On 31 May 1947 in Radom, the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes with its seat in Radom, this in the person of a member of the Commission, lawyer Zygmunt Gloger, interviewed the person mentioned hereunder as a witness, without taking an oath. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Kazimierz Szczerbiński |
| Age | 52 years old |
| Parents’ names | Władysław and Wanda, née Furgo |
| Place of residence | Radom, Bydgoska Street 5, flat 1 |
| Occupation | railway office worker |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
| Relationship to the parties | none |
Between 1937 and 1945, I resided permanently in Garbatka. In the summer of 1942 – I don’t remember the exact month or day – Garbatka was surrounded by a cordon of troops: gendarmes, “Russian” and “Ukrainian” auxiliaries, and Gestapo men. There was a soldier standing every few feet, so it was impossible to escape. Those who attempted to do so were fired at, and the shots rang out constantly. The arrests themselves started in the night and lasted until late afternoon the next day.
All of those detained were herded into two school buildings located next to the train station – where the railway headquarters was also situated. And it was there that the Germans conducted interrogations, during which they would regularly beat the arrestees (or so I was told by informers who observed the buildings from afar). They said that after such examinations, the victims would be taken to the second building. A few hundred people were arrested at the time – the entire local intelligentsia, teachers, doctors, the pharmacist, priest, nearly all the shop owners, and a few criminals. When a train arrived, anyone who got off in Garbatka would be detained.
If my memory serves me right, on the second or third day the prisoners were loaded onto trucks – handcuffed and tied up in twos – and driven off in the direction of Kielce. It was at this time, I think, that the Germans also liquidated the ghetto in Garbatka, whereas all the elderly Jews, women and children were shot dead. No more than two weeks passed before people started receiving telegrams from Oświęcim informing of the deaths of family members. A great many such telegrams came in. As a matter of fact, only a small number of the arrestees ever returned.
Residents commonly suspected the following of bringing about these arrests: village leader Bernacik and his son; the painter Rutka; an official from the Railway Administration Office; a man by the surname of Gajek, who worked for the commune of Policzna during the occupation (and his son, too); and a person whose surname I am unable to recall. In 1943 or 1944, partisans hanged the abovementioned people in the local forest. No other arrests were subsequently carried out in Garbatka on such a large scale, however round-ups were organized regularly, with the victims being sent to Germany for labor. One of the larger round-ups, in the course of which approximately one thousand people were transported, took place in 1944. People were so troubled by these round-ups that they finally started building shelters away from their homes – in the forest and even in well shafts – just to escape deportation. The round-ups were most numerous in 1943 and 1944.