SERAFIN KOŁOSOW

Częstochowa, 5 May 1948. Judge M. Domagała, a member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed 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 Serafin Kołosow
Age 37 years old
Names of parents Jakub and Maria, née Lis
Place of residence Częstochowa, Waszyngtona Street
Occupation foodstuffs warehouseman at the Maltański Hospital
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Criminal record none
Relationship to the parties none

On 1 August 1944 and the following days, that is until 17 August, I worked as an orderly at the Maltański Hospital in Warsaw at Senatorska Street 40. In the first days of August, a German unit entered the premises of the hospital. They had SS insignia on their collars. The unit numbered some 50 men. On 1 August, when they entered the hospital, there were no incidents. In fact, these Germans behaved decently on the whole. The unit stayed at the hospital for no more than a few hours. Before they moved on, they left some ten wounded German soldiers.

On 7 August new SS units arrived, as well as other regular army units. At the time I noticed that there were Ukrainians among these soldiers, judging so by their physical appearance (faces and slanting eyes). They entered the patients’ ward and proceeded to search for weapons, brutally prodding people and knocking them over. I did not witness them taking anything from anyone. During the search they beat up a man who just happened to be on the premises.

Once the Germans had completed their search, I saw an SS officer grab the brother-in-law of one of our employees, Roman Markuszewski. He too was on the hospital premises by chance.

I explained to the German who had caught this man that he was a hospital employee. My explanations were not accepted; the German took him outside and I saw through the window that he shot him, hitting him in the arms and legs. Markuszewski’s brother-in-law fell to the ground. After a while our orderlies went out and brought him into the hospital, where he died two hours later. The Germans did not allow us to bury him, so he was placed in the garden.

On the same day, 7 August, the hospital building at Senatorska Street 36 was set on fire. During the fire I and some other people whose surnames I do not know carried the patients out into the nearby square, from where they were taken to a room at Senatorska Street 40. The Germans did not in any way oppose the moving of the wounded. I know that on the same day the Germans displaced all the civilians, mainly women and children, from the shelter located at Senatorska Street 36. I saw through one of the hospital windows how the Germans shot two men wearing plain clothes.

Since I was occupied with the wounded, I was unable to observe how individual Germans behaved on the premises of the Maltański Hospital.

Since I do not know it, I cannot provide the surname of the commander of the troops that were active at the hospital on 7 August. They were commanded by an SS officer: he was tall, thin, fair-haired, aged around 35.

I am also unable to give the name of the German unit that was on the hospital premises that day. This unit, which arrived on 7 August, stayed on the premises for only a short time, but I cannot say for how long they were present since the hospital changed hands between various units, while I, working, could not control or even view the locations at the hospital which they occupied.

On 14 August a group of SS-men entered our hospital at Senatorska Street 40 and 42, and conducted a search among the patients and personnel. They smashed the X-ray machine and beat up those present in the office. After a few hours they ordered that all of the patients be taken to the hospital courtyard. The less seriously ill [went] in an unknown direction, while the gravely ill remained in the courtyard. I carried these patients with the help of other people and sisters to the Wolski Hospital, which was situated on Płocka Street. When we were transferring the patients, the Germans beat us, calling us Polish bandits.

While we were moving the patients, one of the Germans, whom the others called Sturmoberführer, stopped a stretcher with one of the patients whom I was carrying together with another orderly. The German ordered us to take the patient to one of the rooms. Next, the Germans threw us out of it.

The hospital was emptied of all patients. Before nightfall that same day (14 August) I wanted to determine what the Germans had done with the patient who had been returned to the hospital. I lied and said that I wanted to get some water from the hospital garden. They allowed me to go and I then noticed that the patient in question was lying on his stretcher, shot dead. As I later learned from Sister Pakulska, who worked at the hospital, this man was a Home Army officer.

On 14 August I witnessed the murder of a woman who was caring for her son in the hospital. A German ordered her to move away from her sick son, but since she did not obey he grabbed her by the neck and shot her with his pistol, killing her on the spot. I transferred her sick son to the Wolski Hospital. During this time I saw with my own eyes how two SS-men brought in one of our employees, Górny (I do not know his forename). They ordered him to sit on the other side of Senatorska Street, beside the gate of the Zamoyskich Palace, and fired a few shots at him from their machine pistols, killing him on the spot.

On 14 August our hospital was totally emptied of patients. Of the personnel, only Bocianowski (whose forename I do not know) and his daughter, Irena Bocianowska, Izabella Pakulska, the hospital sister, and myself remained. The Germans kept us in the sanitary department, in which Germans were lying; I was working in the kitchen. Two of the doctors also remained: Wojtarowski and another one, whose surname I do not know.

I worked as the cook for 20 days, after which we were taken to the Wolski Hospital, where I worked until October, when the hospital ceased to exist. During this time the Germans were under attack of Soviet forces and were transferring their hospitals. We were moved to Piastów. There were no incidents during the evacuation to Piastów.

One day in Piastów the Germans carried out a search and took away two men whom they suspected of being Jews. These people had been wounded during the Uprising. The Germans dragged them from their beds and executed them on the premises of the factory where our hospital was located.

As regards the burning down of the Maltański Hospital, I know nothing about this case, for I did not witness it. The Maltański Hospital was burned down two weeks after we had left it.

The Germans took me with them, but I made use of an opportunity and hid in the Wolski Hospital. Such are the events concerning my departure from the Maltański Hospital.

The report was read out.