A surgeon in the underground health service of wartime Warsaw

In the spring of 1943 I was offered a post serving in Kedyw.¹ Actually, I had been serving in a key post, as head of the sanitary service for Warsaw’s Fourth Area, which included the Kiliński and Chrobry Battalions, but service in sabotage, with a gun in my hand, would be more exciting, I thought. Other doctors, Jerzy Kaczyński, Zbigniew Dworak, and later Jan Lipiński, Włodzimierz Nakwaski and Witold Rzęczykowski, were called up to serve in Kedyw. They were graduates of the Warsaw military medical college.

Dr Cyprian Sadowski was head of the Kedyw medical service. As a former scout and scout instructor, I was sent to Zośka, the scouts’ battalion, which was made up of some very interesting individuals, senior scouts, and students attending clandestine university or grammar school courses. They included thirty-odd students of Zaorski’s medical course, car mechanics and drivers, members of the working class and intelligentsia—all of them full of the fighting spirit.

My job was organising the medical and sanitary service and training, organising supplies of medical equipment and dressings, and running a course of first aid in combat for all the soldiers. In addition, I also conducted regular medical check-ups for them, and treated any who were sick, and members of their families on home visits. Often I would write recommendations for them to see specialists or for hospital admission.

In this way I was in touch, either personally or through the services of liaison girls or orderlies, with all the platoons and all the soldiers in the battalion. I managed to do this strictly in line with the rules and principles governing underground operations.

It was a fascinating job. I was employed at the time as a medical assistant in Professor Adolf Wojciechowski’s Second Surgical Clinic, and my work there, especially in accidents and injuries (both the hospital ward and outpatients) gave me the opportunity to acquire and develop skills which proved very useful in combat.

Dr August Jokiel, who had lodgings in the clinic (in the nursing college at No. 2 on ulica Chałubińskiego), was a great help. We often asked him for advice. He patiently explained things, gave us clear instructions, and showed an interest in every surgery and treatment that we conducted, even though he had fallen ill himself. The soldiers who were in our care came to him to have their dressings changed and for X rays.

Most of the nurses and students of the nursing college who were members of the underground resistance force and worked in its medical service assisted me in my duties and were a great help.

Now I’ll give an account of a few out of the many sabotage operations the battalion carried out—the ones I remember best.

In the spring of 1944,² Zośka men shot three Nazi henchmen on plac Starynkiewicza. As they were making their escape in a lorry via ulica Żelazna, they came under fire from a Bahnschutz³ unit in the railway office building at No. 16, ulica Żelazna. Two of our boys were wounded. They were put on a horse-drawn open platform and brought to the coach house on ulica Grzybowska.

That day I was on duty in the clinic. I was told in advance of the operation, so I asked someone to stand in for me and took two hours’ leave to wait on aleje Jerozolimskie for the outcome. Naturally, I took a bag with a surgical kit, medications, and dressings. 20 minutes after the shoot-out I found the two injured men lying on the straw in a stable in the Grzybowska. One had had a bullet pass right through his skull, and the other had been hit in the thigh, but there was no bone damage. I applied dressings and administered an anti-tetanus injection, and asked the female orderlies to get a horse and cart to take the less seriously injured one home, and the one who was badly hurt to the clinic. I rushed back to the clinic, and in my capacity as physician on duty admitted the man with the head wound, who had been “accidentally injured by the Germans.” He had lost consciousness. I cleaned the wound and applied a dressing. There were scraps of skin, hair, bone and brain sticking out of the wound. I consulted Dr Stanisław Tokarski and Dr Jerzy Ludwik Choróbski,⁴ both of whom had been briefed and were aware of the situation. We decided on a course of conservative treatment. The nurses who were let in on the secret worked under the supervision of their trainer, Sister Alina Walewicz,⁵ and looked after the injured man with a lot of commitment and dedication. After just three weeks he was fit enough to be discharged from the clinic, but for the next two months, right to the outbreak of the Uprising,⁶ I continued to visit him at home to change his dressings. I visited the other injured man at home to clean his wound. I asked Dr Janusz Skórski for his opinion on the treatment, and he confirmed my choice. The two casualties were provided with extra food and appropriate medications.

Sometimes operations which were called off gave rise to a lot of tension and suspense.

In the spring of 1944, for instance, we were planning an operation to liberate a group of prisoners due to be deported to Auschwitz. It was to be done at Milanówek⁷ station. I went there with two nurses. When I got there, I noticed several of our soldiers in railway uniforms milling around on the platform and in front of the station.

I set up a provisional medical station in a school building off the road that crossed the suburban railway line (of course, after having obtained the headmaster’s permission). I laid out my instruments and sterilisers and waited for casualties. The time dragged on.

Suddenly, three German officers arrived in a car and drove up to the school yard. The situation was dramatic. We quietly packed everything up and waited to see what would happen next. It turned out that the Germans were looking for premises to accommodate their soldiers and left after having looked round the building.

