STANISŁAW RACZYŃSKI

Warsaw, 9 April 1946. Judge from the Appelative Court in Warsaw, Stanisław Rybiński, delegated to the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, heard the person named below as an unsworn witness, pursuant to Article 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Having been advised of the obligation to speak the truth and of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Stanisław Raczyński
Date of birth 20 April 1884
Names of parents Jan and Marianna née Ambroziak
Occupation worker
Education can read and write
Place of residence Warsaw, Wolska Street 109, flat 5
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Criminal record none

At the outbreak of the Uprising, on 1 August 1944, I lived with my family in the house at Wolska Street 143.

On 5 August, over a dozen Germans entered our yard, and a few entered our house and told us to leave. Many neighbours from our house followed the order, but those who showed themselves in the yard were shot in the head right away and fell heavily to the ground. Being in my flat, I noticed this and decided not to rush out.

Some members of my family, namely my wife and my daughter with her husband and two children, were with me in our ground-floor flat, which had two windows – one to the street and one to the garden. Apart from them, my neighbour Kamiński was also in my flat. My son Stefan (19 years of age) was in the garden adjacent to the flat.

Seeing that the Germans – and even more so the Ukrainians in German uniforms who were with them – were killing everyone who went out to the yard by shooting them in the back of the head, I locked myself in my flat and waited to see what would happen. Eventually the Germans started going into the flats and throwing people out of them.

Before that, as I was looking through the closed window onto the street, some soldier noticed me peeking and shot at me. The bullet went through the glass and lodged in the ceiling.

Eventually the Germans driving other tenants out of their flats came to the door of my flat. I did not open the door. They forced it themselves. No fewer than four thugs in German soldier’s uniforms stormed into our flat and trained their rifles on us. Before they stormed in, my wife jumped out the window to the garden. The soldiers told us to leave. Being able to speak German a little, I explained that I had not obeyed the order to leave because I was afraid. One of the soldiers – a German – understood me and was more considerate, the other – a Ukrainian – kept getting behind me, willing to finish me off, like so many others, with a shot to the back of the head. Having understood his intentions, I tried to turn to face him. Following the Germans’ demand, we left the flat.

When we were in the yard, my daughter Zofia Mikołajczyk (then 32 years old) and her two children – Teresa, aged 4, and Wiesław, aged 2 – turned from the yard towards the garden. The Germans guarding us, that is myself, my son-in-law Wacław Mikołajczyk, and Roman Kamiński, allowed my daughter to go away and did not shoot her. Beyond a doubt the Germans would have done to the three of us what they had done to many of our neighbours, i.e. shot us, if it had not been for the fact that as soon as we had all arrived in the yard and started pleading with the soldiers not to shoot us, a German officer arrived in a car, saw us and, after having listened to our explanations, forbade the soldiers to kill us and made us bury the corpses of those killed, of which there were over a hundred in our yard and even more on the pavement.

Following that command, we started to carry the bodies of the dead from the yard and the street to Sowiński Park, which was near our house. It took us until evening. At that point [the same] officer as before drove up to us again and ordered us to be taken for the night to Saint Lawrence church.

The day after, I met my wife in the church, and on that day, 6 August, we were marched on foot to Pruszków. From there my wife, my son-in-law, and I were deported for forced labour to Wrocław.

Later on my wife and I were hired in the Primkenau factory, to which we commuted three hours by cars. My son-in-law remained in Wrocław, as did Kamiński.

My wife and I worked in the Primkenau munitions factory between 10 August 1944 and 9 February 1945. We had to wear the letter P on our clothes. Our treatment was bearable, only the food was very scarce.

In June 1945, my wife and I returned to Warsaw, my son-in-law had arrived two days before us. Kamiński came back as well.

Neither my son Stefan nor my daughter Zofia Mikołajczykowa and her children have returned yet.

I know nothing of what has happened to them.

My other daughter, Helena Bączek, who had lived with her husband at Działdowska Street 3, has also gone missing, as has her husband.

However, my two elder sons, Józef and Władysław, who had been deported for forced labour after street round-ups, have come back from Germany. Józef was deported in 1940, Władysław in 1942.

Overall, on 5 August 1944 the Germans killed over a hundred out of the people living in our house, including women and children.

The report was read out.