JANINA SŁUPCZYŃSKA

In Warsaw, on 8 March 1946, Halina Wereńko, District Investigative Judge of the 2nd region of the District Court in Warsaw, delegated to the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in the capital city of Warsaw, interviewed the below-mentioned as a witness. After advising the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations, and of the meaning of the oath, the judge took her oath in accordance with the provisions of Article 109 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, following which the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Janina Słupczyńska, née Kupczyńska
Parents’ first names Kazimierz and Apolonia, née Kosacka
Date of birth 14 March 1900
Occupation Shop assistant at the Różycki market in Praga district
Education Eight classes of handicraft school in Lublin
Place of residence Warsaw, Dobrowoja Street 15, flat 9
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic

The outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 caught me in building no. 132 on Wolska Street in Warsaw. On 3 July 1944, together with my husband Wiesław Słupczyński, who was an engineer by trade, we moved to the cellars of the warehouse in Sowiński Park, where the janitor and a few residents of the municipal building on Elekcyjna Street, on the corner of Wolska Street, the Żabicki family (three people), Józef Krupiński (a young insurgent) and Pasterski were also staying. Altogether there were ten people.

On the morning of 5 August 1944 I heard screaming and moaning from the direction of Wolska Street. I went out of the cellar, and saw that a mass execution of men, women, and children was taking place by the park fence, on the sidewalk of Wolska Street. The Hankiewicz building (Wolska Street 129) was in flames. I went back to the cellar. In the afternoon, I saw civilian men carry corpses to the park square and arrange them in piles. At about 3.00 p.m. I got to the rampart around the warehouse outbuildings, beneath the spruce trees. I saw a ditch dug a dozen or so steps from the gate, in which five men were kneeling, their faces to the ground. “Ukrainians” in German uniforms standing next to them – I recognized that they were “Ukrainians” from their shouts – shot the people kneeling with a handheld machine gun. I saw SS men next to the Ukrainians (black epaulettes and badges on their uniform lapels) – they finished off the wounded. The corpses were taken by men from the group carrying the corpses to the piles of bodies. I saw another five men called to the ditch, and that they knelt down in turn. I think these five had been selected from the group of men carrying the corpses because they were half-dressed and very tired, because of the heat and the work. Having seen the execution, I broke down and asked our men in the shelter to run away to the Orthodox cemetery. At 4.00 a.m. on 6 August 1944, my husband, Pasterski, Krupiński, and a fourth man whose surname I don’t know, left. I never came across any of them again, they vanished without a trace. On 5 August 1944 at about 4.00 p.m., I had seen a car arrive at Wolska Street, near the park, and a German officer got out of it. He called [out] something a few times. After he had gone, the executions continued. Later on, people told me that the officer had brought the order to cease shooting civilians.

On 6 August 1944, after the men had left, German soldiers found me, Pasterska, and the young Żabicka in the cellar. We were directed to the Church of St. Lawrence in Wola, and from there by foot in the direction of Pruszków.

I escaped from the transport in Ursus.

At this point the report was concluded and read out.