In Kielce on this day, 7 January 1948, at 11:40 AM, I, Zygmunt Jan from the Criminal Investigation Section of the Citizens’ Militia station in Kielce, acting on the basis of the following: Article 20 of the provisions introducing the Code of Criminal Procedure, maintaining the formalities listed in art. 235–240, 258 and 259 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, with the participation of reporter Józef Łunasik [?], whom I informed of his obligation to attest to the conformity of the report with the actual course of the procedure by his own signature, interviewed the person mentioned hereunder as a witness. The witness, having been advised of the importance of the oath, swore the requisite oath, and was also notified of the right to refuse testimony for the reasons set forward in Article 104 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and of the criminal liability for making false declarations, this pursuant to the provisions of Article 140 of the Penal Code, testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Jan Gąsiorek |
| Parents’ names | Piotr and Józefa |
| Age | 43 years old |
| Place of birth | Kazimierz Dolny |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Occupation | none |
| Place of residence | Wojska Polskiego Street 250, Kielce |
Regarding the present case, I am aware of the following facts. The Germans began to build the camp in the Fijałkowski barracks in August 1941. I was forced to build these barracks. In September, the Germans brought one hundred Russian prisoners to the camp. After a week, they brought 4,500 more prisoners, and after another two weeks – 5,000 more. Later, they brought prisoners in smaller groups of 500 or 1,000. These people were transported from a camp in Chełm. The Germans used them for all kinds of work: cutting trees in the forest, digging sewage ditches, and loading freight cars at the railway station in Kielce.
The prisoners at the camp were fed twice a day. The first meal consisted of so-called coffee (made of some leaves) and a kilogram of bread per ten people – for the whole day. For the second meal, the prisoners received rotten potatoes with rutabaga, which were so few that it was almost just water, and rutabaga or potato were rare. They did not get any more food.
When the prisoners were working, every day they brought back a hundred of those who had died of hunger or had been beaten to death by the Germans with wooden clubs. Such incidents happened every day.
A camp militia composed of “Ukrainians” armed with wooden sticks was organized.
They punished prisoners who somehow were guilty of something. For any offense, the prisoner was beaten to death with clubs in the camp square. After killing the prisoner, they took the body to the mortuary, where corpses were collected, and these corpses were transported on farm carts to the Bukówka forest and buried there.
Such executions took place every day in the camp square. The prisoners sentenced to beating were brought out, and the rest of the prisoners had to watch the execution. After leading out the prisoners, the Germans read the sentence from a list [informing] why the person would be beaten. Each execution was carried out by the camp militia who beat prisoners to death. The Germans watched these executions and sometimes took photos of the murders.
At the time when the most prisoners were in the camp, when there was terrible hunger, one night the prisoners broke into a food warehouse in the camp area reserved for the [German] crew. German military policemen arrived at night, pulled people out of every barrack and shot 500 people dead in the square for theft. There were no more executions by shooting in the camp.
Such a terrible famine was [there] that the prisoners went to the mortuary, where the corpses lay, and if [the corpse] had more flesh, the living prisoners cut off [pieces of] flesh with knives made of sheet metal, baked them over a fire, and ate them.
For example, if something was contrary to German orders in a barrack, they punished the prisoners from this barrack by not giving them food for three days, and those people died from hunger.
The head of the camp was German – I cannot give his name because I don’t know it. This head, who tormented prisoners the most, suffered from dysentery during the [existence of] the camp and died. His assistant was Ukrainian – I don’t know the name. There were medical quarters in the camp, but only for camp militiamen; prisoners did not use them.
Throughout the camp’s existence, about 15,000 Russian prisoners passed through it. Over the course of three months, all of them – a total of about 15,000 – were finished off by hunger and beating, and buried in the Bukówka forest.
Later, it was only a transit camp. Every week a transport of prisoners arrived and every week they were transferred to another camp. In the camp they also created a legion made up of Russian prisoners, who signed their names – they got better food, clothing, and weapons, and after some training, the legion was sent to the front.
If the prisoner had a better uniform, the Germans confiscated it and stored it, and in return he received clogs and an old uniform. If/when the prisoners were handling potatoes, and the Germans found out that someone had a potato in his pockets during a search, they killed the prisoner with their clubs immediately.
The camp was only liquidated at the end of autumn 1944, and the prisoners who were still there were transported to another camp.
I saw the above-mentioned incidents in the camp in person because I worked there.
The report was concluded, read out, and signed by the witness.