MARIA JAGODZIŃSKA

22 April 1950, Warsaw. A judge (no name) acting as a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland interviewed the person named below as a witness, who testified as follows:


Name and surname Maria Jagodzińska née Skrzyńska
Date of birth 6 December 1902, Stare Żreby, Płock district
Profession Laborer
Place of residence Warsaw, Czarneckiego Street 39, flat 8

When the uprising broke out I was at my sister’s house at Czarneckiego Street 44. I stayed there until 30 September 1944. On that day the Germans led all the people out of our property. For the whole two [previous] months the insurgents remained in control of this area. German units were in the Gdański Railway Station, the Citadel, the Chemical Institute near Burakow and in “Blaszanka” (Tin Products Factory) on the Vistula river, whose banks were also in German hands. In Bielany, they occupied the Central Institute of Physical Education from which their tanks carried out a number of sorties into the area and from which the latter was fired at. But not even once, during those two months, did they manage to seize control of the terrain.

I have not heard of any German crimes committed in the area enclosed by Mickiewicza Street, Wilsona Square, the river Vistula and the Citadel. On Wilsona Square, on 1 August 1944, three men were shot, including my brother-in-law’s apprentice, Stanisław Owczarzak. (My brother-in-law, Czesław Mazurek, was a shoemaker. He is no longer alive). Perhaps people living in this part of the city can provide some details regarding that crime.

In the morning of 30 September 1944 the Germans seized control of the fort where inhabitants from the surrounding houses had sought refuge against the attack which the Germans had launched the previous evening and which continued in the morning. The fort abutted Czarneckiego Street. After hanging out a white piece of cloth as a sign of surrender, all were led out of the fort. The fort also housed a hospital. After the [healthy] people had left, the wounded and sick remained in the care of paramedics and were later transported to Milanówek. Mrs Owsianko (she lives at Czarneckiego 54) was taken along with the hospital’s patients. Her son was sick.

The people were escorted through ”Miasteczko” (Little Town) near the Powązki Cemetery to St. Adalbert’s Church on Wolska Street, where the men were partly separated from the women. After a short time we were transported from the Western Railway Station to the camp in Pruszków.

On that day, 30 September 1944, people from the whole of Żoliborz were being evacuated.

I have heard of no crimes committed by the Germans in our area.

At that the report was concluded and read out