That took one and a half hours. I started to anticipate the shoot-out that would occur when our boys arrived. Soon after the Germans left a liaison man arrived and told us that the operation had been called off, because no prisoners were put on the train. But it had been a pretty nerve-racking time. A reprisal operation had been planned for 29 September 1943⁸ in response to the brutal murder of three scouts who had been on a training course in the area of Wilanów.⁹ We were to burn down the village of Powsinek, which the Germans were using as residential quarters, and destroy the garrison and sentry post at Wilanów.

In the evening we assembled in Wilanów graveyard. The guns were quietly distributed and the instructions were issued. After 10 p.m., when the last suburban train out of Warsaw had passed, we attacked. Unfortunately, our intelligence men did not know and hence failed to warn us that during the day the garrison had been reinforced with over a dozen anti-aircraft soldiers, which of course caused confusion and more casualties.

Already in the first phase of the fighting, during the attack on the outpost, I heard a wounded man calling for a doctor. I was lying in a ditch less than twenty metres away from the targeted building, treating casualties, when suddenly there was a volley from a machine gun in our direction. It was fired by some Germans out in the field, trying to attack us. We hushed them with tit-for-tat from a couple of grenade launchers. We took the building and got rid of the killers, but we had sustained a substantial number of casualties. We carried three seriously wounded men to a lorry which was standing by, and packed six with less severe injuries and two female orderlies into a car. I sat next to the driver and we set off for Chylice.¹⁰ On the left we could see the blaze in the “German” village. Every so often the vehicle ground to a halt, because its radiator had been hit during the shoot-out.

I darted up to the nearest homestead and after making a racket got a bucket of water. We had to do this three more times. Suddenly, there were car lights ahead of us on the road. We halted and ran for cover behind a heap of stones, ready with our Stens and grenade launchers to stop the oncoming German military police, if need be. Only at the last moment did the commanding officer¹¹ of Morro’s company, who was with us, notice firemen’s helmets in the approaching vehicle. We stopped them and distributed the helmets to our boys, who got into the fire engine and put our vehicle on haul. The firemen had to proceed on foot to put out the fire, while we drove off and eventually reached Chylice, where we were supposed to have a medical station and refuge in a local convent. The nuns were either not expecting so many casualties or were completely unaware that we would arrive—they were clearly taken by surprise and shocked to see so many armed and wounded men. I was quite abrupt to them, with a demand for bed linen, sheets and hot water. Two of those with serious injuries were dead on arrival—they had abdominal wounds and lost a lot of blood. The less seriously wounded had dressings applied and left in the fire engine we had acquired. I administered the necessary injections and applied the dressings needed by two of the wounded. The deceased had to be buried. I dug a fairly shallow grave in the adjoining park—by this time I was just about exhausted. I wrapped the bodies in a couple of sheets—I was helped by the convent’s maidservant, the only one who wanted to help—and then dragged the bodies, dumped them into the grave, and covered them up with soil. Two days later they were exhumed and secretly buried in the Powązki Cemetery.¹²

I came back to attend the casualties. It was nearly 5 a.m. I left them in the care of one of the female orderlies, and decided to take the suburban train back to Warsaw, travelling with the other girl. At any rate, that was the order I was given.

I washed as best I could and cleaned my clothes. The two of us boarded the train at Chylice. At Wilanów, the station was teeming with black and green German uniforms. They hopped on the train and did a quick, cursory check of the passengers. I was busy “flirting” with the girl, so they managed to miss us. When we reached the city, the orderly went to report to medical and sanitary HQ and I went home, dog-tired.

The first question I got from my family was, “How did you get your trousers so bloodstained?”

Yes, the back of my trouser legs were spattered with blood. I must have soiled them when I was dragging the dead men. Later, when I cleaned the front of my clothes by torchlight, I never noticed the blood on the back. A good thing the Germans who got on the train at Wilanów didn’t notice it, either.

Later my casualties were taken to a safe haven in Góra Kalwaria,¹³ and back to Warsaw after fortnight. They lived to see the Uprising.

In the summer of 1943 the Zośka boys took part in Operation Taśma (Tape)¹⁴ and were tasked with destroying the German border guard garrison at Sieczychy near Wyszków.¹⁵ This outpost was on the secret liaison route from the Vilnius region to the Generalgouvernement,¹⁶ and the Germans serving in it were notorious for the brutality with which they treated any Polish couriers they happened to catch. I was notified there would be an operation and travelled to the venue with Irena and Oleńka,¹⁷ the two orderlies. We got off the train at Dalekie and went into the forest. We had gone no more than twenty steps when we were stopped by a patrol. And what a pleasant surprise—it was our boys in battledress uniforms airdropped by the Allies, with White Eagle¹⁸ badges on their caps, scouts’ crosses on their jackets, and—most importantly—they had good weapons (Stens and Schmeissers captured from the Germans).

