On 30 October 1945 in Bydgoszcz Appellate Judge for Cases of Exceptional Significance Józef Skórzyński, acting as a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, interviewed the person named below as a witness and obtained the following testimony:
My name is: Ludwik Roehr, son of Karol and Olimpia, age 70, Calvinist, barrister, legal counsellor at the Provincial Peasants’ Mutual Aid Society in Bydgoszcz, I reside at aleja 1 Maja 63
During the German occupation I was a member and treasurer of the Warsaw Commissioners Barristers’ Council; the president of the Council was Edward Gruber, presently deceased. When in October last year I was forced to leave Warsaw and found myself in Milanówek, where Gruber then resided, I met a few Warsaw notaries at his home. The discussion they were having concerned thinking up a way to reach Warsaw in order to save notarial deposits and mortgage registers from the Hipoteka building. Gruber, knowing that I too wanted to go to Warsaw, to save from my private apartment at Poznańska Street 23 at least a part of my personal belongings and files from my chambers, proposed that I travel as the representative of the Commissioners Barristers’ Council to the deputy of the Warsaw governor, Dr Gollert, whom we knew due to the fact that for a certain time he had been the head of the justice department of the Warsaw Government, and attempt to obtain from him a permit for removing the mortgage registers from the Hipoteka building. At the time, Gollert had his offices in Sochaczew and acted in the capacity of deputy to the governor of Warsaw, Fischer, having an official title: Chef des Amtes. He received me on 23 October of last year. Having listened to my request concerning the mortgage registers, he declared that he lacked competence in the case, for the matter was to be conducted by counsellor Hinuber.
At the same time, however, he expressed his surprise at the fact that the Commissioners Barristers’ Council was striving to remove the mortgage registers from Warsaw. When I replied that he himself, being a barrister, must appreciate the enormity of the loss that would be suffered by credit institutions and how detrimental this would be to the security of cash turnover, Gellert declared: Warsaw is to be destroyed regardless (Warschau wird so wie so vernichtet worden). I was horrified and said: how can this be possible (wie so ist, das möglich), whereupon he added that such is the decision taken by the command of the battle group and the Warsaw governor (Es hat so Kampfkomando und Gouverneur besschlossen). When in spite of all this I asked Gollert to allow me free passage to my apartment, he refused categorically and cited his lack of competence to issue permits for entering Warsaw as an excuse, additionally explaining that any and all Polish movables remaining in Warsaw are intended for suffering Germans in the Reich.
I would like to stress that before the War Gollert was reportedly a barrister in Szczecin. Furthermore, he was a high-ranking member of the party and the SS, and authored a book entitled Warschau unter Deutschen Verwaltung, in which he intentionally lied that inSeptember 1939 Poles had murdered 50 thousand Germans in Bydgoszcz.
I have read the report.