Warsaw, 28 May 1946. Examining Judge Halina Wereńko, delegated to the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed the person named below as a witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the significance of the oath, the witness was sworn and testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Edward Stanisław Marciszewski |
| Parents’ names | Jan and Anna, née Rybasiewicz |
| Date and place of birth | 13 October 1905 in Warsaw |
| Occupation | financial manager in a forwarding company |
| Education | Warsaw School of Economics |
| Place of residence | Aleja Niepodległości 132/136, flat 76 |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
During the German occupation I lived in Warsaw at aleja Niepodległości 132/136, as I do presently, however with the difference that [at that time] I occupied a flat on the third floor. On 1 August 1944, when the Uprising broke out, the insurgents took up positions in our house (some of the residents also took part in the fighting). The sectional command was located on the first floor. On the morning of 2 August the insurgents withdrew. At around 5.00 p.m. a German SS detachment from the battalion stationed at the Stauferkaserne arrived from the direction of Narbutta Street. While on the third floor, I saw how the Germans successively evicted the residents of all the buildings from the side of Narbutta Street.
When the SS-men came up to our house, they advanced to the ground floor and shouted for all of the residents to leave. They were shooting in the air, and they killed a dog in the courtyard. They were not shooting at the people. In the courtyard the men were instructed to stand separately from the women with children. The men were ordered to raise their arms in the air, after which the SS-men surrounded our group and marched us through the gate on the side of Narbutta Street, leading us to the Stauferkaserne along Kazimierzowska Street. Immediately after passing through the gate at our destination, I noticed that a large group of men were standing in the first courtyard. We were kept near the gate, closer to the building marked with the letter b on the site plan presented to me (a site plan, drawn up on 20 May 1946 by witness Grzelski, was presented to the witness). The SS-men inspected our passes, and led the women further in, to the second courtyard. In the middle there stood a group of SS officers, one of whom gave us a speech to the effect that the Polish bandits had rebelled against German authority, and that we would be protected so that the insurgents would do us no harm. However, we were not informed of the fact that we were hostages. My wife, who had been taken together with the other women to the second internal courtyard, said that an SS man told the women that the men would remain there as hostages, and the women would be freed, however if insurgents were to appear in the houses, the hostages would be shot and the houses burned down. The women were soon released – I saw them walking through the gate. I heard that when they were returning home, SS-men lying in the potato fields near the square at Narbutta Street shot at them, killing Kołodziejska’s small son; I don’t know the child’s name. The men were kept in the courtyard for around two hours and then divided into two groups, created completely at random, the first of which was sent to a hall in building d, while the second was placed in building c. I guess that there could have been some 700 men in total at the time. I was amongst those sent to the hall in building d. It was very dirty, the hall was covered in spit; I think that it had previously housed a field kitchen. The building was surrounded by soldiers on all sides. We were not given any food that day. On the next day an older man by the name of Wierzbicki, if I remember correctly, who used to live in the house for officials of the Bank Polski, started talking as an interpreter with the sentry, who said that they would start releasing us at around 9.00 a.m.. At 9.30 a.m. five SS-men entered the hall, armed with machine guns; following a brief discussion with the interpreter, they declared that, since the insurgents had executed wounded Germans in a hospital, 30 Poles would be shot dead – 15 from this hall. We were all ordered to back up against the wall, whereupon the solders started selecting their prospective victims at random, while the people pulled out their identity cards and tried to get away. In a few instances the identity cards helped. I don’t know the surnames of the 15 selected men. An SS non-commissioned officer shouted at the soldiers not to waste time looking through the documents, and nodded towards me.
The fifteen men were arranged in the middle of the hall, myself amongst them, and then the very same non-commissioned officer who had been shouting at the soldiers not to look through documents demanded that I show him my identity card. I worked in the Rudzki company, which was commissioned by the Kraków Food Bureau to build granaries in Piaseczno. I thus had a document made out by authorities in Kraków, and the non- commissioned officer released me without reading the document; the Kraków seal was sufficient. The group was augmented to 15 by the addition of an Orthodox priest who had been evacuated by the Germans from Pińsk; the SS-men treated him brutally, beating him over the head with their rifle barrels. Thus selected, the men were led out and – as I heard – executed.
I have heard two different accounts concerning the place of execution. Some said that the hostages were shot on the premises of Mokotów prison, while others maintained that the setting of the execution was the Stauferkaserne wall. It was said that they were shot by an SS non-commissioned officer by the surname of Noel. I suppose that the shooting might have taken place in the garden of the Stauferkaserne.
I don’t know the exact spot where the bodies of the men were buried. Insofar as I know, no men were selected for the execution from any other halls in the Stauferkaserne.
In the evening of 3 August 1944, at around 9.00 p.m., a group of 20 men were brought to the Stauferkaserne from the house at the corner of Narbutta Street and aleja Niepodległości. This group was made to stand, with their arms raised, in the courtyard near building b. I saw that the group was shot right there. Immediately after the execution, the SS-men demanded ten strong men from our hall to bury – as one SS man said – “your colleagues.”
I don’t know the location of their grave.