We were in the care of successive patrols, who gave us directions and passed us on to the next patrol. Eventually we came to a copse in the middle of which two companies from our battalion had set up camp. And of course they had victuals—a pot of steaming hot goulash, potatoes, and a delicious soup, afterwards there were scout campfire songs and instructions, and I issued doctor’s recommendations. We were expecting a guide in the evening. He was delayed, as on the way he had encountered Germans and had been shot in the right arm. I managed to extract the bullet and dress his wound in a makeshift surgery concealed by blankets and lit up by electric torches, so he could lead us on the next part of our trek. Around midnight we reached the edge of the forest. In the moonlight we could make out the buildings of the garrison and the dense wall of barbed wire surrounding them. The boys quickly scaled the telegraph poles and cut the wires. After that all you could hear were the roar of grenades and Filipinkas¹⁹ exploding, and the rattle of machine guns. I had a station set up in the reserves, next to a machine gun. However, I had a Vis²⁰ in my hand and couldn’t keep myself from rushing into the fray. Things could have taken a bad turn, because suddenly my gun stalled. However, I managed to change the magazine and engaged in direct combat with the garrison’s commander, knocking him down. Unfortunately, the operation took a tragic turn.

Tadeusz “Zośka” Zawadzki, Batallion Zośka’s popular and madly courageous commander, was killed. He joined in the attack on the garrison, was wounded, and died within a few minutes in my arms. Two others of ours were injured not so seriously, and I dressed their wounds. We captured arms, ammunition, and uniforms, which were useful later in sabotage operations. We loaded up the body of our commander and all that we had taken onto the vehicles we had captured and withdrew in dead silence for Kamieńczyk on the other bank of the Bug.²¹ A shaky ferry was waiting for us there, followed by a dawn march through the village of Kamieńczyk into the nearby forest. Cars were waiting for us in a clearing. We hid the arms we had captured in a couple of oxygen cylinders in one of the vehicles, and put the commander’s body in another car under a tarpaulin cover. The boys dispersed in groups heading in specified directions. Four of our armed soldiers stayed hidden on the lorry, with me next to the driver. We set off for Wołomin via Radzymin.²² On the way we had to pass an SS column, and there was tension as the driver had his documents checked, but finally we reached the infectious diseases hospital in Wołomin. We left our companion’s body in the hospital morgue and returned to Warsaw on the same vehicle, this time with no hassles on the journey. Needless to say, I was dead tired and a nervous wreck. The end result for me was a punishment, a fortnight’s house arrest from the head of the medical and sanitary service for leaving my post during the operation, and a commendation for valour from the battalion’s commanding officer. Sometimes things were paradoxical.

Later there were minor operations, such as liberating wounded prisoners from hospitals, eliminating torturers and traitors, sabotage, and blowing up trains. You can read all about this in Aleksander Kamiński’s book, Zośka i Parasol.²³ The medical and sanitary service took an active part in all of it.

I treated prisoners whom we managed to abduct from the Germans in a secret little hospital in the ruins of a house on the Szustra in the Mokotów district. It had four beds and a corresponding stock of medicines and instruments, and was accessible only to a small group of individuals in the know. I asked Dr Stanisław Tokarski, Dr Irena Giżycka, and a few other physicians for their opinions. In the meantime we continued with sanitary training and collecting dressings and medical supplies. We had contacts in almost all the hospitals in Warsaw and were able to put our casualties in them, but our main centres were in Ujazdów Hospital (during the war known as the Holy Spirit Hospital) and the Maltese Hospital. We also got help from the hospital on the Płocka, which was a TB hospital at the time. This hospital took in two Parasol casualties seriously wounded during the assassination of Kutschera.²⁴ They were operated and died in that hospital, which induced the Germans to launch an investigation leading to more arrests. We had an arms cache in the hospital’s pathology department.

Then came Hour W²⁵ and the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. The entire Kedyw, including Battalion Zośka, had orders to deploy in the Wola district. I arrived in the former Telefunken shop on the Gibalskiego before 17:00.

There was a mass of soldiers. For the first time the entire battalion appeared in public together and fully armed. I was given a short welcome, and then I reviewed my medical station and its resources, the stretchers, dressings, and sanitary kits. We arranged the equipment. This was followed by the commander’s briefing, and instructions concerning evacuation routes for the wounded. Then the first shots were fired and we had our first casualties. Unfortunately, they were Dorota Łempicka (nom-de-guerre Dorota) and Anna Wajcowicz (nom-due-guerre Hanka), two brave young girls serving as orderlies, who were not under cover when they ran to collect a casualty. They sustained serious wounds. We sent them to the Karol and Maria Hospital on ul. Leszno, where they died on the following day. There was a tremendous fighting spirit in us, but coupled with an all too often unnecessary bravura, it led to more casualties. We had plenty of work on our hands. I had a few nurses from the clinic, who had been trained for the Uprising. They assisted me, bravely working under the supervision of Alina Walewiczówna. There were a few moments of crisis, such as the time when three German tanks broke through the shoddy barricades and emerged on ul. Gibalskiego, right in front of the battalion outpost. There was a brief shoot-out, and our boys captured the tanks. Two of them turned out to be battle-worthy and from then on would be working for us. Next morning, our boys took an important hostage, the commandant of Gęsiówka prison.²⁶ His right shoulder was dislocated. When he was brought to our station, he was as white as a ghost. Now this man—the lord of life and death for thousands of prisoners—was weeping and quaking in his boots. I anaesthetised him with a quick dose of ethyl chloride, set his shoulder joint, and sent him to HQ.

