ALICJA WIERZBICKA

On 8 June 1948 in Poznań, Deputy Prosecutor Marian Kaczmarek interviewed the person named below as a witness. The witness was advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the significance of the oath. The prosecutor swore the witness, after which the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Alicja Wierzbicka
Date of birth 22 October 1919
Names of parents Franciszka and Jan
Occupation Polish Red Cross employee
Place of residence Poznań, Śląska Street 11, flat 3

On 2 August 1944, SS soldiers from the Stauferkaserne were forcing civilians out of their homes and basements, setting some of the houses on fire, throwing hand grenades and shooting. Next, people at gunpoint were rushed to the barracks, where the men were separated from their families. After a few hours, the women and children were released, while the men were detained as hostages, from among whom groups were later selected for execution. The hostages were fed only on the third day and consequently many people were taken ill. In the neighboring barracks (at the junction of Rakowiecka and Puławska streets), the situation was the same. Later, at the request of Dr. Tarkowski and J. Wierzbicki, a Polish Red Cross inspector, the Germans permitted the Polish Red Cross personnel and families to provide meals. The Germans forbade us to provide medical help to wounded insurgents, or even to young men suspected of involvement with the insurgent army. The Germans took the documents they found on wounded or fallen insurgents, which often made it impossible to identify a person. They persecuted insurgents’ families. Proof: the execution of the wife of an insurgent and her child near a post on Narbutta Square.

In the Jesuit chapel (on Rakowiecka Street, near its junction with Andrzeja Boboli Street), 26 monks and civilians were forced into the vault, then grenades were thrown at them and they were set on fire with flamethrowers. The positions of the bodies when we found them testified to the terrible suffering and atrocity of what had happened there. After the chapel was demolished and plundered, the building was burnt, along with a few wounded people inside (their graves are in the garden of the Jesuits). Reverend Kosibowicz was taken away and then executed.

The Germans had no mercy on the residents of houses from which shots were fired or where there were insurgents. At aleja Niepodległości 132 (at its junction with Ligocka Street), a building was set on fire and nobody could get out because it was surrounded. A number of civilians were wounded and died, and three elderly women were burnt alive. That evening, in the corner house at the junction of Madalińskiego and Kazimierzowska streets, with the women watching, all the men were executed. The building was burnt and the women driven out. Houses on Sandomierska Street, junction of Rakowiecka Street.

People from Siekierki, Czerniaków, Puławska Street and nearby parts of Mokotów passed through our first-aid station. They were allowed to stop there, so we provided medical help, issued coffee, bread or, sometimes, soup. People from Siekierki had their cows and livestock taken away from them.

But the Germans did not always respect the Red Cross sign – they fired shots from the barracks (at the junction of Kazimierzowska and Narbutta streets) at our first-aid patrol, who were burying the fallen (one dead and one wounded). They arrested a patrol transporting the wounded to hospital. After Inspector J. Wierzbicki was arrested again, the personnel from the first-aid station were taken to work at the barricades.

The commissar was the so-called Baumeister, whom the Germans themselves took away from Nadarzyn and executed for acts of looting during the Uprising.