Warsaw, 10 January 1946. Judge Halina Wereńko, delegated to the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed the person specified below as a witness. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the gravity of the oath, the judge swore the witness in accordance with Art. 109 [of the Code of Criminal Procedure].
The witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Anna Janina Wielowiejska |
| Age | born in 1906 |
| Names of parents | Władysław and Anna |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, aleja Wojska [Polskiego] 29, flat 70 |
| Occupation | qualified nurse |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal Record | none |
In 1944 I worked in Wolski Hospital at Płocka Street 26 as a laboratory assistant. On 1 August 1944 electricity was cut off, so I volunteered to carry the wounded, and therefore I was always near the door, opposite Director Piasecki’s office.
On 3 August 1944, German troops in armed vehicles stopped near our hospital. This was the “Hermann Göring” armed division of the SS, which had come from Italy. Then the hospital director assigned the entire personnel to the rooms, so that everyone would seem busy and would not be standing in the Germans’ field of vision, so only I and the janitor, Okraszewski, were in the hall.
A German officer and a few other Germans entered the hospital and demanded that the hospital director send sanitary patrols in order to bring out the wounded, first Germans and then Poles. The director sent twelve stretchers, Professor Dr Zeyland and I, among others, went out. There were no German wounded left, since the Germans themselves had loaded them on trucks, and I, picking up a third wounded man, got as far as Franaszek’s factory in Wolska Street, accompanied by Franciszek Wojciechowski (who was killed on 5 August).
In Wolska Street, four or five houses away from Franaszek’s factory, stands the “Ursus” factory. I saw that the same SS men from the “Hermann Göring” division were catching passers- by and those standing in gates and were herding them through the “Ursus” factory gate. I heard shooting and the screams of the executed coming from there. When the SS men were opening the gates, I saw that the yard was full of people and SS men. I had to pick up a wounded man and go to Wolski Hospital, so my observations were made in haste.
In the evening of 3 August the Germans retreated to St Adalbert church, to Sokołowska Street, and the hospital was in a neutral zone, since Poles were in Działdowska Street. This situation continued for two days.While we were picking up the wounded, Germans were shooting at us.
On 5 August around 11 a.m. the Germans came to the hospital director, who told me about this later, with an evacuation order. The director reportedly said that the hospital was neutral in accordance with the Geneva Convention, that it had also German patients (we had five of them), and that in these circumstances he did not agree to the evacuation.
Around noon, people wounded during the execution which the Germans had carried out in the house at Wolska Street 54 began coming to our hospital. This execution, as they recounted, had included all the residents of that house, around one thousand persons. Three brothers survived this execution: Edward Szor, Franciszek Szor, and Czesław Szor; as of February 1945 they lived in Wolska Street 54. They are mechanics by profession. I heard from them that they had hid in a factory furnace and had seen the execution through a little window. Allegedly, even the Germans refused to shoot at helpless civilians, and a non- commissioned officer himself had to start shooting a machine gun.
I believe that Leontyna Braun was wounded during that execution.
At around half past two p.m., screaming broke out in the hospital, as a patient with a lung condition had gotten shot [with a bullet coming] through a window. The director then asked me to move the shot patient to the surgical ward. I went there. When I came back, I saw that a group of armed “Ukrainians” were standing in front of the hospital, and that armed SS men were walking around the hospital, ordering everyone to get out of the hospital immediately. At that point the director was in the hall. He was very calm, albeit pale, and he said that there was an order to evacuate the hospital immediately. After a while Germans started calling the hospital director, Dr Marian Józef Piasecki to his office; he was followed by Professor Janusz Zeyland. At that moment, the hospital chaplain, Father Ciecierski, wearing a surplice and a stole, came into the hall of the hospital, supporting a wounded German soldier on his arm, who was screaming in German: “Be good to them, since they have been good to us”. The Germans took their patients away, and an SS man took the chaplain to the office where Professor Zeyland and the director already were. The Germans also wanted the head of the hospital administration, Józef Wójcicki, and the head nurse to come to the office, but they could not be found.
After a while I heard eight single shots from the office. I asked a German soldier who was leaving the office: Kaputt?. To which he replied: Alles kaputt. I do not speak much German, I was unable to get more information.
On the following day, when we were in Moczydło, we were told by the Germans that the director, the professor, and the chaplain had been shot because the hospital was a lair of the resistance, which was not true, however, since we had no insurgents in the hospital. The director had always said that the hospital was a neutral point and forbade any shooting from the hospital.
Coming back to 5 August 1944, I testify that I was one of the last people to leave the hall, only Dr Woźniewski together with his patient, who managed to obtained a permission for herself and the doctor to stay in the hospital, stayed. In the column I was in the last row.
I believe that up to one thousand people were taken away from the hospital, as far I could estimate by sight.
When the column was walking in the direction of Górczewska Street, the insurgents were shooting from the direction of Działdowska Street, and the Germans were hiding behind us. When the column reached Górczewska Street, the insurgents must have realized that the people walking were Poles, and they stopped shooting. As we were walking, all the houses around us were on fire. During the march, I twice saw Germans execute two patients who were slowing down. Shooting could be heard all the time. As they were throwing us out of the hospital, the Germans were saying that they would burn the hospital, so everyone who was able to move got out of the hospital. And now those who were unable to keep up were getting executed.
