ZOFIA BRODOWSKA

Warsaw, 31 December 1945. The investigating judge Halina Wereńko, delegated to the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, heard as a witness the person specified below. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the importance of the oath the witness was sworn and testified as follows:


Name and surname Zofia Brodowska
Date of birth 23 December 1916
Parents’ names Józef and Kazimiera
Place of residence Warsaw, aleja Szucha 34, flat 1
Occupation warehouse worker in a factory
Education six classes of a secondary school
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Criminal record none

I had lived with my husband Tadeusz Mirosław at aleja Szucha 34 since 1941. In August 1944, when the Uprising began, we did not manage to get to our house and we stayed at Puławska Street 1.

On 5 August 1944, at 8.00 a.m., five gendarmes came to the house at Puławska Street 1 (I recognized them by their uniforms, they had a skull and crossbones on their collars and wore helmets), holding grenades, and called on the inhabitants to leave the house immediately. I left with my husband and a married couple we had just met, Kazimierz and Wanda Perzyńscy, and we went in the direction of aleja Szucha. Then, on the square near Aleje Ujazdowskie , the Gendarmerie officers separated the men from the women.

There were many Polish people, so I was surrounded by a crowd. Now the men were walking on the left side of the street, and women on the right, looking from the Unii Lubelskiej Square. The men, as I was able to see, were directed to the Gestapo headquarters on aleja Szucha, I cannot remember the house number, but I remember the number was even. Since then I have not seen my husband, and so far I have not received any information concerning his fate.

After half an hour, a group of women chosen for tank protection, which included myself and Wanda Perzyńska, was approached by a gendarme and Kazimierz Perzyński, whom I had earlier seen entering the Gestapo headquarters with my husband. Then the gendarme read Wanda Perzyńska’s surname, separated her from our group, and the couple went away along with the gendarme. After an hour and a half the Germans took me and other women with children on tanks or made us walk in front of them. I was walking in front of a tank along the Aleje Ujazdowskie to Pius XI Street and there, on the junction with Mokotowska Street, the insurgents recaptured the group of women surrounding the tank as it began to burn. From then on I stayed at Krucza Street.

After Warsaw had been taken by the Russian forces I came back to the city, and in spring of 1945 I met Kazimierz Perzyński. He then told me that he had miraculously left the Gestapo headquarters and that later he was with his wife in a camp on Litewska Street. He told me that during his brief stay at the yard of the Gestapo building he had seen men standing with their faces to the wall.

What happened to my husband he could not tell. Currently Perzyńscy live on Puławska Street at the junction with Malczewski Street, I cannot remember the house number nor the flat number, but I will undertake to deliver to Perzyński the summons given to me by the citizen judge.

The report was read out.