MAKSYMILIAN RUDOWSKI

Łódź, 1 June 1946. Investigative Judge S. Krzyżanowska interviewed the person specified below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Maksymilian Rudowski
Age 64
Names of parents Karol and Henryka
Place of residence Łódź, Wólczańska Street 29
Occupation Supreme Court judge
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic [sic]
Criminal record none
Relationship to the parties none

I have been and I still am the deputy president of the consistory of the Protestant Church of the Augsburg Confession in Warsaw. The content of the memorandum concerning the persecution of the Augsburg Protestant Church dated 30 April 1940, number S.dz. 424, was known to me through the consistory. I was not in direct contact with defendant Fischer, governor of the Warsaw district, or with his administration and police bodies.

After the first period of the occupation, when the bishop and a few other priests from the Warsaw district were arrested, in May 1940, I went to Radom and I handled the consistory matters only during two-week visits to my family in Warsaw, keeping the object of my activity in secret. During the entire period of the occupation we managed to organize a secret meeting of the consistory only twice, during which the plans of the church for the post-war period were discussed. It was planned at that time (1943) to create, or rather revive, the Consistory Court. The legal adviser of the consistory, Lauter, at the time the acting president of the court, appealed with the Department of Justice to the head of the district for information concerning the possibility of implementing a plan for the revival of the Consistory Court. Mr. Lauter reported this matter at a secret consistory, during which he repeated the opinion of one of the members of the Department of Justice that he should not pursue it. For this reason, the consistory did not exhibit any outside activity.

Other matters described in the memorandum can be discussed and presented in more detail by Father Michelis, who after his return from the camp acted as the second head priest of the Polish Augsburg Protestant parish in Warsaw throughout the occupation.

From the internal affairs of the board of the Warsaw parish I know that the German Augsburg Protestant parish in Warsaw (under Minister Krusche) took over the files, or rather what was left unburnt from the files of the consistory. I don’t know whether this happened upon an order from the administrative authorities, but it was probably so.