STEFANIA DUZY

Warsaw, 15 April [no year given], acting investigating judge Alicja Germasz, delegated to the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, interviewed the person specified 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 swore in the witness, who then testified as follows:


Name and surname Stefania Duzy
Date of birth February 1910
Names of parents Paweł and Mieczysława
Occupation painter
Education higher
Place of residence Warsaw

Since 1939, I had been living at Grottgera Street 4, flat 1. Since the beginning of the Uprising, I had been in my flat. Our district was in German hands and there were no clashes with the insurgents there. On 3 August 1944 in the morning, through a window of my flat, I saw a great number of people – several hundred, it seemed to me – including men, women and a lot of children, running down the steps from Dworkowa Street to Belwederska Street. At the same time I heard a volley of machine gun fire. All of those running fell to the ground. Then, I saw a German in an SS uniform. My friend from a neighbouring house and I (I do not remember her name now) went to the Institution for Paralytics at Belwederska Street 20 and there we picked up three nurses and a stretcher to rescue the wounded. We went to Dworkowa Street, where the same SS-man was still standing upstairs. When he spotted us, he pointed a light machine gun at us and shouted angrily in Polish, “What do you want?” I replied that we had come to collect the people who were lying there. He agreed only because we undertook to dress the wounds of "his" Germans, but eventually it did not happen. From among those who were lying, about 70 people got up, rescued, some of them picking themselves up and some being taken on stretchers. We sent all of them to the Institution for Paralytics. Additionally, around 80 people died, and we buried them on the same day, with the help of the people from the neighborhood, at the foot of the steps in Dworkowa Street. Let me say that all of those killed and injured had gunshot wounds, usually to the back of their heads. The survivors included: the young Żmijewski, a confectioner, whose address I do not now, a shop assistant at the Żmijewski company (I do not know her name or address) and the owner of the bar at Puławska Street 51 (I undertake to provide her name soon). Then, I learned – I do not remember from whom since many local residents knew of the abovementioned events – that the German in SS uniform whom I saw from the window was a Volksdeutsch by the name of Maliszewski. This Maliszewski took all of the 150 people from the shelter at Puławska Street 51 and fired several rounds from a machine gun at them in Dworkowa Street, and then kicked the people lying on the ground and finished them off with revolver shots. Maliszewski was a short blond man with blue eyes and a round, florid face, and whom I might recognize. Details of the abovementioned case may be provided by a priest (I do not know his name) and the mother superior from the Institution for Paralytics at Belwederska Street 20.

In March or April 1945, Polish Red Cross carried out an exhumation at the execution site. But in my opinion, not all the bodies were exhumed then, because neither I nor the others present could indicate all locations where these bodies had been buried. Today, this place is completely covered with rubble brought from other parts of the city and buried there.

The report was read out.