WŁADYSŁAW KRÓLIK

Warsaw, 5 July 1949. A member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Norbert Szuman (MA), heard 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 Władysław Królik
Date and place of birth 5 June 1908, Drwalew, Grójec county
Names of parents Walenty and Marianna, née Ignacak
Occupation of the father farmer
State affiliation and nationality Polish
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Education elementary school
Occupation chauffeur, currently caretaker
Place of residence Warsaw, Rakowiecka Street 9, flat 2
Criminal record none

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, I was in my house at Rakowiecka Street 9. From the very first day of the uprising, the Germans from the barracks situated on the even-numbered side of Rakowiecka Street were shooting at the houses on the other side of the street, although there were no insurgents in these houses. On 3 August 1944, the Germans began throwing people out from the houses on Rakowiecka Street and leading them to the barracks.

When they approached the house no. 9, the one in which I lived, they began to tear down the gate, which had been permanently closed since the first moments of the uprising, and to shoot at the windows on the ground floor. A German unit comprising some 20 people entered our house.

I could not determine whether they were SS men or Wehrmacht. I only know that they came from the barracks. The soldiers spread out and began to throw people out floor by floor, immediately setting the flats on fire. At first they threw out the residents from the staircase in the front, without killing anyone. On the next staircase, however, the one at the corner of the building and leading to the courtyard (the house is situated on the corner of Rakowiecka and Sandomierska streets), the Germans began to shoot all the men, claiming that some shots had been fired at them from that part of the house. In that staircase, the following people were thus killed: Zygmunt Kręczyński, Dębczak with his wife, who wanted to cover him and was therefore shot as well, and Krell; I don’t know the surnames of the other victims.

Then the Germans descended to the public shelter, which was situated in our basements. They encountered a sick old lady there, Kwiatkowska, lying on a bed, and they shot her as well. The Germans did not enter the annex of our house, in which my flat was situated and from which I observed the above-described events. I saw that they proceeded to Sandomierska Street, to the house at no. 18, threw out its residents and set it on fire with the use of some flammable liquid, probably petrol.

Shortly afterwards, I went out to the street with a few other residents from the annex. The Germans separated us from the women and led us to the barracks.

From there I was taken to the Stauferkaserne, together with other men from Rakowiecka Street, Puławska Street and the neighboring ones. Supposedly we were to be executed, but as this was not carried out, we were taken back to the barracks, where I stayed for over a week. Some men, especially the sick and the old, had been released earlier.

As I heard, at that time the women were taken to aleja Szucha, and not all of them came back from there. They told me that at aleja Szucha the Germans had picked some hundred women from the crowd, both young and old, and those had to stay at aleja Szucha. The rest returned to the barracks, from where they were released to the previously burnt houses. From among those who had been kept at aleja Szucha, none has returned to this day. Three women from our house had been taken: Krell’s daughter, Maria Kwiatkowska, and Zofia Sporniak.

When I was in the Stauferkaserne, I saw blood stains on the freshly turned grass by the wall of one of the wings of that block. There were also recent bullet marks on the wall of the building. I learned from other people that on the previous day the Germans had executed there a dozen or so men brought from somewhere in the neighborhood of Kazimierzowska Street.

When I was released from the barracks, I went back to my flat and remained there until 15 August or maybe a couple days later (I no longer remember the exact date). On that day the Germans marched all the civilians from Rakowiecka Street, a part of Puławska Street, Polna Street and a part of Marszałkowska Street along Rakowiecka Street and by the municipal gardens to a shed in Okęcie. A few days later, the entire transport was driven on foot to Pruszków.

The witness adds that when he had come back home from the barracks, he buried the victims of the execution of 4 August 1944 with the help of a man called Staniszewski. It is difficult to specify how many people had been killed then as the majority of bodies had been incinerated in burning flats. However, it might be stated that about ten people had perished at the time. Their bodies had been buried in the courtyard. After the war, the families took the bodies of their loved ones, thus during an exhumation carried out in the courtyard by the Red Cross, only the body of Kwiatkowska was uncovered.

At this the report was concluded and read out.