On 6 May 1948, in Warsaw, member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Warsaw, Judge Halina Wereńko, in the presence of summoned Józef Ratajczyk and Zdzisław Ratajczyk, conducted an inspection of the ruined wing of the Main Inspectorate of the Armed Forces at aleja Szucha 12/14, in Warsaw, next to the park.
A site plan of the building was made during the inspection, attached to this report.
Józef and Zdzisław Ratajczyk announced that in August and September 1944 the walls of the ruined building, marked on the plan as CDEF, were still standing, the windows had been boarded up, apart from a single window onto the park, in the spot marked “b” on the plan, and a window onto the courtyard, marked “a.”
Three boards were placed against the window giving onto the courtyard, marked “a,” with narrow boards nailed to them, like steps. Up those steps, SD-men led groups of civilians inside. The groups were taken across the building to the room with the window marked “b.” Through there, their clothes were thrown out periodically, which the witnesses saw a number of times. The clothes were transported on platforms to the camp at Litewska Street 14. In the next room, marked “e,” next to the window marked “d,” on 24 August 1944 witness Zdzisław Ratajczyk saw corpses lying without clothes through a crack in the boards covering the window.
At the moment of the inspection, the building was a pile of rubble, and it is impossible to determine the placement of the window apertures. Witness Józef Ratajczyk states that in late October 1944 he was [there] with a group of workers and was brought inside the building marked “CDEF.” In the middle of the building, in the place marked “d,” the floor over the central heating pipe had been removed from an area measuring around 4 meters and there were ashes and burned bones there. This was the place from which the witness saw clouds of smoke rising during his stay at the Gestapo HQ (aleja Szucha 25) from 23 August to around September, and later until late September from the camp on Litewska Street. One could smell the characteristic smell of burned corpses at the time.
Currently, an empty canal is visible there, from which, according to the exhumation report from 24-31 July and 1 August 1946, 5578.5 kg of ash and unburned bone were removed.
The place is marked with the letter “d” on the plan. There were columns or beams around the canal on both sides, of which no trace remains. In late October 1944, the witness along with a group of workers, ordered by SD-men, covered the ashes with rubble, iron beams and metal junk. While doing this work, the witness saw multiple bullet marks on the wall marked “g” and “h.” Both witnesses [also] saw [bullet holes] in the wall of the building adjacent to the park, between points “e” and “f.” Both witnesses saw SD-men, their faces covered with green veils, lead groups of civilian men into the premises of the Main Inspectorate of the Armed Forces [GISZ] over the boards. The SD-men walked in pairs, one had an automatic pistol, the other an ammunition box. After the group had been led into the building, the witnesses heard shots and saw SD-men walking out of the building. The male civilians did not come out.
At that the inspection report was concluded.
(Site plan attached).