Warsaw, 7 July 1948. Judge Halina Wereńko, a member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, interviewed the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for giving false testimony, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Reverend Wacław Stanisław Ośko |
| Names of parents | Władysław and Rozalia née Mach |
| Date of birth | 20 April 1901, Ksawerów, Radom district |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| State of affiliation and nationality | Polish |
| Education | higher theological |
| Occupation | provost |
| Place of residence | Pilczyca, Końskie county |
On 7 or 8 August (I cannot remember the exact date), I arrived at the care facility for the elderly and handicapped in Warsaw, at Przyrynek Street 4, next to the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, run by the Daughters of Charity. The neighboring buildings housed a refuge for the elderly run by the municipal board. There were up to 200 elderly and handicapped there – women only, as far as I know. There were more boarders in the municipal refuge, and I believe that there were both men and women there. On 12 August, the Old Town came under heavy fire from all directions. On 29 August, around noon, German soldiers, the so- called “Ukrainians”, under German command, entered our premises. They ordered us out of the house. At that time, I was in the basement together with the nuns and their charges. There were 16 or 18 elderly women lying in one of the cells, while a couple dozen were unable to walk. Before I left, I heard sister Zofia Kowalczyk ask one German to let her stay with them, but he didn’t agree. Chmielewska came out in the first group and I followed, the handicapped and the elderly women coming after me. I saw that the Daughters of Charity and the ill elderly women had stayed in the basement. We were led through the rubble parallel to Przyrynek Street and then the nuns who had stayed with the elderly women lying in the basement caught up with us. They said that the German soldiers had thrown grenades into the basement.
At the beginning of March 1945, through the windows of the care facility basement, I saw corpses lying inside.
Before 29 August, I saw that the Germans had not yet reached the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was protected by insurgent barricades. However, half an hour after we left, our group had a stop and we were joined by people from the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary. These people, whom I didn’t know, said that at the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Germans had murdered a couple dozen elderly women from the municipal care facility, throwing grenades and firing at them from machine guns. We were grouped together in a school near the Citadel, where we spent the night. There, we were handed over to the SD. The following day, in the morning of 30 August, an SD officer announced that those unable to walk would be transported in lorries. If memory serves me right, five lorries arrived and the elderly, the weak and the handicapped were loaded onboard the vehicles, in groups of around 50 people per vehicle. At one point, I wanted to put sister Anna Moc, who was ill, in a lorry, but one German soldier told me that “there is no need for it.” The lorries drove off and these persons disappeared without a trace. Myself and the remaining people were escorted to the Pfeiffer factory on Okopowa Street. On our way there, as I was helping sister Moc walk, I said it was a pity she had not been put in a lorry. Then, one of the guards escorting us said in Polish: “It’s not a pity, father.” After we arrived in the courtyard of the Pfeiffer factory, the Germans divided us into those fit and those who were infirm. The selection was made by a couple of Germans on the strength of physical appearance, without checking documents. The group from the care facility stuck together; the nuns stayed in this group and it was joined by all those been deemed unfit to work, even though there were also young people among them. Together with Chmielewska and a couple of other persons, we wanted to join the care facility group, but the Germans wouldn’t let us, claiming that we were fit to work. Before 3 p.m., I saw the Germans summon the nuns, eight of them, to the house where the command post was. Soon afterwards, we were taken away from the factory grounds, and a group of some 300 people, whom the Germans had deemed unfit to work, remained in the courtyard. That group, as well as the eight nuns disappeared without a trace. Previously, I had handed out money to the handicapped girls, on condition that they would square up with me when we met, and gave them the address of my vicarage in Pilczyca; the nuns also knew the address. Without doubt, if any of these persons were still alive, they would have come to us. Myself and the group of those fit to work were taken to St. Adalbert’s Church on Wolska Street, from where we were transported to the Western Train Station [Dworzec Zachodni]. On our way there, one of the guards who escorting us, in response to one woman’s complaints that we were being sent to labor and would have been better off staying with the handicapped and the elderly, clearly stated that we were never going to see them alive again. At the Western Train Station, SD-men took me and six other people to the SD command post at the vicarage of St. Adalbert’s Church. We were told that we would call on the Old Town residents through loudspeakers to move out. Fortunately, the loudspeakers were broken, but we were subjected to a thorough interrogation. I witnessed the interrogation of people captured in action. They were being terribly tortured; I saw two men kneeling, their faces to the wall and their hands tied behind their backs with barbed wire; they had been beaten up, their clothes torn. There was a young girl with them in the corridor. One of the SD-men was questioning them, hitting their heads against the wall. In the evening, we started to distribute water among the people from the Old Town roundup. The Germans made us join this group, which, after a night spent in St. Adalbert’s Church, was transported to the Pruszków transit camp the next day.