Near the flyover on Górczewska Street, Dr Wesołowski, Manteuffel, Barbara Warda and Irena Dobrzańska were separated from us and taken to a German dressing point, and the column was formed in such manner that the doctors were in the front, and behind them were the patients and the civilians who had taken shelter in the hospital during the uprising.
From the flyover, we were taken to the water glass factory on Moczydło. The doors to the factory hall were blocked with poles, and machine guns had been set up in the yard. A few SS men were on guard. I asked them what they were going to do with us. An SS man replied that there were too many of us to be executed, so they would burn us alive. After an hour, the SS men started to enter the factory hall in groups of a few men, they were shooting in the air and ordering men to get out. First they ordered four men to volunteer; the following persons went out: Wiktor Chorzewski, a mechanic at Wolski Hospital, Kwiryn Sydry, the hospital’s gardener (residing in Rembertów), one more hospital employee whose name I don’t remember, and one man I did not know.
Shooting was being heard all the time, that is why the shots fired during the executions did not draw our attention. After a while the SS men took twenty-five men, half an hour later another twenty-five, and only then did we realise that these men were going to be executed. In the meantime Germans were bringing more and more groups of civilians.
It was already dark, around 11 p.m., when the SS men took the doctors away.
I am unable to determine how many men were taken. There were three factory halls there, large wooden barracks, all of them packed so tightly that it was impossible even to sit down, and one-third of all these people were men.
On the following day, 6 August 1944, the SS ordered that the women and around two hundred men brought in at night, many of whom had been wounded during the street executions, be led out. We were taken to the Wola Fort, near Jelonki. The column was lined up in fours and around one kilometre long. It was being rumoured that they were taking us to Germany to work, so I ran away.
I got to Jelonki, and there I found out that the hospital was in the camp in the Wola Fort. I got in touch with the Jelonki village administrators, Gawęda and Cepiga, and they intervened with the Germans, saying that they would take care of the hospital, since they had appropriate facilities, as a result of which the Germans released the hospital on 6 August in the evening. I counted that we were missing around one hundred patients, Sister Lange, and Dr Woźniewski, following which Dr Misiewicz delegated me to get through to Wolski Hospital.
I went through Koło, through Zawiszy and Płocka Streets, and around every fifteen steps or so I came across corpses on the ground. Through the gates in Płocka and Zawiszy Street I saw piles of corpses in the yards. The Germans let me into the hospital for fifteen minutes. There I found those patients who had not left the hospital, ninety-eight of them, Dr Woźniewski, and Sister Lange. Fifteen minutes later I began to go back to Jelonki. I was going back down Górczewska Street; behind the flyover, opposite the “Simpleks” factory, I saw the execution site where our doctors had been killed. From afar, on a pile of corpses, I saw the white aprons of the doctors and the clothes of our patients. SD men and SS men were standing around this place in masks, and they did not let me stop. I saw Polish workers, having wrapped their hands with cloths, arranging the corpses in piles one beside the other and one on top of the other, pouring something on them and setting them on fire.
That was on 7 August, the corpses were decomposing due to the heat. The pile of corpses was four metres high, but walking by, I was unable to determine what area it spread over. From then on I went to the hospital in Płocka Street every day, and for a week I was seeing the workers arranging the corpses and burning them.
I don’t know whether all of the men taken away from the Moczydło hall had been executed in that location, I do believe, however, that this must have been the case, since later many items such as stethoscopes, tongs and other medical tools were found there, and moreover I had seen white aprons on the corpses before they were burnt.
On 28 August, during the final evacuation of the hospital, there were no more patients, only the last staff members were leaving. I saw that there were thirteen workers on an open truck, and the driver had a pass for only eleven of them. Then an SS man pulled two men out from the truck, without any selection, on sight, and the sergeant shot them in the back of the head.
I know that these two soldiers had nicknames, one of them was “Quickly-quickly”, and the other was Rote lump. Both of them belonged to the Gestapo unit which was stationed in the Pawiak [prison], where sergeant “Quickly-quickly” got his nickname, since he was shouting “quickly” during the executions in Pawiak.
I know this because when I was in the hospital I had contact with German soldiers, or when I was pulling people out of St Adalbert church, I had to talk to Germans and they told me about it.
As to the robbery of hospital property, I must point out Dr Janik, whose first name I don’t know. He was the head doctor in charge of Polish civilians, and you could do nothing in the hospital without Janik’s permission. He worked in Daniłowiczowska Street in the office of the chief-arzt. He had property inventories for all the hospitals. With this inventory he would come and take away everything. From Wolski Hospital he took away the entire chemical laboratory of Professor Zeyland. I managed to disassemble, and thus save for the hospital, a diagnostic and an irradiation X-ray machine. Thus the Germans took away only one X-ray machine. I heard that similar hospital property looting had taken place in other hospitals as well; this could be testified to by Dr Rogalski, who together with Dr Sabot was the co-owner of an X-ray facility at Aleje Jerozolimskie 49 or 69, and who accompanied Dr Janik to hospitals to take away the property.
The report was read out.