Poznań, 10 May 1946. Deputy Prosecutor Alfons Lehmann from the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes heard the person named below as a sworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Teofil Kucharski |
| Age | 57 years old |
| Names of parents | Józef and Józefa, née Braun |
| Place of residence | Poznań, Focha Street 47 |
| Occupation | doctor |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
After the failed insurgent attack on the Gestapo building at aleja Szucha, on 1 August 1944, Ujazdowski Hospital became part of the area captured by the Germans, and from that time on it was under the control of a German police battalion commanded by Cpt. Majer (Meyer), which was stationed in the building of the Sejm [Polish parliament] at Wiejska Street. I don’t know whether Cpt. Meyer was a German or a Volksdeutsch. To me it seemed that he was a German. He was of middle height and stout, had an oval, sweaty face, bloodshot eyes, and parted blonde hair. He always gave me the impression of a drunk man. He was sending his inspections to the hospital premises. When a German soldier had been killed in front of the gate of Ujazdowski Hospital at Górnośląska Street, he sent a few soldiers to carry out a search, suggesting that the shot had been fired from the hospital. At the time, I worked as the hospital director upon the request of the other doctors, as the hospital director, an insurgent doctor named Strehl, had been assigned sanitary chief of the uprising, and his deputy could not come, as the road had been cut off. In the hospital there were sick civilians and a few Polish soldiers, either wounded or sick. Only three insurgents were brought to the hospital through the German posts as civilians.
On 5 August the Germans burnt down an administrative building of the hospital, which was situated just by Górnośląska Street.
(At that point there was a change of court reporter. Articled clerk Czesław Filipiak assumed the post).
When I intervened with the police commandant Cpt. Meyer, asking him to spare the hospital, he showered me with abuse and declared, “ wir haben von Berlin den Befehl bekommen ganz Warschau abzubrennen, ” and told me to get out. On the same day, at 10.00 p.m., I received an order to evacuate the hospital. There were no fights in the vicinity at the time. On 1 August there had been the unsuccessful attack on the Gestapo building at aleja Szucha. Apart from Ujazdowski Hospital, the following were also on our premises: Holy Spirit Hospital, an educational institution for the disabled, the staff residing on the hospital premises, people who had visited the sick on 1 August and could not leave the hospital due to the outbreak of the uprising, and 350 women evacuated by the Germans from burnt-down houses on Wiejska Street. In total, there were 1,831 people, including 369 sick people, and 152 of them were fit for transport on stretchers only.
The staff of Ujazdowski Hospital consisted of eight doctors (associate professor J. Krotoski, Lieutenant Colonel Dr Stanisław Kozłowski, Lieutenant Colonel Dr Witold Waligórski, Cpt. Dr Franciszek Borusiewicz, Lieutenant Colonel Dr Narkowicz, Lieutenant Colonel Dr Wiloch, Major Dr Fritz, and one young surgeon), chaplain Father Juszczyk, one pharmacist, about 40 nurses with chief nurse Wiłkomirska, and auxiliary staff such as Michał Zawiszczak, a morgue diener, bricklayer Orzechowski and many others.
When I formed a column in the morning, I still needed people to carry 50 stretchers with the sick people. I went again to Cpt. Meyer, asking him to give me some people to carry stretchers from among the men from the burnt-down buildings in the neighborhood whom he had incarcerated. At the same time I pointed out to him that a medical library, one of the largest in the world, was situated on the premises of Ujazdowski Hospital. Cpt. Meyer barely heard what I had to say, and again spared me no abuse, saying, “Banditen Direktor, Poles do not deserve pity, because they themselves had burnt wounded Germans from the former district hospital at 6 Sierpnia Street.” It was a rumor made up by the Germans to incite hatred and thirst for revenge against the Poles.
Cpt. Meyer told me to get out and announced that should the hospital not set off within half an hour, he would sort us out. I managed to find people to carry these 50 stretchers by exerting strong pressure on the staff, who consequently had to leave their bundles behind or deposit them on a wagon.
We set off at about 10.00 a.m. There were no Germans on the hospital premises, but they were in front of the hospital and along our route. We went down Górnośląska Street to the building of the State Office for Physical [Education] and Military Defense at Myśliwiecka Street.
At the front of the column, there were five women with the Polish Red Cross flags, then those who carried the sick people on stretchers (among these were all the doctors and the chaplain), then the disabled people, then the hospital staff and evacuated women. At the end there were five wagons with the most indispensable sanitary articles, foodstuffs, and linens from both hospitals.
