Warsaw, 20 May 1948. Member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, Judge Halina Wereńko, interviewed the person specified below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false accusations, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Tadeusz Marian Knapp aka Knap |
| Names of parents | Ludwik and Maria née Gierasin |
| Date of birth | 10 January 1924, in Warsaw |
| State and national affiliation | Polish |
| Education | high school |
| Occupation | student of the Academy of Political Sciences, Social Department |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Spokojna Street 3 |
The outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising caught me at Narbutta Street 50. On 3 August 1944, around 4.00 p.m., an SS unit stationed in the Stauferkaserne came to our house. SS men released a volley in the yard, then went down to the basements and started calling all residence to get out. They robbed us in the gate, taking watches and valuables. Next, they checked documents. We were led out onto Narbutta Street through Kazimierzowska Street. We passed by a tank on the corner of Kazimierzowska Street and Narbutta Street, and its crew, consisting of SS men, beat the passing men with their rifle butts. In the courtyard of the Stauferkaserne on Rakowiecka Street we were segregated: men working in public and private institutions were divided, and the women were released. At 9.00 p.m., while we were standing in the courtyard, the commander of the barracks spoke to us with the help of an interpreter. He said that as long as the uprising lasted we would be executed. Just after that, shots from a machine gun placed on a tower resounded. They shot at a distant target, but we waited to be executed and an atmosphere of panic reigned.
After the departure of the women, I, among a group of those employed in public companies, was led to the building to the left of the entrance. On the following day of my stay, I saw traces of bullets on the wall on the right side of the courtyard, in front of the wall of the building fingers tucked into the ground were red - had traces of blood. I don’t know who was executed under that wall or when. Rumors had it that men employed in private companies were chosen for execution.
After a few days, the Gestapo started arriving and taking groups for labor. Not all of them came back to the barracks complete. I was taken on 13 August in a group of around 20 men. We were employed in digging shooting trenches on Aleje Ujazdowskie, opposite Szopena Street. Later, I was also employed in the barracks area and in loading cars in the city. The Germans guarding us at work used to beat us with rifle butts and kick us. In September (I don’t remember the date) four other prisoners from the Stauferkaserne and I, along with a bigger group from Flak Kaserne, were moved to Wedel’s House on the corner of Puławska Street and Madalińskiego Street. We were employed in cleaning and digging shooting trenches, and burying corpses from the area of Mokotów and Czerniaków. It was already after the capitulation of Mokotów (that is, 27 September 1944). On Rakowiecka Street, we buried corpses brought from the neighboring houses, scattered individually. We buried 19 corpses of men and women from the civilian population. Before burial, German gendarmes, among others Hoffman, cut off corpses’ fingers, as long as they saw a ring on them. In Mokotów (I don’t remember the street or the house number, I would not find the way now), in a house occupied before by the Monaco consulate, we found 11 corpses of elderly people in the basements. They did not have traces of bullets, were exhausted, it seemed that they had died of hunger. On Kazimierzowska Street, in the yards at numbers 14, 16, and 18, another group, which worked simultaneously, buried 72 bodies of men and women from the civilian population and the insurgents. We walked from one house to another in Mokotów. In a quandrangle from Puławska Street to Niepodległości Ave. and from Madalińskiego Street to Grójec railway, we took insurgents’ corpses from houses, [but] the majority were from the civilian population. Hoffman, a confectioner by profession, directed our [group of] ten. A second group buried corpses in Czerniaków, Wacław Szykowny was in it (residing in Włochy).
The SS and the Wehrmacht were stationed in Wedel’s House, apart from our groups used for work.
I don’t remember the surnames of the Germans.
I don’t remember the date, after the end of the works in Mokotów, I was moved in a group of 105 men to the court building in Leszno, where we were used to move court files, to clear out the place for the Wehrmacht and the “Ukrainians”. Later, our group was moved from the court building to the “Helgoland” cinema at Złota Street 38, from which we were taken to work on Leszno Street to the courts.
I don’t remember the date. When we were moved partly to the “Społem” storehouses on Wawelska Street, we worked in loading food, when that storehouse served the Warsaw frontline.
In January 1945, I got a three-day pass. I left and did not come back.
I am attaching my pass as an attachment to this report.
At this the report was concluded and read out.