Warsaw, 25 March 1946. Judge Halina Wereńko, delegated to the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Warsaw, interviewed the person specified below as a witness, under oath. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the gravity of the oath, the judge swore the witness in accordance with Art. 109 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The witness testified as follows::
| Name and surname | Wacława Gałka née Bekier |
| Date of birth | 10 August 1908 in Warsaw |
| Names of parents | Stanisław and Zofia née Pogorzelska |
| Place of residence | Redutowa Street 29, at Barańska’s |
| Occupation | peddler |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
During the Warsaw Uprising I lived at Wolska Street 132 on the corner of Elekcyjna Street in Warsaw, in a magistrate house by Sowińskiego Park, with my husband Szczepan Stanisław Gałka (born in 1905), daughter Stanisława Danuta (born in 1925) and son Wojciech Leszek (born in 1938).
In the first days of the uprising no Germans came to our house, nor did any insurgent operations develop in our vicinity.
On 5 August 1944 at around 10 a.m., a group of German soldiers burst into our house shouting that everyone was to leave their homes (raus). Our house had 43 flats, there might have been around two hundred people in it. We came out onto Wolska Street. The group was herded up to the fence of Sowińskiego Park. In front of the fence, near Elekcyjna Street, I saw corpses of men, women and children lying singly or in groups, some of them on top of others. I later learned that residents of the houses numbers 129 and 128 in Wolska Street were executed before us in that location.
When our group approached the place where the corpses were lying, German soldiers standing in Wolska Street near the railway tracks shot a round at us from light machine guns. I did not notice whether the machine guns installed on the stands were also used. After the first salvo, I collapsed without being hurt. After a while, when everyone in our group had collapsed, German gendarmes stepped among us (they were wearing green uniforms with brown distinctions on their collars and epaulets) and they killed the wounded who were still moving. To check whether a person was alive, they hit and kicked the people on the ground, ordering anyone who was still alive to get up. I was approached by a gendarme, who hit me, kicked me and told me to get up. I got up, but when the soldiers fired another round, this time from the direction of Hankiewicz’s house (Wolska Street 129), I fell on my face without being hit.
With my face to the ground, I did not see what was going on around me, but I could hear heavy footsteps and single gunshots nearby. I figured that one or two gendarmes were walking among the people lying, killing those who were still alive. I got the impression that they were shooting almost every person lying there.
After a couple of hours, maybe around noon (I did not have a watch), my son Leszek started crying that his knees had gone numb, and then a gendarme shot him. My son was lying beside me, on the body of my cousin, Damian Pasterski, who was shot after the first round. When the gendarme shot my son his blood trickled down on me, and this is probably why I was considered dead.
After the first round, after everyone in our group had collapsed, I got the impression that there were fewer German soldiers than at the beginning. While a few gendarmes were killing the rest of the living, one of the soldiers called to the others to bring another group, because they could handle those already there. He was speaking German, but I understood the sense, without understanding particular words.
At around 1, maybe 2 p.m., I recovered a little and I heard that a group of people were coming from the direction of Ordona Street. I would emphasise that there are only four or five houses in Ordona Street. I later learned that a part of residents of Ordona Street had fled, hearing the sounds of the execution by Sowińskiego Park. The Germans executed only those who had remained.
I do not know how many people were in that group, since I was lying face-down and this was difficult for me to figure. One way or another, I heard the execution of this group loud and clear: machine gun rounds, moaning, then single shots. Then everything went silent, but not for long, since very soon similar sounds were repeated: machine gun rounds, screaming, single shots, as if they were bringing in new groups of civilians.
I am unable to say how many groups were brought.
After a longer time, perhaps around 5 p.m., the shooting and the crying subsided. When it started to get dark, perhaps around 8 p.m., the gendarmes were again walking among the corpses, asking if anyone was alive and saying that if they got up they would not be executed anymore. I got up, and I was followed right away by my husband. Seeing that our children had been murdered, he went berserk. He shouted: “You killed the children, kill me as well!” and he kept getting in the soldiers’ way. About ten women got up (Żabicka, Wallas, Bekier, among others) and about four or five men. The soldiers separated the men from the women. They executed the men in Sowińskiego Park and they brought the women to the Russian cemetery and into the Orthodox church. They ordered us to sit there and give up our valuables, because we would not need anything else anymore.
In Wolska Street, opposite the police station, the soldiers once again wanted to execute us on an earthwork, making preparations for the execution (they lined us up and positioned themselves facing us). Luckily, a car arrived. A German military man (I did not recognize the rank) who was in that car ordered our escort not to kill us.
After that we were escorted to Saint Lawrence Church. We found several people there (perhaps more than twenty) and among them Bishop Niemira, who granted a pastoral blessing to us. Shortly after we had arrived at the church, German soldiers burst in, ordered us to stand against a wall and pointed their guns at us. I cannot explain why they did not kill anyone, and after a moment they left.
On the following day, on 6 August 1944, I saw that Bishop Niemira’s head was bandaged and he was so weak that he fainted. People gathered in the church told me that he had been severely beaten by the soldiers and then ordered to carry water. During a mass (6 August 1944 was a Sunday) celebrated by Bishop Niemira, a couple of German gendarmes burst in and tried to keep the bishop and other people away from the altar. For this reason, only a small fraction of those present were able to receive the holy communion.
On 7 August 1944 I was herded in a foot transport to the Pruszków transit camp, from which I was deported to work in Germany.
I know the names of the following persons who were killed from our group, which was executed in front of the fence of Sowińskiego Park: Wawrzyniec Piskiewicz; Helena, Damian, Wiesław, Mieczysława, Aleksander and Roman Pasterski; Roman, Julian and Aleksandra Piątkowski; Edward and Kazimiera Rutkowski; Edward and Aleksandra Wójcicki and their two sons; Janina, Wanda, Franciszka and Boguś Zwarski; Janina Jabłońska; Marian and Teresa Wędrowski and four persons from their family; Alina Frączek; Stanisław and Jadwiga Matysiak; and the Jabłońskis – two persons. The following persons survived the execution: Agnieszka Wallas, the Matysiaks, and Kucharski.
At that the report was concluded and read out.