Warsaw, 11 January 1946. Judge Halina Wereńko, acting based on the Statutory Order dated 10 November 1945 on the Main Commission and District Commissions for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, heard the person specified below as a witness. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the significance 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 | Wacław Dąbrowski |
| Age | 29 years |
| Names of parents | Wawrzyniec and Anna |
| Place of residence | […] |
| Occupation | labourer |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
During the Warsaw Uprising I worked in the Wolski Hospital at Płocka Street 26 as a physical labourer. On 5 August 1944, at about 1 p.m., while I was in an operating theatre helping to relocate wounded patients, a couple of SS-men armed with rifles and rozpylacz guns [machine guns] burst into the room. They ordered everyone there to get out of the hospital. They did not allow us to take the wounded, and so the patients lying in the hospital wards remained there. I went to the hall. It was crowded, SS-men were leading the staff and civilians seeking shelter in the hospital, as well as the patients who were able to walk. While I was standing in the hall, I heard three shots, one after another. Right after that the SS-men ordered us to go in front of the hospital. We were asking one another where the shots had come from and someone walking beside me, I do not remember who, told me that Germans had shot the director of the hospital Marian Piasecki, Professor Zegland, and the chaplain, Father Cieczerski, in the director’s office. I could not find out the reason for this murder.
In front of the hospital the SS-men grouped us into fours, then into sixes. First women, then men. The group was herded towards Górczewska Street through Płocka Street. By the flyover in Górczewska Street the group was stopped and the [SS-men] separated two surgeons from us: Dr. Manteufel and one other doctor, as well as two operating-theatre nurses: Barbara Warda and another nurse, whose name I don’t know. During the march, before we reached the flyover, people walking with me were saying that on the way the SS-men had shot two patients who had been unable to keep up. I did not see that myself. Shots were audible all the time while we were walking, because insurgents were fighting the Germans not far away. After a stop by the Górczewska Street flyover, we were escorted to the boiler factory in Moczydło Street, where all the men were brought into a [timber] hall. A part of the women also came in there as well, a part of the women stayed in the yard. In the hall, when we entered, there were about twenty people. After a while men were ordered to stand on one side of the hall and women on the other. Doctors and nurses were ordered to stand separately, then they told us to sit down and keep quiet.
After an hour, an SS-officer arrived and through an interpreter ordered four men to volunteer to carry the wounded. Employees of the hospital: Wiktor Chorzewski and Kwiryn Sydry and two men that I did not know stepped forward and went out. Chorzewski and Sydry disappeared without a trace, their families do not know anything about them to this day. After ten minutes, the same officer demanded that twenty men volunteer. This party went out and I do not know what happened to them. After another ten minutes the same officer demanded that twenty-five men volunteer. This time men were reluctant to go, they were forced by an SS-man threatening to shoot them. After another ten minutes the same officer ordered a further fifty men to get out, which they did. The SS- man ordered fifty men to go once or twice again.
I went out of the hall in the fourth or fifth group, as one of the last men. When I was leaving, there weren’t fifty people in my group, there were only about twenty of us. The only men left in the hall were doctors. After we stepped in front of the hall an SS-man put us in threes, and then the SS-men took away our watches and rings and demanded gold. Then a soldier came and spoke a few words to an SS officer who ordered us to go in the direction of Górczewska Street. We were escorted by six SS-men with automatic weapons in their hands. Once we reached the overpass on Górczewska Street, the SS-men ordered us to turn left in the direction of Ulrychów. We walked about [missing] meters up Górczewska Street and turned right, where damaged houses stood, into the courtyard opposite the bottled water factory at number 53. I don’t remember the number of the yard of the burnt house which we entered.
At this point the witness drew a site plan of the execution ground (the drawing has been attached hereto).