Our boys took St. Kinga’s School in the Okopowa, so we moved and I established a first aid station there, with a small operating theatre and a room for less serious casualties. The more severely wounded were evacuated to the hospital on ul. Leszno and the Wolski Hospital on the Płocka.

One of the prisoners we took turned out to be a Russian called Nestia. He was over fifty and had a long beard and an odd-looking uniform that was neither German nor Soviet. He told us that the Germans had taken him prisoner. A German officer whom we captured confirmed his story, and said that he had helped out in their kitchen. Nestia was hard-working and inordinately cleanly, and asked to be admitted to our unit. He always did his best to help out and make himself useful. He was appointed to serve as my batman and attended me for the whole of the Uprising, always by my side at the hardest of times. He cooked, fetched water, cleaned and tidied up, and looked after me like a nanny.

In the afternoon hours of 3 August we took over the municipal sanitary plant on ul. Spokojna, with large warehouses full of medications, surgical dressings, and underwear. I requisitioned the entire stock for the army and ordered the goods distributed to the hospitals in the Wola district, taking some to replenish our own reserves. The food and uniform warehouses we captured on ul. Stawki brought a substantial enhancement to our meals, and clothed us in military camouflage jackets. Our boys looked bellicose in them. Pfeiffer’s tannery and shoe factory (which we took over) supplied us with boots. We now looked like a real army. The situation with arms and ammunition was gradually improving, as our boys were acquiring more and more weapons from the enemy in the heavy fighting going on at the time. On 4 August we captured the heavily reinforced and staunchly defended Gęsiówka.

In it there were about 500 Jews from all over Europe. We liberated them. Some of them joined us to fight. Initially, I was even joined by two Jewish doctors, but after two days they left. Karol, a Jewish cook, stayed with us right to the very end and went into captivity with us when the Uprising fell, but that’s another story.²⁷

The fighting got more and more intensive and there were more and more casualties. When we liberated part of the former ghetto, we were able to evacuate casualties to the Old Town, to St. John’s and other hospitals. Sad news reached us that the Germans had taken the hospital on ul. Płocka and the Karol and Maria Hospital. We heard of the tragic fate of the casualties, and of Dr Józef M. Piasecki and the rest of their medical staff. It only made us stronger and more determined to fight. The wounded were dying in an atmosphere of great poignancy. Many asked me to tell their family that they had been brave defenders of their country. Day by day the fighting was getting harder and harder. There were more and more casualties and fatalities. We buried the dead at the back of the Powązki Cemetery; after the War they were all exhumed and reinterred in its military part. Col. Jan Mazurkiewicz (nom-de-guerre Radosław), the unit’s commander, was injured. I carried him off the field of battle, dressed his wounds, and evacuated him to the Old Town. The Germans were applying more and more pressure on us. We were fired on from an armoured train on the circular line.²⁸ Enemy tanks were getting through to ul. Okopowa. We evacuated to the Old Town. The medical and sanitary service was the last to leave, of course. We took advantage of the short spell of time during an air raid immediately after a couple of bombs exploded to run across the Okopowa into the ruins of the ghetto. Then something happened that has stuck in my memory. I saw a wounded Zośka soldier in a state of shock, shouting and running straight into enemy fire. I called out after him, trying to stop him, and he finally fell into a bomb crater. I ran up. The view was macabre. All around bombs were exploding and there were corpses. I took a quick look at him. He had a tangential gunshot head wound, and his right hand was hanging down on the remaining scraps of its tissue and bleeding profusely. He was terrified and calling for a priest. I got the chaplain, Father “Paweł” (Fr. Józef Warszawski), from a neighbouring crater. With the assistance of an orderly, I tended to his wounds, while he made his confession out aloud. Then I heard his confessor telling him to make an act of contrition for his sins. The wounded man said he couldn’t, because he was glad to be dying for his country. I burst out laughing hysterically. Here we were in a macabre situation, and this man was unable to feel remorse for his sins—it was absolutely bizarre. When I had finished dressing his wounds, the orderly and I dashed back to our post. All this happened against a background of projectiles ripping into pieces and grenades exploding. The chaplain and the wounded penitent were left in the crater. After a couple of hours, once our lines had managed to hold on in the ruins and stop the assault, it all quietened down. We were about to jump out to fetch the injured man and the chaplain, when suddenly the chaplain was there in front of our post with the wounded man on his back. They made it safely to their group.

