AURELIA SZLEZYNGIER

On 14 December 1945, in Radom, Kazimierz Borys, Investigating Judge from the Second District of the District Court in Radom, based in Radom, interviewed 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 Aurelia Szlezyngier
Age 28 years old
Names of parents Mikołaj and Maria
Place of residence Jastrząb, Rogów commune, Radom district
Occupation stenographer
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Criminal record none
Relationship to the parties none

My father, Mikołaj Szlezyngier, born on 1 December 1891 in Jastrząb, a brick foreman, employed at the Arms Factory in Radom, was executed by the Germans on the gallows near the Arms Factory in Radom on 14 October 1942.

Three weeks before the execution he was arrested on a train at the train station in Rożki while on his way back home to Jastrząb.

I don’t know the reasons for my father’s arrest.

I witnessed the execution. On the day on which my father was killed I was on my way to the prison to bring him a package. On the way I learned that the gallows had been erected near the Arms Factory. So I went in its direction. When I got there, there was already a car standing next to the gallows set up on the factory’s premises. The convicts were just getting out of the car. The Germans lined them up according to the sequence of numbers written on their backs in chalk and then two hangmen, dressed in civilian clothes and wearing beards and mustaches, led them one by one to the gallows, put a noose around their necks and removed a stool from under their feet. The hangmen’s movements were so quick that it seemed they were professional executioners who were simply wearing "stage make-up".

Among the convicts, standing in a row, I recognized, except for my father, other factory workers whom I knew personally: Sapiński, Kociński, Rzeszot, Kurys and Łozicki. I had once also worked at the factory.

The factory’s coat checker Łozicki was hanged first. My father Mikołaj Szlezyngier was fifth. After his death I passed out. When I came around, every convict had already been hanged. Fifteen men were executed on the gallows near the Arms Factory. Their bodies were left hanging until 4 or 5.00 p.m. Then they were taken away in a car, but I don’t know where to. The bodies were probably buried in Firlej.

After the execution a board was set up next to the gallows. It contained a notice, in Polish and German, from which it followed that the men hanged had been condemned to death as hostages in connection with the murder of two Germans in Różki. I don’t remember what exactly the notice said. However, I do remember that it referred to the men hanged on the gallows as bandits. The notice also contained a warning that if a German were killed again or German orders weren’t complied with, I don’t remember clearly, the families of the executed would also be held liable.

The issue of the homicide in Rożki that the Germans were talking about concerned two men who had shot a German and wounded another on a train. The perpetrators remain unknown.

Having been shown a photograph of the men executed on the gallows near the Arms Factory, the witness testified as follows:

Among the men executed near the Arms Factory I recognize my father. He is fifth from the right or eleventh from the left.

The man who is hanging sixth from the right or tenth from the left is Sapiński.

The report was read out.