MAKSYMILIAN MIŁOBĘDZKI

Warsaw, 10 June 1949. Mgr. Norbert Szuman, member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Maksymilian Miłobędzki
Date and place of birth Warsaw, 14 February 1911
Names of parents N.N.
State and national affiliation Polish
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Education 4 grades of elementary school
Occupation disinfector
Place of residence Warsaw, aleja Wojska Polskiego 31, flat 1
Criminal record none

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, I was in my flat at Powązkowska Street 35. An insurgent operation that consisted of attacking German cars driving by from entranceways on Powązkowska Street was put out after around 2-3 hours.

The next day German soldiers ordered all the men to leave the houses. They were SS men with skulls on their uniforms. The men from our house and the neighboring ones, numbering around 60, were sent to Powązki Cemetery, where we were set up to provide cover for an SS unit that was to attack a school on Okopowa Street, held by the insurgents. It was to work thus: first a tank, followed by a line of soldiers and all of us Poles down the middle of the road, while behind would be the Germans along both fences and behind us both another tank. The Germans shot at windows as they moved forward. In this fashion we reached Spokojna Street. At that moment the insurgents opened fire and I noticed that Kotowski, my neighbor from Powązkowska Street 33a, who was walking with us, fell. Behind him was an SS man with a submachine gun pointed at his head. At that moment the Germans ordered all of us to fall to the ground and then to get up and keep going down Spokojna Street. The insurgent fire intensified, the German unit began to retreat and put up a smokescreen for cover. I used this opportunity to flee.

After around two weeks spent in hiding near Spokojna Street, I found myself in Powązki again. I stayed there until about the middle of September, when we were ordered to leave the houses which – as we were told – were going to be burned. At that point I left Warsaw along with the civilian population and went to Laski. As for the fate of the other men from our group of 60 Poles covering the [German] attack on the school on Okopowa Street, I saw two other people fall on Spokojna Street. Some of the men fled like me, while those who stayed – as I was told by one of the men in that group – were employed for a while at Fort Bema, after which they were deported to Germany.

I don’t know the name or whereabouts of my informer.

At that the report was concluded and read out.