Gdańsk, 10 May 1948. Investigating Judge A. Zachariasiewicz, acting in the capacity of chairman of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed the person named below as a witness, who having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Janusz Wnykowski |
| Age | 27 years old |
| Names of parents | Stanisław and Anna |
| Occupation | type-setter |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Place of residence | Gdynia, św. Piotra Street 12, flat 5 |
| Criminal record | I have a clean criminal record |
| Relationship to the parties | none |
When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, I was in my flat in Warsaw at Focha Street 4. On hearing the first shots, I went to look out of the window and saw that the civilians walking down Focha Street were being fired at from the Brühl Palace; many people were hit.
Probably on the third day of the Uprising I looked through the window and saw four women in white gowns with armbands marked with the red crosses who came over from the direction of Senatorska Street and started collecting the wounded from Wierzbowa Street. A machine gun fire was opened on these women from the Brühl Palace and all of them fell.
On the sixth or seventh day of the Uprising I saw two German tanks driving across Teatralny Square, from the direction of Wierzbowa Street in the direction of Senatorska Street. A group of some one hundred men, women and children walked in front of these tanks. Thetanks proceeded without being fired upon to the Town Hall, and when they got near thebuilding the SS-men walking among the Polish civilians opened fire towards the barricade at Senatorska Street. The insurgents from the barricade returned fire. Then, the first tank fired its cannon three times, destroying the barricade.
The house in which I lived was set on fire three times by German units using grenades. On each occasion we, the residents, managed to locate and extinguish the fire. Only on 9 August 1944 in the afternoon was the house attacked by aircraft with incendiary bombs. We soon determined that we would be unable to contain the fire, and thus we left the building, going wherever we could. I know that one group went towards the ruins of the Ministry of Agriculture, while I and many others used the basements to get to the property at Kozia Street 5. It had two courtyards. Since the fire from our abandoned house was spreading to the houses in Kozia Street, we undertook a rescue effort and subsequently kept watch; for this reason I spent the night in the courtyard, which I call the second courtyard, as opposed to the one adjacent to the Saski Hotel. I was awoken by shouts, “The Germans are coming” and the frenetic running of the Polish populace in the courtyard. The time could have been after 5.00 a.m.. Since we were gathered in the courtyard, we had no means of escape, for the Germans were advancing through the entrance passage, from Kozia Street. First I saw a soldier who was waving his machine gun and shouting in Polish, “Do not be afraid, Poles, no harm will come to you.” I saw that he had an armband with a gold inscription on his sleeve, and I remember that it had the following words: “Hermann Göring.” He was calling, “Come out of your flats.” Upon hearing these words, people started to leave their flats. After a while some twenty soldiers came to the courtyard; they had the same uniforms and the same inscriptions on their sleeves (however I cannot account for all of them, for some of the soldiers had their sleeves rolled up). The soldiers walked into the staircases. During this time I saw a woman who tried to jump from a ground floor window into the courtyard; while she was still in mid-jump, one of the soldiers standing in the courtyard shot her. One of the men, in all probability an officer judging by the respect he was offered by the soldiers, called for interpreters to come forward. A few people stepped forward and, having talked to him, called for us to remain completely calm, for nothing untoward would happen to us, and we would only be taken to the Brühl Palace, where the Germans would check our papers and lead us out of Warsaw.
At the same time, we were ordered to stand in threes, and then the doctors were told to come forward. I saw that two men complied and presented their papers to the soldier. He, however, rejected the documents and told them to return to the line, which they did.
When we were standing in threes with our hands up, soldiers came up to us and took our jewellery, wallets, and even the smallest items that we had in our pockets – handkerchiefs included. After the search an order was given for all those who had some category of German nationality to step forward. Nobody did. We were then divided into two groups, one comprising men and the other women with children. The women were taken through the basements to Focha Street, whereupon an order was given for ten of us to come forward. Some thirty men responded, obviously thinking that there was some work to be done. Or at least I thought so at the time. The group was put back in line and one of the soldiers counted out the nearest ten men, whom another soldier then led to a staircase in the same courtyard. After a while we heard shots rang out from the staircase, but on a higher floor. Once the noise had subsided, one of the soldiers went to the second staircase and, soon enough, I saw him appear on a balcony, from where he fired his pistol into the window of one of the flats, starting a fire. The officer cussed the soldier and, waving a pistol in his direction, reproached him for having started the blaze too soon.
I would like to explain that the staircase adjacent to the blazing flat was the sole exit from this courtyard. We were withdrawn to the courtyard located next to the Saski Hotel, and I guess that the Germans put out the fire on their own.