Over the next few days the SS-men would fool around with us, coming to the hall and selecting a dozen or so people to be shot, only to inform us following the selection that there would not be an execution after all. Such jokes were typical of the SS non-commissioned officer by the name of Noel, whose first name I don’t know. He was youthful, aged around 23, tall, well-built, and black-haired. Over the next few days men aged over 65 were released from our hall, as well as those who ransomed themselves with gold and foreign currencies. A number of new groups of men from nearby streets were brought into our hall. I remember that among the arrivals were men from Madalińskiego Street. Furthermore, men from our hall would be taken for work both on the premises of the barracks and outside, in the city, where they were ordered to pillage houses. The entire courtyard was crammed with furniture and objects taken from the neighboring houses. Initially our treatment was brutal, but after a few days – since we were required to help with the pillaging – the attitude towards us improved. The hall was guarded by SS-men and Wehrmacht soldiers, and there were no more mass executions.
I did, however, see groups of people being led into Mokotów prison; in my opinion they were condemned to be shot. There was much hunger in those days, we had no water, while our only food was stale bread. Later on, the Germans would pay us for work in cigarettes or bread. After five days, our hall started being fed from the soldiers’ cauldrons. This was because we were next to the kitchen and helped out with the kitchen work – washing pots and pans, etc. – and therefore whatever was left in the cauldrons would be given to us. The situation in the other halls was worse. Furthermore, there were few educated people amongst us, we were all dirty, and the Germans used us to perform the most difficult work, so that they ceased calling us bandits and instead referred to us as “workers.” I heard that a list of educated persons was to be drawn up, that professions were to be written down, but this was not performed in our hall.
Around 9 August, I’m not sure of the date, we were all driven down to the first courtyard, while those from the other halls were taken to the second courtyard. Gestapo men arrived from aleja Szucha and – as I heard – selected 70 men from the second courtyard. They did not take anyone from our group, and I later heard that in the second courtyard the Gestapo men conducted a very random selection of educated persons. I also heard that this group of 70 men were executed at aleja Szucha.
What is more, the Germans kept an isolated group of some 20 men in our area; I never saw them close up, and I don’t know from where they had been taken. I heard that the Gestapo men drove this group by truck every day to work on the erection of barricades, and drove them back together with other men, selected from the halls. Later, as far as I know, this group was placed in hall c.
At around noon every day we would be stood in the first courtyard, and the women would come to us with food. The women were frequently shot at while making their way home. The wife of the caretaker of our house, Rydz, was wounded while returning from the barracks.
On 22 August all the men from our hall who were aged over 39 (and I among them) were attached to the civilian population gathered in Rakowiecka Street, from where we were led through Narutowicza Square to the Western Railway Station. In Kopińska Street our column was pounced upon by “Ukrainians,” who – beating and shoving us – robbed us of our prized personal belongings and valuables. The German escort did not react.
From the Western Railway Station and through the camp in Pruszków, I was deported to the concentration camp in Mauthausen. I travelled in a transport of 3,000 Varsovians who had been directed to this camp; the group comprised 700 men and 2,300 women. Following our arrival in Mauthausen, the women were placed in tents in the open air, where they were not used for work. The men were located inside the camp, in block 24, the so-called “quarantine.” Initially, the camp authorities did not know exactly what to do with us, but on the next day we were dressed in striped prison clothes. After a week new instructions were received, namely that we were to be sent away for labor. Representatives of the Linz Labor Office arrived together with Gauleiter Eingruber (presently sentenced to death in the American Zone). I think that because of the fact that the camp in Mauthausen did not have a sufficient number of female barracks, while our transport included 2,300 women, the entire transport was farmed out to work in factories and agricultural farmsteads.
While the group of Polish laborers from the Stauferkaserne were being used to construct barricades, a few men were killed or wounded. Such a death befell a young fireman from our hall, one Zwierzyński, or possibly Wierzyński.
I was told by my wife that on 11 August 1944 three insurgents entered the premises of the house at aleja Niepodległości 132/136 from the direction of Ormiańska Street. One of them – wounded – remained on the premises, and his wounds were dressed. The Germans arrived a while later, shot him, and as a repressive measure shot dead 16 men and two young girls, sisters by the surname of Tomkowit, while the men included Janowski and Morel, in the courtyard. The rest of the residents were evicted and the house was set on fire. The wife of the caretaker, Rydz, was wounded and lying in her flat, but when one of those present said that a wounded woman was still in the building, a German soldier approached the window and started shooting. Rydz managed to escape, and currently lives in the same house. Although one of the tenants, Zywnicka, begged and pleaded, the Germans did not allow her to take her sick husband, Jan Zywnicki, from the basement; he burned to death. Three sick, elderly women who lived on the ground floor and were unable to exit the building were also burned alive. I don’t know whether or not they had been previously executed. Their surnames were Erenfajcht and Kowalczyk – the superior of a girls’ boarding school in Warsaw. I don’t know the surname of the third woman.
The soldiers who carried out operations there could have been either from the Stauferkaserne, or from the school at Kazimierzowska Street.
The report was read out.