ZOFIA STACHURA

On 18 May 1946, the Municipal Court in Opatów, represented by Judge Al. Zalewski, with the participation of reporter R. Cybulski, interviewed the person mentioned below as a witness. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations, of the wording of Article 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and of the significance of the oath, the judge swore the witness in accordance with Article 108 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, whereupon the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Zofia Stachura
Age 20 years old
Parents’ names Stefan and Antonina
Place of residence Opatów, Iwańska Street 100
Occupation living with parents
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Criminal record none
Relationship to the parties none

During the German occupation – I can’t remember the exact date – I saw the locally infamous torturer of Jewish people, officer of the local SD unit Ryszard Hospodar, commonly known as “chauffeur”, take a young man, around 20 years old, to the cemetery that I live next to. According to statements by eyewitnesses the man was murdered at the cemetery, which they [the SD] chose as their execution site. Most probably he had escaped from a labor camp multiple times.

Another time I saw Hospodar, assisted by the equally cruel criminal police officer Stanisław Słonka, take another young man, with his hands tied up behind his back, to the very same place, the cemetery, where people say he was murdered. Sometime later, I found there a corpse of a man without one arm, who people said was murdered by Słonka and Hospodar as well. I also saw the gendarme Alfred Biller going along the road leading back from Iwaniska village, and soon later, Jewish militia came from the same direction, carrying the corpse of a Jew murdered for crossing the designated ghetto border.

German gendarme [and] Polish citizen Alfred Biller, proved his great hate towards Jewish and Polish people as he opened fire from behind the cemetery wall during the chase after the perpetrators of the assassination of the head of the local SD unit, Schultz. According to what the locals said, he managed to shoot one of the [people] retreating. Likewise, I saw the same Biller hit people (captured in the nearby village of Marcinkowice to be transported to labor camps in Germany) with his gunstock.