In the courtyard next to the Saski Hotel we were set up against the wall; the soldiers started abusing us and firing at us, albeit aiming above our heads. At the same time, ten men were counted out – myself included – and ordered to proceed towards the first staircase. We were told to halt some four meters from our objective. Two soldiers accompanied us. The others surrounded the group from which we had been detached. One of the soldiers grabbed the first man in our group and ordered him to run towards the staircase in front of which we were standing. He fired at and hit the running man when he was a meter away from the threshold. The same fate befell the second and third man. The fourth, by the surname of Brzeziński, the father of an opera singer, started explaining in both Polish and German that he was blind (which was true) and therefore did not know in which direction to run. A soldier killed him with two shots to the head. Next came my turn. I do not know how it happened, but I instinctively drew back, so that two other men were killed before me, and then – totally exhausted and with a soldier pulling me by the sleeve – I started to run as those before me, hoping that this nightmare would end as quickly as possible. A shot was fired, and the bullet passed between my side and left arm, at elbow height, burning me acutely. I was shot at a second time, with the bullet hitting the muscles of my left armpit. The second shot threw me down onto the bodies in the staircase, but despite the pain I did not lose consciousness and heard the Germans continuing the execution in the same manner. After some time, I started groaning due to the pain and the mental breakdown that I was experiencing. I then heard a voice close to my head: “Do not moan, my friend, for the Germans will hear and finish us off.”
I cannot say how long the massacre lasted. In any case there came a moment when the shots ceased and I heard footsteps receding through the courtyard. After a short while, I once again heard footsteps and then the sound of shots. Five or six bursts were fired from a machine gun, hitting and mortally wounding the man who had warned me not to groan. I understood that the Germans were finishing us off and, with this awareness, I fell asleep or maybe lost consciousness, but I cannot say for how long.
When I regained consciousness I found that the staircase above us was on fire, and the flames were already taking hold of the tramcar conductor who was sitting on the third or fourth step with his skull broken in two. My terror gave me strength, and I managed to haul myself out from among the bodies and then wade through them to the courtyard, where I found another survivor, who was wounded in the stomach. Apart from the two of us, some six more or less severely wounded men emerged from the pile of massacred bodies. Of these, only one pulled through. So, in total, three of us remained alive from this group, namely myself, Józef Balias (currently resident in Warsaw at Chmielna Street 1a), and another man whose surname I do not recall right now, but Balias most certainly remembers.
Since the fire was closing in from all sides, we hid in a pit which we covered over with doors. Władysław Hochedlinger joined our group, but I do not remember in what circumstances. We took advantage of a moment when the fire started to die down in one spot and passed through the embers to Trębacka Street 4. There we joined a group comprising seven men and one woman. These were residents from houses at Kozia Street 5, Senatorska Street and others, who were far away from this block during the massacre. Together, we managed to get to the ruins (dating from 1939) of a residential building, where we used ladders to climb up to and occupy the second floor. When talking with Władysław Hochedlinger I became aware that he had survived the massacre at the courtyard wall. After the war I learned from Józef Balias that his brother-in-law, Zygmunt, whose surname I do not remember, a wireman by profession, was in the first group of ten men taken to the staircase and executed on one of the upper floors. He survived only because he fell quickly and then set the room with the bodies on fire, escaping to the adjacent building through windows located close by. From what I gather, he lives at Chmielna Street not far from Balias.
One day (I do not remember the exact date) while hiding in the ruins at Trębacka Street 4 (which lasted until 10 December 1944), I heard Germans shouting on the first floor below us, and a woman crying desperately in Polish, “My God, they are breaking my arms, what do they want?” Next there was a shot, and the same female voice cried out, “Let me see her again!” Soon after, we watched from our hiding place how four uniformed Germans, probably SS-men, led away a man and a woman. Only then did we find out that some Polish family had been hiding on the first floor below us. Had we known of this earlier, we would have taken them in, for our location was safer – the first floor could be reached by stairs, but to access the second floor you had to use ladders, and these we pulled up after us.
After this incident, while going to various ruins and basements in search of food and water, I looked into a room on the first floor and noticed the body of an about eight year old girl, while in the courtyard I saw the half-buried body of a woman, but it was not the woman who had been taken away with the man. Looking at the corpse I understood that it had been there for some time, and was being propelled to the surface by decomposition and atmospheric changes.
One night two of our companions in misery went out in search of water. They were young boys. One was called Tadeusz and he was a furrier’s apprentice in a workshop at Focha Street 4. They were spotted by German, but did not obey the command to stop and in the darkness jumped into the nearest gate. The German threw a grenade after them, which exploded and threw Tadeusz to the ground. Notified by the other boy, four of us came along to collect the body and bury him in our courtyard. Along the way we found out that Tadeusz was still alive, so we took him to our hideout and there one of us performed a surgery with a razor blade, removing some 40 pieces of shrapnel from the left half of his body. After a lengthy period of suffering, Tadeusz confounded our initial expectations and started to recover; he lives to this day. Maybe Balias knows something more about him.
I have scars where my left armpit was damaged during the massacre. I have retained the use of my left arm. This is all.
The report was read out.