As soon as we began to carry the sick people into the building, the German police from Wiejska Street, commanded by some second lieutenant whose surname I don’t know, arrived and ordered us to go away straight off. Before we managed to take all the sick people out, they had set the building on fire. The Germans confiscated the wagons with everything we had managed to save from the hospital and from our personal belongings. My assertions that there were no weapons in the wagons and request that they check it were to no avail. Clearly it was an element of harassment on the part of the Germans to tell the Poles to go the building of the State Office for Physical Education and Military Defense. Probably they had wanted to burn the building down while avoiding the risk of getting shelled from a weak and poorly armed insurgent post that was situated on Belwederska Street.
We were directed towards Czerniakowska Street and told to march on, without any specific destination. Having passed the last German post by the water works at Czerniakowska Street, the column found itself in an area occupied neither by the Germans nor the insurgents.
The hospitals took up the Home of [Divine] Providence of the Sisters of Mary on Chełmska Street.
During the next days, the Holy Spirit Hospital went to Powsin. Ujazdowski Hospital stayed in the same place, got organized with the help of the local populace, and began to admit the wounded: civilians, insurgents, and German soldiers alike.
Following the evacuation of Ujazdowski Hospital from Górnośląska Street, the Germans set fire to and partially burnt down the remaining buildings of Ujazdowski Hospital. Although the Soviet troops encircling Warsaw also shelled Ujazdowski Hospital, as – being situated on a hill – it was a perfect defense position, the hospital buildings were so completely burnt out that it could not have been the result of artillery fire, but of an ordinary, thorough arson job. When already on Chełmska Street, we had observed smoke above the hospital, even before the Soviet troops captured Praga.
The Germans knew everything about the new hospital location on Chełmska Street. We were visited by German patrols. I sent them the wounded Germans, and for other wounded people the Germans sent their soldiers, who were blood donors.
On about 15 August, the hospital premises were captured by the insurgents. On the morning of 30 August, [the Germans] shelled the hospital, but no harm was done to the people. They demolished a tower with the Polish Red Cross flag. On the same day, there were two air raids from dive bombers, at about 5.30–6.30 p.m. The first raid damaged only the washing room. During the second air raid the Germans used high explosive and incendiary bombs, and when they tore down the hospital and the house of the staff, they opened fire with onboard weapons at the people who remained alive. The wing of the building which was occupied by the Sisters of Mary and the children was left intact. The hospital wing and the house of the staff were almost completely demolished. About 180 wounded people and staff members were killed under the rubble. The wounded people were evacuated to Sadyba and Upper Mokotów. In Sadyba, associate professor Krotoski opened a branch of Ujazdowski Hospital, and I opened another branch in Upper Mokotów. Some wounded people remained with the staff in the rest of the building on Chełmska Street, and during the next days they suffered three further raids which resulted in the deaths of 60 more people. In total, about 240 people were killed during the air raids against the hospital. After the uprising, the hospital branches from Sadyba and Upper Mokotów rejoined in Milanówek. In the middle of November, the hospital was removed by the Germans to Kraków in a sanitary train.
For three days of – quite comfortable – journey, neither the sick people nor the staff received anything to eat or drink from the Germans who were in charge of the train. The majority of the sick people did not have warm clothing.
In Prądnik, a district of Kraków, the sick people were bathed and deloused, and then transported to a hospital in the home of the Jesuits on Kopernika Street. The sick people caught colds, and a few of them died of them. The German board of the St. Lazarus Hospital provided neither bedding nor blankets, not taking any care of our sick. Besides, the supplies of the St. Lazarus Hospital were meager, as – I learned from professor Kostrzewski – the Germans had transported them to Germany in July of the same year.
I submit the surnames of some of the people who were killed during the air raids on the hospital on Chełmska Street.
Nurses: Wiewiórowska, Markoń, Narbut, Marzecka, Grabicka, Łukomska, Ludwika Sterlieb, Apczyńska, Likoń, Irena Kutkowska, the wife and two daughters of Sergeant Rogoziński. I do not remember any more surnames.
As witnesses, I submit: associate professor Dr Krotoski (Poznań), Lieutenant Colonel Dr Witold Waligórski, and Lieutenant Colonel Dr Stanisław Kozłowski (Poznań, district hospital, Grunwaldzka Street 16/18).
[a site plan was appended]