as well.
I don’t know whether these poor souls had been read their sentences before they died.
From the landscape, it transpired that the lie of the land forced the Germans to herd the prisoners to the execution site. I cannot tell whether the victims were handcuffed, since I was not an eyewitness to the execution.
On 29 May 1942, after the execution, the execution squad left for Warsaw, singing. Since I was in the forest house, I was able to tell the direction from which the cars with the prisoners came and the direction in which they drove off, since the building of the forest house is located right next to the road, on its right side relative to Warsaw.
The execution itself took place on the night between 27 and 28 May 1942 and on the night between 28 and 29 May 1942; throughout this time the gendarmerie and its outposts distributed on the perimeter of the execution site remained manned. On 29 May 1942 at 7 in the morning the gendarmerie posts surrounding the execution site were disbanded, and the entire execution squad drove off in the direction of Warsaw in a roofless bus, singing, as I have already emphasized.
At that time I did not see the passenger’s car that had come on 27 May 1942.
At 9 a.m. I got on my bicycle and headed for Magdalenka, approximately in the same direction where the execution had taken place. I found traces of a fire and empty cigarette packs scattered around it. The location of the grave was entirely masked, birch branches were stuck into it, which at first sight gave the impression that it was a birch groove. But as a forester I immediately realized that, judging from the disturbed earth, this could not be a grove where normal trees grow, and that only dead branches were stuck in the ground. This helped me to establish the location of the grave and the size of it.
By further examining the ground I discovered near a small oak that the earth was beaten. Based on these traces I concluded that the machine gun had stood there. I found no shells, they apparently must have been collected and buried or taken away.
I don’t know whether the Germans took away the clothes and shoes of the victims, since I did not see them in the departing car.
Apart from that execution, there was an entire series of executions either of individuals or groups of three to nine persons. They took place quite frequently, not a week would pass without such an execution.
From the execution I could not tell whether the victims were Jews or Poles, but I got the impression that these were only Poles.
In five or seven instances, I saw the corpses with my own eyes. I even searched one of them to find out what his name was; he had a little prayer-book with him, with the name “Stefan” written in it. At another time, where there were three corpses, I established that they had railway tickets for the distance between Warsaw and Piastów. These bodies were taken away by families in the night. One of them had an identity card on him – I don’t remember thename today – I only remember that he was the secretary for the Piastów commune.
I saw distinct handcuff marks on the wrists of some of the victims. I know where they had been buried, but these corpses have already been exhumed and are buried in the catholic cemetery in Magdalenka.
All of the murdered people whom I have mentioned just now were brought from Warsaw and executed in the Sękocin forests. I don’t know whether they were read their sentences before they were executed.
Coming back to the execution which I described at the beginning of this testimony, I should add that, having come to the site on 29 May 1942, I marked the grave, I took out the birch branches stuck in it and I measured the grave.
The grave was 18 meters wide and 40 meters long. I based these measurements only on the[appearance] of the disturbed soil. The depth, which I examined down to the first layer of corpses, was approximately one meter.
I heard that a few days after this first mass execution, children going to the church in Magdalenka, near a path running through the forest from Lesznowola to Magdalenka, found scattered pieces of a human body, among others a human arm hanging on a bush.
I state that on the nights when the execution was being carried out, that is between 27 and 28 May 1942 and between 28 and 29 May 1942, apart from machine-gun fire, I was able to discern heavy explosions, as if caused by grenades.
A few days after this execution a car came to the forester and two officers got out of it.
I am unable to say whether these were the same men as on 27 May 1942.
They then captured forestry engineer Jankowski and drove him in the direction of the village of Słomin, in the direction of Lesznowola. At some point the car stopped, everyone got out of the car and they started questioning Jankowski about whether he knew where the grave in the Lesznowola forest was located, in which people executed by the Polish police had been buried. These officers emphasized that they wanted to punish the perpetrators of this murder. At the same time they threatened that if Jankowski did not tell them the truth, they would take him to aleja Szucha, where he would tell the truth for sure. Jankowski categorically denied that he had any information whatsoever, and thanks to that he was released. In general, the grave was being watched by the Gestapo after the execution, and even within two days after the execution an airplane would fly over it from time to time.
That is all I know in this case.
Read out, and at this the interview was concluded.