Warsaw, 5 March 1946. Acting Examining Judge Alicja Germasz, delegated to the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed the person named below as a witness. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the significance of the oath, the judge took an oath therefrom, following which the witness testified as follows:
Name and surname | Aniela Wiśniewska |
Date of birth | 20 March 1888 |
Parents’ names | Jan and Marianna |
Place of residence | Warsaw, Odrowąża Street 75 |
Religion | Roman Catholic |
Criminal record | none |
On 1 September 1940 my son Edward (21 years old) left home in the company of friends. On the evening of the same day I was informed by a friend of my son, Zieliński (I don’t know his first name or address), that my son and his friend, Zygmunt Młodecki, had been arrested by the German Gendarmerie at Grójecka Street and detained at the hostel. I went there the next day in the morning and communicated with my son through the window of the cell in which he was being kept. My son told me that he had been walking with his friends, Młodecki and Zieliński, along Grójecka Street, when a German gendarme passed them by and then looked back. My son then said, aloud: "Oh, something was not to his liking". Upon hearing these words, the gendarme turned around and arrested both my son, and his friend Młodecki. The same circumstances were confirmed by his friend Zieliński, who recounted the event, adding that the gendarme proceeded to beat my son up right there in the street.
I went to the window of the hostel a few times, and my son said that they kept on hitting him during interrogations and asking all the time about clandestine Polish newspapers.
After five days my son was taken to Mokotów prison, from where he sent me letters, while I delivered him parcels. Towards the end of January I was informed by the prison administration that my son was ill. On 2 February 1941 I was notified that my son had died at the Wola district hospital. The prison issued a burial permit and a certificate stating that my son had died of typhus. I was handed his personal belongings and the judgement.
Whereupon the witness presented a copy of a judgement issued by a German court in Warsaw, dated 7 November 1940 (4 Ja 7979/40 Cs 2161/40), whereby Edward Wiśniewski was found guilty of insulting Hilfspolizei wachmeister Brust Schwarz, a Volksdeutscher, on 1 September 1940 in Warsaw on Grójecka Street, and sentenced him to a term of imprisonment of 6 months.
I would like to add that my son’s friend, Zygmunt Młodecki, was released from prison, however he died shortly thereafter in an accident on the electric narrow-gauge train line. I don’t know his father’s address.
The report was read out.