MIECZYSŁAW JAROSZEK

Warsaw, 5 August 1949. A member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Norbert Szuman (MA), heard the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Mieczysław Antoni Jaroszek
Date and place of birth 22 June 1922, Warsaw
Names of parents Stanisław and Helena, née Zalewska
Occupation of the father bricklayer
State affiliation and nationality Polish
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Education two grades at secondary school
Occupation militiaman
Place of residence Warsaw, Rzeczna Street 3
Criminal record none

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, I was in a group of insurgents concentrated in the boiler house on Suzina Street. When the troops marched out, I went with a part of the group in the direction of Słowackiego Street, where during a fight with the Germans we tried to stop a tram going in the direction of the terminal at Potocka Street. It did not stop, however, but accelerated and stopped only at a tram stop occupied by the Germans, who immediately took out the crew, that is two tram drivers, and shot them on the spot.

Around noon on 2 August, when I was in an advanced position by the Central Institute of Physical Education, approximately in the area where Słowackiego Street rises, I saw that the Germans were using civilians whom they had forced from the nearby houses on Słowackiego Street, women and children included, as a live shield for a tank fighting the insurgents, who ceased firing upon seeing this.

In the period of later fighting, when we had our positions in the building owned by the Sisters of the Resurrection on Krasińskiego Street, I saw the bodies of two or three women lying at the corner of Burakowska and Suwalska streets. They were paramedics or liaisons in the insurgent units from Żoliborz, and at the time it was said among the insurgents that they had been executed by the Germans from the Chemical Institute.

During the surrender of Żoliborz, when the insurgents decided to lay down their arms, there were incidents of beating and kicking the prisoners of war, which was the favorite method of the Germans, while the “Ukrainians” were often robbing us of watches and other valuable objects.

As for the above-mentioned incident of using women and children as tank protection, I would like to add that more than twenty women and children were herded for that purpose, and they had to walk in front of the tank in three files for several hundred meters along Słowackiego Street. These women and children, as I learned a few days later, had been chosen from among the residents of nearby houses and those people who had not managed to get back to their children before the outbreak of the uprising. Due to the fact that upon seeing them we immediately ceased firing, there were no casualties among them, but our insurgent group retreated and I do not know what happened to these women and children afterwards. I believe that the tank in front of which these people had to walk was from the artillery positions in the Central Institute of Physical Education, as it was the closest one and as the roads from other German artillery positions, for instance in Powązki, were controlled by our troops.

At this the report was concluded and read out.