HIPOLIT ŚLIWONIK

On 21 November 1968 in Waniewo Waldemar Monkiewicz, assistant prosecutor for the District Prosecutor’s Office, delegated to the District Commission for the Investigation of Hitlerite Crimes in Białystok by the Prosecutor General of the Polish People’s Republic, proceeding in accordance with the provisions of Article 4 of the decree of 10 November 1945 (Journal of Laws No. 57, Item 293) and Article 129 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, interviewed the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false statements, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Hipolit Śliwonik
Date and place of birth 11 March 1920, Waniewo
Parents’ names Aleksander and Józefa
Place of residence Waniewo settlement, community of Jeńki, Łapy district
Occupation farmer
Criminal record none
Relationship to the parties none

During the entire Hitlerite occupation I was living in the settlement outside the village of Waniewo. I don’t recall the exact date, I suppose it could have been 7 September, I don’t know the year, when one night the Germans burned down the buildings belonging to my neighbor, Stanisław Krysiewicz, and murdered their inhabitants. This crime was committed by the gendarmes from Tykocin.

They arrived at night, around 11 p.m. After encircling Krysiewicz’s buildings they set them on fire, and when the residents started fleeing from the flames, they shot at them. I was in nearby Pszczółczyn at the time and watched these events unfold before my own eyes.

Pszczółczyn is located no further than a kilometer from our settlement. The gendarmes from Tykocin used the road leading to Kurowo to arrive and leave. I cannot list the names of these gendarmes.

I saw the buildings burn and heard shots being fired, as well as the cries of the people being murdered by the Germans. The following morning I went over to the settlement where the Krysiewicz family lived and saw the corpses. Those shot were: Stanisław Krysiewicz, as well as five or six Jews and two Jewesses, who were sheltered in Krysiewicz’s buildings. His wife was taken to Tykocin by the gendarmes and murdered there.

On the orders of the local gendarmes I participated in burying the murdered Jews and Krysiewicz. The local gendarmes ordered the head of the village council to bury the murdered and he selected me to carry out this task. I dug a pit into which I threw the bodies of the murdered and covered it up. A notable number of local farmers from the area participated in the burial on the crime scene. After a while members of the Krysiewicz family took the body of Stanisław Krysiewicz and buried it in the cemetery in Waniewo.

The next day, or perhaps at a later date, gendarmes from Sokoły shot a Russian man on Krysiewicz’s burnt-down farm. Allegedly he was captured in the street. I was told this by my mother who no longer lives with me.

Irena Żur, Krysiewicz’s daughter, lives in Łapy and works at a preschool. Another one of his daughters, Krystyna, lives in Oświęcim. I don’t know where the third one, called Alina I believe, resides.

My mother, Józefa Śliwonik, lives in Olsztyn at Chopina Street 4.