ANTONI BOROWIECKI

Warsaw, 11 December 1947. The member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, Judge Halina Wereńko, interviewed the person specified below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Antoni Borowiecki
Names of parents Unknown, Antonina Borowiecka
Date of birth 13 September 1904, Szymanów near Sochaczew
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Education four years of elementary school
Occupation janitor in the Radium Institute
State and national affiliation Polish
Place of residence Warsaw, Wawelska Street 15

The outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising caught me in the Radium Institute on Wawelska Street 15, where I worked as a porter in the economic department.

On 5 August 1944, amidst a disorderly shoot-out, units in German uniforms speaking Russian, “Ukrainians” as they were generally called, entered the area of the Radium Institute from the side of Pole Mokotowskie. At the moment of the solders’ entrance I was among the sick in a basement. The soldiers gave an order for all those able to walk to leave the buildings, and in this way they led out the medical and sanitary personnel from the Radium Institute. I heard from my wife, Jadwiga, that the “Ukrainians” shot the husband of a sick woman in the garden because he stepped outside of the line. The group was led to Zieleniak.

I did not obey the order and I remained in the area of the Radium Institute, together with the son of a stoker, Stefański, eng. Rzepecki, a few insurgents (I don’t know their names), and the female workers of the Radium Institute, Bronisława Mazurkiewicz, Apolonia Kania, Barcikowska, and Powelska. After leading the groups out of the Institute area, the soldiers starting looting and demolishing the hospital equipment. They drank ether and denatured spirit and harassed the sick women. In the evening, I saw in the basement how a few soldiers committed rape on a sick woman, who had been staying in the hospital already before the uprising. I heard women’s cries all night. One of the soldiers took me to the science building, intending to push me into the flames, but another one defended me. I saw a few corpses lying in the building’s doors exiting to the garden.

On 6 August, together with a group of the remaining workers of the Institute, I hid in a chimney flue of the boiler room. Mazurkiewicz and one other worker told me that on that day, in the afternoon, drunken soldiers had murdered the sick lying on the ground floor, and then set the mattresses on fire. When the soldiers left the Radium Institute after 20 August, I saw partly burned corpses with signs of being shot, numbering around 15, on the ground floor, and two corpses in the basement. Five sick people remained in the basements, six people from the personnel and two civilian men, insurgents as I presume. From that time on the “Ukrainians” visited the hospital, looting the remains, I also heard women’s cries.

On 19 August, “Ukrainians” under the command of a German officer came to the Radium Institute and told everyone to leave the area. All the sick left then, apart from two elderly ones who remained in the basement. At that time I was hiding in the boiler room with Stefański, and I heard two shots, and on 20 August I saw the two partly burned corpses of those sick people in the basement. After leading the group of women out, the soldiers set the basements of the Institute, the pharmacy, and the coking plant on fire. After 20 August, during two weeks, I saw that trucks were coming to the Radium Institute, bringing groups of workers from the civilian population who loaded hospital equipment onto the cars under an escort. They took five X-ray cameras then.

On 3 October 1944, together with Stefański, we left for Okęcie.

At this the report was concluded and read out.