Then there was the Old Town. Still intact, teeming with masses of people, still elated and full of the fighting spirit. Two days’ rest and a good sleep bolstered my strength. At first, we were quartered in pasaż Simona at the Długa and Nalewek street junction. That’s where my batman experienced a nasty adventure. Wherever we had quarters, Nestia always fetched water and did the cooking. One day, when I was having forty winks, he took his bucket and started asking people for the nearest well. His appearance and poor Polish made our military police on the beat in the Old Town suspicious. He had no documents on him, so they took him for a spy and promptly sentenced him to death. Prior to his execution, Nestia washed, knelt down and started to say his prayers. He was an Old Believer,²⁹ and a very devout one at that. He never parted with his icon. Just at that moment, one of our Zośka boys recognised him, and of course the matter was settled. Nestia was released. He dashed into my quarters, woke me up, and in some sort of primitive reaction started kissing my boots and promising never to leave me again. This time there was a happy end to his escapade.

Our units took Muranów, the environs of the tram depot and St. John’s Hospital, in other words the northern edge of the Old Town. I set up my station for the battalion on ul. Młyńska near St. John’s, which was no longer a hospital for psychiatric patients and the wounded, but a fort that had to be defended and held at all costs. Twice a day I crossed the outermost defence points, treated the wounded, and distributed medications and dressings.

One day as I was returning from one of these outer posts in the Inflancka area and hiding in the ruins, I stepped into the half-ruined little church next to St. John’s Hospital. Safe at last. I took a rest. Suddenly, I saw the figure of a woman with dishevelled hair and in a hospital gown slinking out from behind the devastated altar, straight for me. She had a packet of Junaki³⁰ cigarettes in her hand. She looked weird. For a moment I wanted to run, but my legs refused to budge. It was another uncanny situation. A ruined church, dead bodies all around, and this unfortunate madwoman. She came up to me and offered me the cigarettes in a theatrical gesture. “Here, soldier, and fight for our Country.” I was dumbfounded, said a quiet thank-you and kissed her dirty, bloodstained hand. Then I hurried out and went on, leaving her in the church.

The insurgents’ hospitals were getting more and more overcrowded. Around 14 August I was given orders to establish a hospital for wounded soldiers from the Radosław group. I found suitable premises on the first floor of a long terrace of houses from No. 17 on the Miodowa to No. 23 on the Długa. Various individuals supplied it with beds and bedclothes. During the night we collected up the wounded from sundry hideouts and provisional hospitals and brought them in, to make up a hospital of about 100 beds.

The women’s ancillary service under Krystyna Blach took care of food supplies and other economic aspects. I set up an operating theatre in the basement. Our lighting came from a set of car headlights and batteries dismantled from vehicles immobilised by the barricades that blocked off the streets. On the next day we had an air raid. The entire hospital was bombed by a squadron of Stukas. Two of the wounded were killed, but we managed to extricate the rest from the rubble. We moved the whole of the hospital into the basement. The building over our heads was ablaze.

The ether and alcohol in Mr Gobiec’s³¹ pharmacy fanned the flames. The rolls of newspaper in the printing shop on the ground floor were still smouldering. The rescue operation organised and bravely and resolutely conducted by all the people cooped up in the building put out all the fires and saved the hospital lodged in the basement. All that remained above us were the gutted stumps of an erstwhile five-storey edifice.

Angel of Death. Marian Kołodziej. Photo by Piotr Markowski. Click to enlarge.

The wounded—and now there were more and more of them—were calm. Their numbers eventually went up to 170. We worked without respite, assisted by Dr Zapolski and his wife, who landed up there during their peregrinations having lost their home. Performing surgeries, applying dressings, acquiring medications and dressings, and sending out dressings to the lines of combat—that was our everyday work.

We also had 20 wounded Germans, whom we treated and fed like our own, in line with the Geneva Convention. We were running out of bandages, so we used paper ones; there was a water shortage, but we managed to continue.

Then, on 13 August 1944, there was the notorious incident with the explosion of the booby-trap tank (it had a couple of mines inside) on ul. Kilińskiego. Hundreds were killed and wounded. The hospital was full of patients. The less seriously injured and those who had recovered wanted to get back to the fighting as soon as possible. We treated, operated, and dressed the wounds of scores of civilians.

Dr Cyprian Sadowski (nom-de-guerre Skiba), head of the group’s medical and sanitary service, fell ill and went to Żoliborz via the underground network of sewers and drains. I was appointed to his post and now had to look after other battalions, Parasol and Miotła, as well, providing them with medications, evacuating their wounded, etc.

On 30 August there was an abortive attempt to get across to the Śródmieście (City Centre). It cost many lives. All night my wounded patients were out on stretchers in ul. Hipoteczna, waiting for the opportunity to evacuate to the City Centre. The undertaking failed. Only one of the Zośka units,³² fully armed albeit heavily depleted, managed to get across via the Saxon Garden. Again there were fatalities and casualties, and again the wounded were brought back to our basement hospital. I was completely exhausted.

