Warsaw, 21 January 1946. Associate judge Antoni Krzętowski, delegated to the Warszawa- Miasto Branch of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed the person named below as a witness. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the significance of the oath, the judge took an oath therefrom The witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Gryglaszewski Kazimierz |
| Parents’ names | Stanisław and Bolesława |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Bagatela Street 10, flat 17 |
| Occupation | co-owner of a shop |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, I was working in my shop, located in my house at Bagatela Street 10. Once I realised what was going on, I immediately closed the shop and went to my apartment, which was located on the ground floor of the same house. I lived in this apartment together with my sister, Maria Gryglaszewska, and my brother-in-law, Julian Chmielewski.
On 5 August the Germans took us from the apartment with the intent to deliver us to the Gestapo at aleja Szucha. However my sister, already standing in the gate, returned to the apartment, and then we followed her on the pretext that we wanted to fetch her – the Germans granted us permission to return to the apartment, and we made use of this opportunity and hid from the Germans in the cellar, where they were unable to find us.
A few days later my brother-in-law left the cellar to get some cigarettes and never returned. I found his body lying in the courtyard of our house, in March 1945 as I recall. Once my brother-in-law went missing, I moved with my sister to the attic of the building and there we remained until 27 August. The attic contained a single-room flat that before the Uprising was occupied by one of the tenants, who went missing on the day fighting commenced.
On 27 August two Germans came to the attic, ordering us to leave and go to the Gestapo offices at Szucha Street. In the street one German post would hand us over to another, and in this way we reached the Gestapo building. There, following a brief interrogation, my sister was sent to Pruszków, while I, together with a group of 13 men, was sent to work. We were ordered to Litewska Street, where in house no. 14 I was tasked with carrying sacks of foodstuffs from one floor to another. Before the uprising, as some of my friends informed me, this house was used as a transit point for prisoners released from Pawiak. During the time I worked there, the house contained only a small stock of food. I saw a great quantity of men’s clothing and shoes. These items were gathered in the chapel (before the War, the house at Litewska Street 14 functioned as an orphanage) and taken away on trucks – where to, I don’t know.
I myself only once saw two trucks loaded with clothing from the chapel. I don’t know how many items of clothing were kept there. The clothes were used, of various types, and I saw no blood stains on them. My friends told me that they also saw cassocks amongst these clothes.
We were also used to prepare barricades for the Germans. Before Christmas 1944 we were transferred to the railway blocks at Chałubińskiego Street. We stayed there right up until the liberation of Warsaw.
Our work consisted in removing bodies from the city streets, keeping the streets clean in general, removing the rubble of burned-down houses, in order to prepare them as apartments for Germans, and removing and loading various items that the Germans took with them when they fled Warsaw.
I myself took part in the removal of bodies only once. This was in Nowy Świat Street. Human bodies were then incinerated together with a dead horse which had blocked the street. The Germans ordered us to bring logs, which they proceeded to set alight, thus burning both the corpse of the animal and the human cadavers. Friends who were more frequently engaged in the removal of bodies from the city streets and houses told me that corpses were also collected and buried in pits.
I know for a fact that after the uprising collapsed, the Germans deliberately – and right up until they left Warsaw – set fire to houses that had escaped the fighting.
I did not witness this myself, but since the civilian population was not present in Warsaw at the time, and new fires kept on erupting all around the city, I am sure that only the Germans could have been responsible.
Around Christmas, when the Royal Castle was ablaze, I saw Germans taking photographs of the conflagration.
Apart from the military units that were posted to the city’s defensive lines, Warsaw was also home to detachments that did not take part in the defensive fighting, and in my opinion it was these that were starting the fires.
When I lived in the house at Bagatela Street 10, circumstances were not conducive to observing what was happening in the open-air kindergarten and on the premises the Chief Inspectorate of the Armed Forces. My flat was situated on the opposite side of the house, and whatever screams may have come from victims from the kindergarten did not reach our ears at that time – this would have been all the more so later, when we were hiding in the cellar. I was in a better position to make observations later, when I moved with my sister to the attic of the house, however this was around 20 August and I think that at this time no executions (or at least no large-scale ones) were being carried out in the open-air kindergarten. At the beginning of the uprising, however, I often heard the sound of shots coming from the premises of the Inspectorate and the open-air kindergarten, and this was accompanied from the same direction by a whiff of burning.
When I moved to the attic, I no longer noticed anything of interest – even though I looked outside from time to time. Cows were then grazing on the land of the open-air kindergarten. I also saw labourers, who were used to bury the bodies of German soldiers. During that time I observed some 20 graves dug by those labourers.
As regards the house at Litewska Street 14, I would like to clarify that the chapel contained only clothing, while shoes were gathered in one of the rooms on the ground floor. I don’t know how many there were there. Sometimes my friends would try to obtain a shoe ration, and I know that in some instances the Germans allowed them to take footwear from that room. The Germans did not officially grant such shoe rations.