With regard to the approaching trial of Fischer, we would like to submit a note to the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes which reflects our experiences during the first days of the uprising in a certain part of Warsaw, the most heavily impacted part.
This refers to the so-called German district, encompassing the following: aleja Róż, part of Koszykowa Street from Aleje Ujazdowskie to Mokotowska Street, Natolińska, Służewska, 6 Sierpnia from Aleje Ujazdowskie to Zbawiciela Square, Mokotowska from number 8, including the Wawelberg school, the odd-numbered side of Marszałkowska from Unii Lubelskiej Square to Zbawiciela Square, Oleandrów, Bagatela, Flory, Klonowa, part of Chocimska, Puławska, and Rakowiecka streets.
From 1 to 5 August 1944, a strong German crew, consisting of Gestapo men from aleja Szucha and Litewska Street, and thugs from the SS – Germans and Ukrainians – quartered in the nearby houses/barracks on Służewska, Natolińska, Bagatela, Klonowa and Rakowskiecka streets, would abduct defenceless civilians from the said district to aleja Szucha, not sparing the sick, the elderly or children. Their houses and possessions were burned down. Acts of brutality and murder proliferated. For example, the director of the BTH company, engineer Józef Sobecki, was shot along with Mr. Karnicki, Mrs. Kawelinowa, and a number of others in the courtyard of Marszałkowska Street 17, and the Germans threw two grenades into a shelter overflowing with residents of an already burning house (c. 150 people).
Having led people out of the buildings set on fire, they looted mainly watches, jewellery and money, separated the men from the women and drove us, the women, to aleja Szucha or to the fire station on Unii Lubelskiej Square. There, around thirty hostages were executed, including two sisters, the wives of Przemysław Kleniewski and Karol Szlenkier, and Mrs. Dziekońska; their husbands were also killed. A few hundred young women were chosen from among those gathered at aleja Szucha, and pushed as living shields in front of and onto tanks attacking insurgent positions on Piusa IX Street. A tank set alight by the insurgents with an accurate throw of a bottle full of petrol allowed some of the wretched women to escape to the Polish district. The rest returned to aleja Szucha under a strong German escort and were told that the same experiment would be repeated the next day. After a horrible night spent in the slushy courtyard of the Gestapo building, we were led out via Litewska Street to Marszałkowska Street and were allowed to go to the Polish district.
At that, our tormentors told us to proclaim their power and persuade the Poles to stop fighting.
We never met our husbands, father, sons, and brothers again. We learned from the priests from the Church of Our Savior, who had been released from aleja Szucha, that the Germans tortured the men in a savage way. They were placed along the wall of the children’s clinic on Litewska Street and shot at just above their heads for several hours.
Then they were rushed to aleja Szucha, to the Stauferkaserne on Rakowiecka Street, and to Mokotów prison. There were around 10,000 men from roughly 300 houses, aged 14 to 80. There was no news so far about what had happened to this mass of men. Only terrible rumors went around that they had all been executed. The executions were supposed to have taken place inside so-called sports grounds at the Main Inspectorate of the Armed Forces [GISZ], in the park on Bagatela Street, in Mokotów prison and in the Stauferkaserne. At the last of these places, so much blood was spilt that it was difficult to walk in the courtyard.
In the house at aleja Szucha 14 a crematorium was found, in which supposedly thousands of executed individuals had been burned on 1, 2 and 3 August – men, women and children.
We know from the Nuremberg trial that Guderian and Reinhardt had directed that action.
It is also known from the attached plan, given by von dem Bach to our prosecutor Mr. Jerzy Sawicki, that the part of the city of which we are speaking was under SS Obergruppenführer Geibel.
On behalf of hundreds, or rather thousands of orphaned women, we are firmly asking that Fischer be forced to reveal the whereabouts of the executioner of our husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers.
Maybe he will come to Warsaw among the eight thousand criminals who are supposed to be handed over to the Poles and judged at the site of their crimes.
Geibel could say if all the men were executed, and if so then where their documents are, as they were supposedly put in chests to be presented to Himmler.
There is also another version going around Warsaw, according to which some of the men from that quarter were transported to Germany proper.
In support of our report we are attaching a tiny portion of the announcements, including thousands of searches for men from the aforementioned Warsaw streets, and a number of names of scholars, professors, engineers, doctors etc. of whom their families still have no news, even though others, deported to Germany at different times during the uprising, have sent news of themselves.