In the morning I received orders to cross to the City Centre, taking the wounded good enough to make the journey via the sewer network. I was extremely sorry to have to leave about 100 wounded patients under the care of Dr Zofia Martenowska (nom-de-guerre Przemysława, 1900-1990), and depart with nearly 90 others. With the sound of bombs exploding and whizzing bullets rattling in our ears, we entered (or more precisely—jumped down) the manhole on the sewer in plac Krasińskich. Our guides told us to keep silent, as we would be passing under enemy lines. Nonetheless, there were groans and moans, and people hurrying each other on. The stronger ones were supporting and helping their weaker companions. After three hours of intermittent stops on the way, trying to figure out what was going on overhead, telling each other to keep quiet, and plodding on step by step through a nasty, stinking slime that went up to our knees, we reached the corner of ul. Warecka. Local people gave us a hand out of the sewer, helped us to wash, and fed us. That was the end of our Old Town odyssey.

I should add that in the Old Town I met my wife, who was an orderly in Battalion Chrobry, working in a first aid station on Rynek Nowego Miasta (the New Town Marketplace). We parted an hour before the Uprising started, and I had no news from her for the next fortnight. On 14 August I met an officer from a Chrobry unit, who told me that she was alive and working in a first aid station in the Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary just off Rynek Nowego Miasta. So, on the next day I went there, escorted by four armed ensigns, to persuade her boss, forcibly if need be, to allow her to transfer to my hospital. She was in the sixth month of pregnancy and I thought that I would be able to give her at least a minimum amount of security, even in the worst situations that might occur during the Uprising. It all went smoothly. My arguments, and my fierce, heavily armed escorts worked. We left together, and I guided her across the barricades and trenches and brought her to my hospital on ul. Długa. She assisted me during surgeries and other treatments, illuminating the operating area with a headlight. On 30 August I dispatched her to the City Centre, putting her on the underground sewer route, as I was convinced I would be staying in the Old Town right to the end. Nevertheless, when I had to leave, she waited for me patiently next to the exit manhole on ul. Warecka, until I arrived.

And what about the wounded I left behind in the Old Town? On 31 August, during the last air raid, a bomb hit the hospital and devastated one of the rooms. 9 patients were killed. The rest survived. The Germans killed off wounded insurgents still alive in the other hospitals in the Old Town. When they got to ours, the wounded German POWs stood up for their Polish fellow patients, and said that they had been treated well, which no doubt helped to save their lives. They were evacuated to the hospital on ul. Płocka in the district of Wola, and thereafter to Milanówek.

Meanwhile, the City Centre seemed a peaceful haven. The Old Town had been a mass of smouldering ruins full of the overwhelming stench of corpses in shallow graves, and more bodies and other stuff set on fire. The City Centre was spick and span, there were flowers and windows with their glass intact, flags up on flagpoles, and the people were smartly dressed or in uniforms. Enjoying their brief respite of freedom. At first, we were shocked to see this new situation and the relative tranquillity (no bombs or guns going off all the time), but later we got used to the prevailing mood. Soon we joined in and started to relish the general atmosphere, smiles appeared on our faces and we forgot about the hell we had just been through.

I took the wounded to their new quarters or to insurgents’ hospitals in the environs of the Wspólna and Hoża. They were well armed and in their smart army camo jackets, so in general people admired them. We were very happy to learn that our entire company from Battalion Zośka had got safely across to the City Centre, especially as we had thought they would not make it.

For two days we had a real rest, the opportunity to take a bath and get a good night’s sleep. Then we were ordered to move to Czerniaków and deploy in the Czerniakowska area. On 5 September we carried out this order. Our wounded practically fled their hospital beds in the City Centre to man the combat positions. They caused a lot of trouble, because they were not as battle-worthy as before and still in need of medical care. But they wanted to make themselves useful, so they were put on guard duty or helped out in the medical and sanitary station or the quartermaster’s stores. For the time being, the weather was good and things were quiet. We enjoyed tomatoes from the allotment gardens—a rare delicacy we had not seen for well over a month. We also had tinned meat and noodles from a German food warehouse we had taken over.

My wife arrived via the trenches dug along ul. Książęca. In the evening I sent her home to our place on the Koszykowa, promising that in two days’ time I would turn up to collect her and stay in Czerniaków. Unfortunately, within the next two days the Germans took control of ul. Książęca, cutting off our route for the City Centre.

I set up a first aid station in the area of ul. Śniegockiej, only to move it to the Okrąg-Wilanowska corner two days later. l supplemented my supply of dressings, medications, and surgical instruments from the stocks in Czerniakowski Hospital. That was the last time I saw Professor Zdzisław Gorecki (1895–1944). He was depressed by the large number of casualties and deaths, and took a pessimistic view of the prospects for the future. Nonetheless, he did his best to help and provided me with the things I wanted. A few days later he was dead. The Germans shot him.

