Warsaw, 31 January 1946
To the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland
On 19 January 1943, I witnessed the German Gendarmerie from Łochów bring in a couple of sleighs loaded with the corpses of Polish citizens and, helped by the locals, rip off all their clothes and bury a couple of hundred corpses of both sexes in a mass grave.
This took place near Ostrówek train station in the village of Łojew, next to the properties owned by local residents Mioduszewski and Sadowski, the latter of whom gave me shelter after I escaped from a train transporting victims to Treblinka.
I live at Marszałkowska Street 62, flat 1, in Warsaw. I have quite a lot more valuable information pertaining to German crimes and will be happy to come forward when requested.
WITNESS INTERVIEW REPORT
On 11 January 1946 in Warsaw, Associate Judge Antoni Krzętowski, delegated to the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, interviewed the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the obligation to tell the truth and of the criminal liability for giving false testimony, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Edmund Stanberg |
| Names of parents | Andrzej and Renée née Batnicka |
| Date of birth | 15 July 1896 |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Marszałkowska Street 62, flat 1 |
| Occupation | pharmacist |
| Education | university |
| Religious affiliation | Reformed Evangelical |
| Criminal record | none |
In 1943, on 18 January, SS units surrounded the Warsaw ghetto and began to force people out of their homes. At that time I lived at Muranowska Street 42. This was the second stage of the general liquidation of the ghetto.
All the residents of the house I was living in, myself included, were then taken away. Next, the SS marched everyone they had rounded up to the reloading point by the railway line, urging them on with horsewhips with iron endings and punching them indiscriminately, mostly on the head. Then, we were crammed into covered freight cars, together with the sick – naked – who had been forced out of the Jewish hospital on Gęsia street. A hundred people were loaded into each car in this fashion. The cars were then sealed and four guards, Kalmyks, former Soviet POWs, were posted to each.
The train only set off 18 hours after it was loaded and headed towards Małkinia. Almost 24 hours after, i.e. after I was forced out of my home at 4 a.m., I decided to escape from the car, following the example of a couple of others, who, having torn the barbed wire off the windows and having been lifted up by their companions (the windows, as typically in freight cars, were placed just beneath the roof), jumped out as the train was moving. I also got out of the wagon that way.
The guards in the train conductors’ booths and the SS-men watching the train shot at the escapees – the former with rifles, the latter with machine guns. They killed many people and wounded several others. Yet all of them, just like myself, had decided to risk an escape, knowing that the SS-men were taking us to be killed in gas chambers in Treblinka or Czyżew.
There was a blizzard when I jumped out of the train. I fell by the tracks and passed out. When I came to, I noticed that I had suffered a bullet wound to my left leg and that my shoulder had been damaged during the fall. The train, when I jumped, was approaching Ostrówek station, located between Łochów and Małkinia, but it didn’t stop because such trains only stopped if there was a need to finish off those who had jumped off. They didn’t stop at stations. Consequently, when I came to, the train was already far away because some two hours had passed.
I managed to reach the station building on my own. There, the ticket clerk let me into his room behind the ticket counter, where he let me warm myself and gave me food. Then, the clerk’s son took me to the village of Łojew, to farmer Mioduszewski, who let me rest at his place for some two hours, and then I found shelter at farmer Sadowski’s (I don’t know the first names of Mioduszewski or Sadowski).
When at Sadowski’s place, through the window I saw the Łochów gendarmerie escorting three pairs of sleighs loaded with human corpses: men and women. The SS-men were transporting them through the area adjacent to the property where I was hiding. The pit had been prepared earlier because local peasants had been tasked with digging it. The gendarmes ordered the peasants to rip the clothes off the corpses and then bury them in the pit. I think there were around […] bodies.
The next day, 20 January 1943, I decided to return to Warsaw. I was walked to the station by Sadowski, who then left me because I had attracted the attention of German SD-men. This was because my arm was in a sling and I had a cane. I was arrested, but managed to bribe my captors, who drove me up to Warsaw and let set me free for 5000 zlotys.
In Warsaw, I had my wounds dressed at the Maltański Hospital. Previously, my wounds were dressed by farmers in Ostrówek and I contracted some kind of blood infection in my leg. When I had left the hospital after being treated, I stayed in a private house where I had to undergo treatment under Dr. […], a surgeon, for three months.
Next, I hid in Włochy near Warsaw until 17 January 1945. During that time, I was twice disturbed by the German Gendarmerie, having been denounced, but I managed to pay them off with bribes.
The report was read out.