LUCJAN MAJCHRZAK

Warsaw, 4 February 1948. The member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, Judge Halina Wereńko, interviewed the person specified below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Lucjan Emil Majchrzak
Names of parents Franciszek and Anastazja née Szczepaniuk
Date of birth 30 June 1911
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Education vocational school
Place of residence Warsaw, Grójecka Street 24
State and national affiliation Polish
Occupation metal polisher

The outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising caught me in the house at Grójecka Street 24. In the first days, I stayed in the basement and I don’t know the course of events outside. I heard that the nearest point of insurgent resistance was located on Kaliska Street, in the building of the Tobacco Monopoly. On 4 August 1944, I saw in the evening a fire in the blocks at Grójecka Street 20. After a few days, I learned that at that time an execution of men from that block had taken place there.

On 5 August, between 5.00 and 6.00 a.m., an SS unit arrived in front of our house in cars. They surrounded the house and ordered the residents to go outside into the yard. When the people came down, the soldiers walked through the flats and looted valuable things, which the caretaker had to load onto the cars. Then they set the flats on fire. Two separate groups were placed in the yard: women and children and men from the age of 16. The commander of the unit spoke to the gathered, asking who from our house had shot at the Germans. There were no insurgents in the house, nor was any action conducted from there. Józef Amanowicz, speaking German, answered on behalf of our entire group that none of us had fired shots. The commander replied that if the guilty did not confess, we would all be executed. The women and children were led out to the other side of the street. The commander asked: “Who is going to be executed first?” Since no-one volunteered, Amanowicz was taken first.

I don’t know the German language, but men standing near me translated the entire conversation of Amanowicz with the commander to me.

There were around 40 men in our group. The execution happened in this way: we were divided into two groups, next we were led one by one to the stairs leading to the basement, at which there were two SS men by the entrance. One led the men, the other shot them in the back of the head. When I was led to the stairs, the SS man shot me in the back of the head but the bullet went by my right ear, wounding me superficially. When I fell to the bottom, I managed to crawl to the part of the basement where the mangle was, and I stayed there until the end of the execution. When the shots stopped I heard three explosions, probably of grenades. When everything was quiet, I met Edmund Cugowski, and a wounded Henryk Dyga, who came out from under the corpses like me. Together we went to a block on Spiska Street, where we received medical first aid. On 10 August, Wehrmacht soldiers threw us out with the civilian population from the neighboring houses into Zieleniak. On that day, in the afternoon, we were transported to the camp in Pruszków.

At this the report was concluded and read out.