Day by day, the peaceful haven was turning more and more into a battlefield, just like the Old Town. We were being fired on from the ground and bombed from the air, and pushed back from the positions we had taken up originally. Now we were putting up a defence in just a few houses on the Czerniakowska and Ludna, down to the river. There were more and more casualties, and more and more gory work for the doctors. Dr Zbigniew Dworak (nom-de-guerre Maks) set up a centre for the wounded in the PKO bank building on the Ludowa, and treated and operated Parasol casualties there. Dr “Bohdan” Kaczyński and I had a small operating theatre on the ground floor of a house in ul. Okrąg. After treatment we lodged them in the basement. We were surrounded. Evacuating them was out of the question. We were running out of medical supplies, drugs, and dressings. An artillery shell destroyed the room in which we sterilised our instruments. We retrieved what we could from the rubble. I had just three surgical needles left. I had no morphine or any other anaesthetics left. My last bottles of spirits and vodka, which I was using for disinfection, were running dry. I performed the indispensable amputations, surgical removal of shrapnel, and sutures using a macabre type of sedation—the patients were knocked unconscious. Afterwards they howled in pain. We were beginning to feel the pangs of hunger. The little artesian well in the yard was continually under a barrage of exploding grenades and surrounded by a ring of corpses. You could draw water from it only by night.

At the back of the yard there were two wounded horses. I saw two people sitting on one of them while it was still alive, cutting out a piece of flesh from its loins, and eating it raw. The horse was howling and trying to raise its head. I felt nauseated. We were running out of ammunition., and saving our last two bullets for personal use. An exhausted orderly brought in a wounded man from an exposed corner post. I told her to take a rest, but she said she had to go back because there was one more man there, still fighting, and if he was killed or wounded, she could come back and stay.

It was 17 September, “Bohdan’s” birthday. We downed the last drops of the vodka and solemnly promised each other that should any of us be seriously wounded, his mates would finish him off. More surgeries. The wounded were groaning. There were loads of burns caused by Nebelwerfers.³³ These weapons, nicknamed krowy (cows) in Polish, accounted for our biggest losses and damage. Again, all around there was the stench of burning, of decomposing corpses, and hopelessness. The aircraft flying over us from the west brought a little hope. Alas, a great deal of what they dropped did not reach us, but fell on areas held by the enemy. And suddenly we were bursting with joy—a platoon of men from the First Army of the Polish Forces³⁴ reached us from across the river, bringing arms and ammunition. There was a glimmer of hope. We managed to ferry the most serious casualties over to Praga.³⁵ A squadron of Kukuruzniks³⁶ appeared in the sky and dropped sacks of army tack, buckwheat groats, weapons and ammunition. In the afternoon a huge explosion rocked the building, just as we were finishing dressing an injured soldier’s wound.

I looked out of the window and saw our soldiers being hit from the upper storeys and falling one by one. Clearly, the Germans had got into the building and were over our heads. Dr Kaczyński grabbed hold of his defensive weapon, a Soviet grenade, and I was clutching my Luger.³⁷ We ran up to the first floor. There were holes in the walls and sandbags in the windows to make the place easier to defend.

Suddenly a terrified face in a helmet and a camo jacket just like ours lunges out of the room next to us and asks in German, “Kamerad, alles in Ordung?”³⁸ “What’yah fooling about for?” I replied in Polish. I hadn’t taken in that the Germans were so close to us. His eyes were out on stalks as he fired a round from his Bergmann³⁹ at me. I ducked. “Throw the grenade,” I shouted to Jurek [Dr Kaczyński]. He chucked it, but was so nervous he missed. It bounced off a protruding brick and catapulted back into the room we were in. We dropped down, counting the seconds and sure it was curtains for us.

Suddenly there was a huge explosion and the room went black and dark, with rubble flying and the walls shaking. I could still move my hands and feet. “Jurek, are you all right?” He was alive, just a bit stunned. We were in the middle of the no-damage zone, so luckily we were not hurt in the blast. We got up and ran after the scarpering Germans. They must have thought that the whole building was mined and were fleeing in a panic. We fired a volley at them. Situation under control.

Later there were congratulations from our commander, and a decision was taken to evacuate to ul. Solec, on the riverbank. Again we had to leave the wounded behind, in the care of some elderly women doctors who were local residents. We reached ul. Solec in the small hours. We stopped in a single-storey house slightly below the level of the road separating us from the Vistula. All around there were loads of First Army soldiers, which raised our spirits a bit. They shared their food tins and ammunition with us.

The Germans did their damnedest to destroy our post. They attacked furiously, firing at us from the viaduct on the Poniatowski Bridge and from local buildings. Again there were considerable numbers of casualties and fatalities. We pulled the wounded into our house, which served as a haven for them. I tried to get to our command, crawling between the bodies of those who had been killed and were now stiffening with rigor mortis. I managed to obtain a dozen or so dressings, but it took a lot of effort.

