MARIAN PRUMM

On 24 June 1946 in Warsaw, Deputy Prosecutor Zofia Rudziewicz interviewed the person specified below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Marian Prumm
Date of birth 19 August 1901
Names of parents Christian and Katarzyna
Place of residence Warszawa, Grochowska Street 131, flat 9
Place of birth Łódź
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Occupation head of the chancellery of the School Inspectorate
Relationship to the parties none
Criminal record none
Education humanities-oriented secondary school in Łódź

During the war, I was employed at the School Inspectorate for the City of Warsaw as the head of the chancellery, and thus I am familiar with the attitude of the German authorities towards Polish schooling.

The Education Office was suspended at the beginning of 1940 upon the order of Fischer, who created a schooling department (Abteilung Schulwesen) in the district.

School supervisors, who as a rule had to be German, were appointed by municipal and county governors; a Polish schooling inspectorate functioned alongside them.

Regulations concerning schooling were issued by the schooling authorities in the district, that is, by authorities subordinated to Fischer, whose objective was clearly to completely reduce the level of Polish education.

The district issued a regulation on the withdrawal of and prohibition against using any handbooks used up until then for studying Polish, history, and geography in elementary schools.

Under a district regulation, schools were ordered to remove all teaching aids, such as maps, globes, historical pictures and so on. These aids were deposited in a special storage unit at Górnicka Street 4 and removed to Germany, or destroyed even before the uprising; I can say this, since the school headmasters who accessed this storage unit to check whether the maps were still there, were unable to find them.

Under a district regulation it was prohibited to teach history and geography in elementary schools, while the level of teaching Polish was reduced by means of limiting the hours spent of this subject.

Children were deprived of handbooks, with the exception of a periodical titled “Ster” [“Rudder”], which was published by the German authorities.

The level of education was reduced, since there was no specialization.

Before the war, the obligation to complete compulsory education had been supervised by a special public education committee. Since the Germans dissolved the schools’ self-government, the obligation to complete compulsory education was not observed during the occupation. The Polish school inspectorate influenced one of German school supervisors to submit to the district a request to introduce the obligation to complete compulsory education, but the district refused.

This clearly demonstrates that the German authorities wanted to increase the number of illiterate people. Indeed, this number did increase.

Before the war, there were around one hundred and fifty thousand children who were old enough to fall under the obligation to complete compulsory education, of which around one hundred and forty thousand fulfilled this obligation. During the occupation, around sixty- five thousand children were fulfilling the obligation to complete compulsory education, while the number of children who should have been covered by this obligation was roughly the same as before the war.

The Germans seized school buildings and the children used substitute premises. This adversely affected their health, since it often happened that such premises did not meet the most fundamental hygienic requirements.

General high schools were abolished on the basis of a district regulation in 1940. Only vocational schools with a very poor level of teaching were permitted. The curriculum for vocational schools was imposed by the district. It did not include classes in history, geography, or Polish. It was clear that the Germans wanted to create a population of workers and craftsmen, but they wanted no intelligentsia in Poland.

Relying on a district regulation, the Arbeitsamt ordered schools to send students to work for the benefit of the German army. Schools were forced to deliver the appointed quotas if they wanted to save themselves from being liquidated and the children from being deported.

All of the abovementioned regulations passed through my hands due to the post that I held.