JULIA ŁAWNICZEK

Warsaw, 14 July 1949. Member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, magister [MA] Norbert Szuman, heard the person named below as a witness. The witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Julia Ławniczek née Subda
Age 67
Parents’ names Kazimierz and Franciszka née Wardaszko
Occupation of the father farmer
State affiliation and nationality Polish
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Education three grades of elementary school
Occupation living with son
Place of residence Warsaw, Czerniakowska Street 143, flat 10
Criminal record none

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out I was at Czerniakowska Street 141. On 2 September 1944, at around 7.00 a.m., a car with Germans in it came to the gate. They immediately threw incendiary missiles at our house, aiming at the windows. Since the windows were covered with bedding to protect the inhabitants from bullets, our house soon broke out in flames. The inhabitants – except for the Wesołowskis, a married couple, and the concierge, who remained on the first floor – were hidden in a pit that we were using as a shelter, dug under a wooden shed adjacent to our house. I wasn’t hiding in the pit either; the moment the Germans entered the yard I was standing by the shed. I had previously masked the entrance to the pit with some hay. When they entered the yard, the Germans set fire to the wooden stairs, and the hay covering the pit caught fire. People in the pit began to burn.

Meanwhile, the Germans noticed me (I would like to add that they were SS-men) and told me to come over. When I stopped, a young SS-man, at the order of another SS-man, probably an officer, shot at me from a distance of some five steps. The bullet pierced my neck and exited through my back (the witness points to a small scar on the right side of her neck). I fell near the burning entrance to the pit. When I felt that my hair was beginning to burn, I crawled under the eaves of the shed. I stayed there until the Germans left. They saw that I was crawling but didn’t fire at me again. When they left, I crawled further to the lilac bush as the shed began to burn. From there I went to the horse-drawn carriage of a certain Wolski, an inhabitant of our house, and sat down there. From there I saw my son and his friend run out of the pit. My son’s clothes were burnt and his friend had had his eyes burnt out, which I learned later from the Wesołowskis. My son took his friend to be treated, so to the medical point in the establishment run by the sisters of Nazareth at Czerniakowska Street 137. The Germans shot at them twice and then approached them when they were already down and took them somewhere. Neither of them has come back.

Therefore, 13 people died that day: 11 burnt in the pit, including six children, and two men who were probably executed by the Germans.

Apart from me, the execution was also witnessed by the Wesołowskis and the concierge, whose name I don’t remember, but the Wesołowskis will probably know her name.

At that the report was concluded and read out.