HELENA KURA

7 June 1949, Warsaw. Member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Norbert Szuman, interviewed the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false statements, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Helena Kura, néeŻych
Date and Place of birth 2 February 1920, Brzesko
Parents’ names Franciszek and Maria, née Cichostępska
Father’s occupation Farmer
State and national affiliation Polish
Religious affiliation Catholic
Education Elementary school
Occupation Janitor
Place of residence Warsaw Bytomska Street 6
Criminal record None

When the uprising broke out I was in the house at Mickiewicza Street 44 in Żoliborz. I stayed there until mid-September 1944. On 14 or perhaps 15 September (I cannot remember the exact date), following the bombardment of the surrounding houses by German planes, I took shelter, along with my child and my husband, Ludwik Kura, in the basement of the house at Mickiewicza 38. That day in the morning the area where we were staying was attacked by German units. During the assault my brother-in-law, Antoni Wierzba (he lives in Kraków at Barska Street 3, Dębniki), who had come out of the basement for a while, was wounded. Following the fuss my sister made about the wounds he had sustained, soldiers in German uniforms burst into the house – “Ukrainians”, as the acquaintances with whom we were hiding called them – and ordered everyone to come out. In the courtyard they separated the men from the women and children. The men, about ten in number, were kept there while we were escorted out of the courtyard through the neighboring property at Bytomska Street 3. We only managed to catch a glimpse of the men having their papers checked. While walking through the property at Bytomska 3, we saw the dead bodies of unknown men – about twenty in number – lying in disarray in the garden from the side of Bytowska Street, along which we were being escorted towards Marymont. While still at Bytomska Street we could hear shots, moans and screams coming from the direction of the premises we had left behind. We wanted to return to see if it was true that the men from whom we had been separated were shot, as we presumed. But we were brutally marched to Marymont and further, through The Central Institute of Physical Education, to – if I am not mistaken – the Marians’ monastery. Finally we were ordered to go outside Warsaw.

I returned to Warsaw in March 1945. Shortly afterwards I met a man who told me (I didn’t know his name) that he and some other man had survived the execution carried out on Bytomska Street. But his brother was killed and he had hoped to find his body in the graves that can be seen clearly defined in the garden and in front of the house at Bytomska Street 3. I did not witness the exhumation carried out by the PCK, but my sister, who lives in Kraków (I cannot remember her address, Antoni Wierzba, whom I mentioned above, can provide it) was present at it. She told me that because of a downpour only four persons were exhumed.

That is all I can say about the exhumation. But I often see the man who survived the execution at Bytomska 3 (I will undertake to learn his name and address and to inform the Main Commission).

At this the report was concluded and read out.