ITA RADOSZYŃSKA

On 22 October 1945, in Siedlce, Judge Z. Łukaszkiewicz interviewed the person specified below as a witness, without swearing her in. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Forename and surname Ita Radoszyńska
Age 27
Names of parents Jankiel
Place of residence Siedlce, Kilińskiego Street 31
Occupation trader
Religious affiliation Judaism
Criminal record none

In August 1942, during the liquidation of the ghetto in Siedlce, I managed to save myself by dressing up as a man and joining a group of Jewish laborers who had been left in the so-called small ghetto.

After two weeks had passed, I escaped from the ghetto and survived in hiding in the country; then, as a result of the notices posted around by the German authorities informing that there were transit ghettos for Jews being set up in Siedlce, Kałuszyn, Warsaw and in another place whose name I do not remember, I went to Siedlce to the ghetto set up in the so-called Limanowski settlement.

I want to add that at that time those Jews who had survived believed that there would not be any extermination of Jews in the ghettos that I listed above.

After two days in the ghetto, on the night of 30 November 1942, the ghetto was cordoned off by the Gestapo, the Gendarmerie, and the Blue Police. In the morning, everybody was herded into a square, where the Gestapo Chief Dube and the town commissary Fabisz gave short speeches in which they assured the people who were present that all of them would be transported to a ghetto in Kałuszyn, where they would “start a new life without money” and they ordered them to hand over all their money. The money was collected with suitcases.

Then they herded all the people into one building (there were three single-storey buildings in this ghetto), which was extremely cramped – about 2,000 men, women and children, who had previously lived in the three buildings mentioned above, had to fit into one now. We were kept in this building for twenty-four hours and then in the evening, taking great precautions in order to prevent people from escaping, they took us onto a loading ramp (the so-called Polmin loading ramp), where we waited for another about two hours. Then, wagons were brought and we were loaded into them, a hundred people into each wagon.

There was a locksmith in our wagon who had some tools on him and managed to open the door of the wagon. A dozen or so people jumped out of this door, me included. They shot at me but I was not wounded. Then, I hid out in Siedlce, and later on in Warsaw until the arrival of the Red Army.

The witness interview report was read out and then the witness signed it.