CZESŁAWA PALOTKO

Warsaw, 9 January 1946. Acting Investigating Judge Antoni Krytowski, delegated to the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Warsaw-City Division, heard the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the duty to tell the truth and of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Czesława Palotko, Młućko after her first husband
Age 38
Place of residence Birżańska Street 16, flat 17
Occupation employee of the railways directorate in Warsaw
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Criminal record none

At the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, I was with my first husband, Stanisław Młućko, in his brother’s house at Wszeborska Street 5. At around 5.00 p.m, the Germans opened heavy fire from a pancerka [armed vehicle] stationed on the railway track, and since one bullet (a rifle bullet) hit our flat through the window, we left it and went to the basement. There were many people gathered there. In addition to women and children, who constituted the majority, there were 10 men, including, apart from my husband, acquaintances of mine – Jerzy Winiarski and his father, whose name I don’t know. The elder Winiarski was and still is the owner of the house at Wszeborska Street 5.

We spent about an hour in the basement and then we heard footsteps and German soldiers appeared (with skulls and crossbones on their hats), shouting “raus” loudly, and threatening us with “rozpylacze” [submachine guns], they ordered us to leave the basement. When we were led out into the street, the Germans separated us from the men and told us to stand by the wall of an adjacent house on Księcia Ziemowita Street, and then we were forced into the yard of that house. When we were in the yard, we heard a volley of machine gun fire. This was just after we were forced into the yard. Because of the shooting, we put our hands over our ears, and at that moment we saw Winiarski senior, who entered the yard holding his head and yelling: “They are already dead!” When I asked him, he told me that my husband had just been executed, as had his son Jerzy and the others. He said that he had seen it with his own eyes.

Winiarski told me that he survived because a German officer had separated him from the rest. I think that Winiarski was spared because he was wearing a railway uniform, and besides, he seemed old, though he probably wasn’t much over fifty.

The execution took place by the wall of the same house at Ziemowita Street into whose yard we, that is women and children, had been forced. We were not taken to Ziemowita Street again, but we were led through yards and palings back to the basement of the house at Wszeborska Street 5.

The day following the execution, 2 August, at 6.00 a.m., I carefully collected the body of my husband from the street and buried him in the potato field near our house. Five days later, when the situation calmed down a bit, I made a coffin and buried my husband on the same spot.

In the spring of 1945, I took my husband’s body and, since I had obtained permission, I buried him in the Bródno cemetery. On Ziemowita Street, apart from my husband’s body, I saw corpses of other men who had been executed with him. The Germans didn’t remove these corpses, but the families or friends of the executed took their bodies. Initially, they were all buried in the field next to my husband, and later the families moved the bodies to the cemetery.

The report was read out.