MARIA OSTROWSKA

On 31 May 1947 in Zwoleń, the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes with its seat in Radom, this in the person of its member, Deputy Prosecutor J. Skarżyński, acting pursuant to Article 20 of the provisions introducing the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed the person mentioned hereunder as a witness, without taking an oath. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Maria Ostrowska
Age 49 years old
Parents’ names Edward and Klementyna
Place of residence Zwoleń, Rynek Street 47
Occupation housewife
Religion Roman Catholic
Criminal record none

I witnessed two executions carried out by the Germans in 1944 in the market square in Zwoleń. The first took place on Good Friday 1944, before noon I think. I observed it from a window. I saw the victims being led towards the wall, and then I heard shots. I didn’t see the bodies. I heard that more than 20 people were killed. In the evening of 19 June [19]44, the Germans (gendarmes and Gestapo men) brought two truckloads of Poles to the marketplace. The Germans stumbled upon me while I was returning from the cemetery, and turned me back to the market square. Many other people were also forced to assemble there and watch the killing. A few men, nearly all of them handcuffed, would be taken from the trucks, arranged in a row and ordered to kneel by the wall. Revolvers were then aimed, point blank, at the backs of their heads, and the triggers pressed.

I saw that a larger group of Germans was standing some distance away. The kneeling men were dispatched by no more than two men at a time; they wore Gestapo uniforms, for I distinctly remember that they had death’s heads on their helmets and caps. I recognized the following residents of Zwoleń, friends of mine, amongst the victims: Nowakowski, Kordziński and Koseł. All the victims passed by me on the way to their deaths, however they said nothing, and indeed emitted no sound. The dead were placed on horse-drawn carts and buried near the cemetery in Zwoleń on the same day. I know that before this act of murder was committed, German aircraft dropped leaflets informing of a planned execution of citizens of Zwoleń, which would be held if two officials of the Radom District – previously kidnapped by partisans – failed to turn up.