UNIDENTIFIED PERSON

On 27 September 1939 I was arrested in Ciechocinek and released after interrogation. On 9 November I was again arrested as a “hostage for 11 November” and released on 13 November.

I was arrested for the third time in Warsaw on 31 March 1943, and on the same day I was transported from aleja Szucha to Pawiak prison. On 27 April 1943 I was taken by train, in a prison car, to Radogoszcz, from where after a short stay I was deported to the camp in Inowrocław. I stayed there until 31 May 1943, working in a locksmith’s workshop, and I was released in return for money, in total some 50,000 zlotys. Upon leaving the camp I signed a commitment that I would not disclose to anyone anything I had heard or seen in the camp, and that I would not claim damages from the German government.

During my stay in Pawiak, on 25 April 1943, that is on Easter, between 2.00 p.m. and 3.00 p.m., the Gestapo men brought Polish men to the prison yard in two trucks. Looking out of the window on the first floor in Ward V, where I was incarcerated, we saw how the Germans divided the men into fives, and then took each five – the men had to undress down to their shirts first – to the house on the other side of Pawia Street, opposite the prison, from where we heard the salvo of automatic weapons; there was no doubt that each five was executed immediately. We counted fourteen or fifteen salvoes, so 70 to 75 Polish men. When the last five had been executed, the Germans set the house on fire (on the same day); I should mention here that at the time the so-called Jewish quarter was already ablaze.

During my stay in the camp in Inowrocław, my fellow prisoners told me that they had been in the camp for a long time, for instance Aleksander Kaniepień – a railway clerk from Kutno, Dr. Tadeusz Krzemiński from Gostynin, Borodytseh [?] from Kutno – an engineer or structural technician, Jerzy Tietze – a railway clerk from Kutno, Kraszewski, Kałużny and Volksdeutscher Franz Zolondek and his wife (also domiciled in Kutno). Zolondek’s wife was in the camp for the longest time, and it was she who told me that she had witnessed such tortures as stretching Poles with a machine, hanging (the gallows stood in the middle of the camp yard – it was standing there during my stay and there was a concrete stand for it. The parts of the machine used for stretching limbs were stored behind the barrack in which the blacksmith, carpenter and locksmith workshops were situated), and so many instances of murder that after a short period of time – although she was young – she went completely grey. The victims who had been tortured to death would be buried behind the camp fence on the side of the field.

The atrocities committed by the Germans in this camp were witnessed by and acutely affected Dr. Tadeusz Krzemiński and Aleksander Kaniepień, who had been in the camp for two years before I arrived. Especially perhaps Dr. Krzemiński, as he would dress the wounds of the prisoners and provide them with medical assistance as much as he could in order to relieve their pain, and – as he told me himself – “I diligently note every single atrocity, hoping that when once again free I will get the opportunity to give the facts which I have witnessed myself.”