When I entered the yard, the house nearby, marked with the letter C on the drawing, was already burning. Corpses were lying near the wall of the building marked with the letter C, and at the wall of the house marked with the letter E. The ground on which the execution took place was about fifteen meters long and ten meters wide. I estimate that when I entered, there might have been up to five hundred corpses in the yard. I did not recognize any of them, and I do not know whether these were the men previously escorted from the factory in Moczydło Street. The corpses were lying in layers, one on top of another, such that the pile of these corpses at the walls marked with the letters I and C on the drawing was one meter high and in places even higher. The highest pile of corpses was located under the wall marked with the letter B. SS-men armed with grenades and hand machine guns were standing under the wall marked with the letter B. Having entered the yard, as I saw the corpses, I heard one of the SS-men calling in Polish: “Climb as high as you can!”.
I then heard a salvo and I fell on my face in the place marked on the drawing with the letter A. While I was on the ground I felt some man fall on my legs, and others were walking on me. The execution continued for l0–15 minutes. Then I heard single shots and Poles crying: “Kill me!”, “Help!”. After several shots the crying ceased. I infer from this that the SS-men were killing the Poles who were still alive, all the more so as I could hear footsteps. After some time, maybe after fifteen minutes, I heard the Germans bringing another group to be executed.
I don’t know how many people were brought, because I had my face to the ground. I only heard footsteps, salvos, crying, screams. The voices were male and I later saw that only male corpses were lying in the yard. After another salvo I again heard footsteps, moans and single shots, I therefore believe that the SS-men were again killing the wounded. After ten minutes I heard footsteps walking away. After some time I again heard footsteps, I think it could have been three persons, and then I heard again pleadings of “Help!”, “Kill me!” and then shots again. Apparently, the SS-men were again moving about to kill the wounded. After the SS- men went away, I again heard moans, as well as pleadings of the wounded to keep quiet.
At some point some wounded man lying among the dead started singing “Poland Is Not Yet Lost” [Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła – the Polish anthem], I again heard footsteps, shots, gurgles, and then everything went completely silent. It started to get dark. Some of the shot men were still alive, because I heard moaning from time to time. I again heard single footsteps and shots. I realized that a single soldier had come back to kill the wounded. This time he was walking for a long time among the corpses and I could hear single shots. I was lying still, with my face to the ground. At one point I felt that the SS-man was standing right beside me. He then started shooting, the bullets were hitting around me, one of them hit me, but fortunately it was just a flesh wound. When the man assigned to kill the wounded was leaving, everything was totally quiet, I turned my head and I noticed that he was wearing an SS uniform.
I lay there until it became totally dark, I got up then and I noticed that another employee of the Wolski Hospital, Franciszek Wojciechowski, was also alive. Just outside of the yard where the execution had taken place we met a priest, whose name I do not know, but who had also survived the execution. Apart from the priest, a bit further on other men who had survived the execution joined us, so that we were walking in a group of around ten persons.
I don’t know the names of the survivors who were walking back with me. I don’t meet with them now. Franciszek Wojciechowski did not leave the yard where the execution took place, although I was urging him to do so. I peeked out onto Górczewska Street and I saw that SS-men were swarming there, so we went in the direction of Koło to the so-called clay- pits [glinki], where we washed ourselves.
After the Russian troops took Warsaw, in February or March 1945, I went back to the execution site and I found that human bones were still lying there. I collected and buried a part of them in the neighbouring square, where the grave marked on the drawing with the letter D is. Some women I didn’t know told me that this was the place where the remains of the victims massacred in the yard, where the execution which I described took place, had been buried. These women also told me that the bodies of the murdered men were burnt by the Germans. When I was leaving the execution site, a part of the corpses had already caught fire from the burning house marked on the plan with the letter C.
I don’t know whether the Germans were later burning the corpses systematically. When I came to the site in 1945, I saw that the wall of the house marked on the drawing with the letter E had collapsed or was demolished. Apart from human bones, I also found charred caps and hospital robes on the execution site. Such caps could have been worn only by employees from a surgical ward. The one I found was marked “Wolski Hospital operating surgery” and was partially burnt. One robe also had the mark of the Wolski Hospital. There were three partially burnt robes, one of which was marked like that, and two other pieces had the same fabric and design. Apart from that I found unmarked fragments of a white apron. These items proved that this was the place where the hospital employees had been executed.
I heard from Doctor Jan Napiórkowski that he and a group of doctors had been herded to be executed in the same place which I described in my testimony, but he had managed to escape into the rubble.
At this the report was concluded and read.