ADOLF MORAWSKI

In Suchedniów on this day, 3 June 1948, at 2.00 p.m., I, Wacław Smolarczyk from the Citizens’ Militia Station in Suchedniów, acting on the basis of Article 20 of the provisions introducing the Code of Criminal Procedure, on the instruction of citizen Deputy Prosecutor from the Region of the Prosecutor’s Office of the District Court in Kielce, this dated 23 March 1948, file number ŁN 79/47, issued on the basis of Article 20 of the provisions introducing the Code of Criminal Procedure, observing the formal requirements set forward in Articles 235-240, 258 and 259 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, with the participation of reporter Alojzy Kocela, whom I have informed of the obligation to attest to the conformity of the report with the actual course of the procedure by his own signature, have heard the person named below as a witness. Having been advised of the right to refuse to testify for the reasons set forward in Article 104 of the CCP and of the criminal liability for making false declarations, pursuant to Article 140 of the Penal Code, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Adolf Morawski
Parents’ names Paweł and Bronisława, née Pajek
Age 60 years old
Date and place of birth 15 April 1901 in Ostojów
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Occupation farmer
Place of residence Michniów, Suchedniów commune
Relationship to the parties none

With regard to the matter at hand I can provide the following information: On 12 July 1943 at 1.00 a.m. the German gendarmerie and the Gestapo, about 3,000 Germans in number, cordoned off the village of Michniów and established telephone communication between different posts. At 4.00 in the morning some of the posts were ordered to search the houses in Michniów. The search was to last until 9.00 a.m. At the edge of the forest the Germans began to detain those who were going to work in the sawmill in Skarżysko or at the railway system. They stopped 50 men and 20 women. The women were deported to Germany and the men were brought to the village, forced into 6 barns and two houses and burned alive. 48 men whom the Germans took during the search formed the next group to be burnt alive on the spot in Michniów.

On the night of 12 to 13 July 1943, partisans from Wykus, who learned about the crime, took revenge on the Germans by attacking the German holiday train between Krzyżka and Berezowo. Then they retreated across the fields into the forest. When the partisans left, the Germans, the gendarmerie and the Gestapo returned, surrounded the village, forced people into their homes and burned all of them alive, including children and the elderly.

The Germans destroyed the village because its inhabitants, in addition to offering shelter to the Polish partisans and to the Soviets transferred to Poland, provided food to the partisans staying in the woods. Stefan Kwardowski, who lived in Orzechówka, Bodzentyn commune, is suspected of informing on the people living in Michniów to the Germans. Taken prisoner of war in 1939, he was set free in 1942 in return for spying and informing on his fellow countrymen. The names of the perpetrators haven’t been established. Wacława Materek (she lives in Kielce at Targowa Street 23, flat 3) appears to be the only person who may know something about the Germans who committed the crime because she was detained by one of the gendarmes who took part in the raid on Michniów. Wacława Materek was taken by way of punishment by this gendarme and served for a year and a half as his maid after these events in Michniów. As far as the bodies of the people are concerned, all were burned, except for five people who were found dead in the field. All of them, 203 people in number, were buried, their remains and so on, in the common grave in Michniów.

At this the report was read out and signed.