Warsaw, 23 April 1948. Member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, Judge Halina Wereńko, interviewed the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
My name is Józef Rączkowski, son of Władysław and Julia née Grzegorzewska, born on 12
April 1907 in Mława, Roman Catholic, of Polish national and state affiliation, completed seven years of elementary school, a hairdresser by profession, owner of a hairdressing salon at Puławska Street 118 in Warsaw, residing in Warsaw at Litewska Street 4, flat 27.
Since 1941, I worked as a hairdresser in a hairdressing salon run by a German, Waldemar Stelle. The main salon was located at Bagatela Street 14, it had a branch at aleja Szucha 25, in the building occupied by the Gestapo, on the ground floor, from the front. Already in 1941 I was assigned to the salon at aleja Szucha 25. While at work during the German occupation I thrice saw corpses, covered with paper, carried on stretchers from the floor where the prisoner examinations took place to the exit doors. Those were the corpses of interrogated people, a car from Pawiak prison took them, the same which had brought them in to be examined.
I don’t remember the dates, it was in 1942 and 1943. I don’t know the names of the prisoners.
I don’t remember the dates either, but it happened three times that prisoners jumped out of the window before an examination.
In the first days of the uprising, I was in the house at Litewska Street 4. On 3 August, a unit of Gestapo men (in uniforms with black lapels on their collars and with skulls) and Ukrainians took me along with the other residents of our house to the Gestapo HQ. I know that a unit of Ukrainians was stationed at aleja Szucha 21. I was in a “tram” (a cell in the basements) and from there, the head of the hairdressing salon, Volksdeutsch Szymański, took me to work in the salon. The following hairdressers were at the salon together with me: Kryczkowicz (he now has a salon at Marszałkowska Street 18) and Durski (he now works as a hairdresser at the Polonia Hotel). We were not allowed to (go out) leave the salon, Szymański guarded us, even at night.
I remained there until the end of August, when I managed to leave Warsaw by car.
Staying in the salon, starting from 3 August 1944, I saw through the window crowds of men being led to the gate of the property at aleja Szucha 25 and, after some time, groups of men being led along aleja Szucha in the direction of the park.
The salon window didn’t give a view of the gate to the former Main Inspectorate of the Armed Forces [GISZ], through which the park could be accessed.
I cannot tell how many groups or the number of men were led in and out each day. The peak of groups being led in and out was until 7 August. Until the end of my stay in Warsaw, groups of men were also led in and out of the Gestapo HQ, but it was not on as mass a scale as in the first days.
In the period before the uprising, I knew many of the Gestapo men staying at aleja Szucha 25 by sight, I saw the same faces during the Warsaw Uprising. I don’t remember the surnames of those Germans, except for Hahn, who was called Komandeur. Around 10 August (I don’t remember the exact date) Hahn came to the salon accompanied by two armed Gestapo men. I shaved him, so I was able to recognize him.
At that the report was concluded and read out.