The surnames of these men are the following, although we have to note that we are only providing the names of those known to us personally, we do not know thousands of other names.
Professor Gustaw Hentzel, famous across Europe, electrical expert
Professor Stanisław Przyłęcki, famous across Europe, chemical physiologist, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Warsaw University, and his son Wojciech, Marszałkowska St. 35
Eng. Stefan Ossowiecki, Marszałkowska St. 17
Professor Michał Prawdzic and his son Stanisław
Professor Adam Bendyński, headmaster of the Wawelberg School
Chudzicki, warden at the Wawelberg School
Professor Władysław Kosieradzki, Służewska St. 4
Zygmunt Przedrzymirski, banker, 6 Sierpnia St. 4
Eng. Władysław Srzednicki, former director of Żyrardów, Natolińska St. 7
Eng. Tadeusz Orłowski, owner of an office and a factory, 6 Sierpnia St. 18
Doctor of philosophy Karol Szlenkier, 6 Sierpnia St. 16
Przemysław Kleniewski, farmer, 6 Sierpnia St. 16
Wacław Dziekoński and son, 6 Sierpnia St. 4
Andrzej Sokołowski, 80 years old, 6 Sierpnia St. 2
Eng. Eugeniusz Karpiński, head of the Emigration Syndicate, 6 Sierpnia St. 14
Fulde, aleja Róż 6
Cybulski, musician, aleja Róż 6
Adam Uklański, owner of the battery factory Saturn, Flory St. 9
Andrzej Daszewski, Flory St. 9
Andrzej Sztompka, 15 years old, a pianist’s nephew, Bagatela St. 15
Eng. Klemens Ziembiński, Bagatela St. 15
Tadeusz Biliński, secondary school teacher, Bagatela St. 15
Iwanicki, farmer, Oleandrów St.
Wacław Herniczek, Oleandrów St. 7
Stanisław Herniczek, Marszałkowska St. 25
Antoni Snopczyński, head of the Crafts Chamber, Marszałkowska St. 25
Dzieduszycki, Marszałkowska St. 17
Eng. Cegielski and son, Marszałkowska St. 35
Tadeusz Brzeski, head of a bank, Marszałkowska St. 35
Aleksander Szepelski, student, son of a professor of dentistry at Warsaw University
Józef Jabłoński, gasworks worker
Feliks Nowacki, concierge
Przyłuski Andrzej, shop owner
Sawicki Kazimierz
Eng. Iwanowski
Rzepko-Laski, professor
Eng. Stanisław Kowalewski, chemist
Odolski, Marszałkowska St. 33
Światłowski, factory owner.
Geibel or Fischer should answer when and where they were deported.
We are only providing a small number, in relation to the whole, of names of men known to us, of whom there has been no news. As you see, there are numerous eminent individuals on the list, representing but a tiny fraction of all the losses.
Warsaw, 23 May 1946
We add that it has reached us that Geibel is supposedly dead and the whole murderous action on aleja Szucha was directed in August 1944 by a certain captain Birkner, a Gestapo man. It would be desirable to make efforts to find and interrogate him.
Zofia Iwaszkiewicz
Halina Przyłęcka
Zofia Ossowiecka
Eng. Marian Sztos, owner of a sewage plant, Koszykowa St. 5
Eng. Zaczek, associate professor at Lwow University, Koszykowa St. 5
Eng. Kazimierz Zaniewski and his son Tadeusz
Tadeusz Skrzypiciel, hairdresser
Eng. Stanisław Gayny, Marszałkowska St. 31
Antoni Czeczot, Mokotowska St. 5
Eng. Więckowski, owner of the Motor factory
Ratyński, director of PKO
Czekay, owner of a medical supplies warehouse
Judge Zaborowski, Oleandrów St.
Professor Iwaszkiewicz, Koszykowa St. 5
Professor Janusz Iwaszkiewicz, Wilno University (Faculty of History), School of Historical Sciences in Warsaw
Halina Przyłęcka
Zofia Ossowiecka
Zofia Iwaszkiewicz
Att. 1.
Peszyński Stanisław, lawyer resident at Marszałkowska St. 15 taken from his home on 6 August 1944 to the Gestapo HQ (aleja Szucha 25)