I returned to our quarters, which already had one of its wings on fire. Assisted by a First Army corporal I had not met before, I carried the wounded out to a safer part of the building. We had to stay there to nightfall, when we could evacuate the wounded over to Praga. It was a partial success, as the Germans sank a few of the boats carrying the wounded. Before midnight on 20 September our command decided that we would withdraw to Mokotów via the sewers. I was exhausted physically and mentally. I took two papashas,⁴⁰ ammo, my medical bag and dressings, and a few things that had belonged to soldiers who had been killed, and went down into the sewer along with those still able to make the journey. Dr Kaczyński and 5 orderlies went with me.

I was so exhausted I could barely stand up on my feet. The same with Dr Kaczyński. At first, the storm drain was tall enough for us to be able to hold on to its walls, though in places the water went up to my waist or even higher. I had stopped reacting to the smell. The silence was ringing in my ears, broken only by the occasional groan and the squelch of boots plodding. Later the height of the sewer was smaller, and we had to go down on our knees and move along on all fours. Our sad and dismal journey seemed endless. The papashas were digging into my body, and my doctor’s bag seemed to weigh a ton. I started to lose hope of reaching the destination. It took over 7 hours, and we could have done it in half an hour out on a quiet stroll in the sunshine at street level.

Finally there was an invigorating waft of fresh air and a flash of distant lights. Nestia was crawling behind me. He came up closer and handed me a canteen of vodka (now, where did he get that from?). Two good sips gave me a boost. We got to the exit. Some local people helped us climb out. We were on ul. Wiktorska in the Mokotów district. It was quiet and the sun was out. There were no signs of fighting, just insurgents in uniforms and carrying weapons, flags on the houses and barricades, to remind us that we were in Warsaw during the Uprising. Behind us was the hell of Czerniaków, which to us seemed worse than what we went through in the Old Town. We are a macabre sight—the residents of Mokotów looked at us with astonishment and admiration. They hadn’t yet had such fighting there, and our appearance could not have been much of an encouragement. We washed and bathed in an anti-aircraft water tank in Orlicz Dreszer Park. Nestia washed our coats and uniforms. By this time I had already taken the wounded to the hospital run by the Sisters of St. Elizabeth on ul. Goszczyńskiego and to our one-time little hospital on ul. Szustra.

We were taking a rest, glad to be alive and wrapped up in the velvet curtains we had taken down from the windows in our quarters. We enjoyed two days of respite and two nights of good sleep with no air raids, no groaning and moaning, no surgeries. As I was resting in bed, I heard a street vendor shouting outside, “Tomatoes, onions!” I found some wet, partly torn banknotes in my pocket and sent Nestia out to do some shopping. A while later we were enjoying tomatoes that were still a bit green and onions—they were simply delicious!

The consequences only to have been expected came a few hours later. I ran out for the anti-aircraft ditch at the back of the house, as the sanitary facilities were out of order due to a shortage of water. Right at that moment the Germans launched a furious artillery barrage, aiming straight at those ditches which they thought were our entrenchments. I was being pelted with falling soil. The noise was horrendous! “O, lor’,” I sighed. I’d been through so many hard times, and now I was coming to such an ignominious end, in an embarrassing position in the middle of an embarrassing business. I ground my teeth in anger. I didn’t even have the chance to pull my trousers up. The barrage lasted three or four, perhaps five minutes, but it seemed endless. Finally it was quiet. I could straighten up and button my trousers up. I returned to the house. They all stared at me flabbergasted. They had stayed in the air raid shelter in the basement for the whole of the attack, and thought I had been killed. I’d had another lucky escape, although this episode gave my mates a good opportunity to keep pulling my leg right to the end of the Uprising.

The Germans were attacking Mokotów. The large Radosław group from the Wola district had dwindled down to less than 200 men. Only Dr Kaczyński, 5 orderlies, and I were left in its medical service. Later I learned that Dr Dworak had managed to get across the river, join the First Polish Army, and continue fighting against the Nazi Germans.

Our positions were shrinking all the time. There were more and more casualties and fatalities. And once again, more and more treatments, dressings, surgeries, and more suspense. We took yet another decision to withdraw, this time back to the City Centre via the sewers. I had promised myself never to go down into the sewers again, but it was overruled by my survival instinct and determination to see my nearest and dearest.

In the evening, yet again we quietly descended into the depths of the sewer on ul. Wiktorska (the manhole was not yet under fire). At first, we virtually had to crawl, then we were up on all fours, until finally we reached the storm drain. In places the water was high and went up to my waist, and later to my chest. I could feel bodies under my feet. Someone was wailing because he had lost his wife, and somebody else was hushing him. Bangs and people shouting could be heard in the distance. Every so often, our column stopped to listen for tell-tale sounds. Someone got scared and tried to back out. There was growing confusion.

After five or six hours of intermittent stops on the way, moving back and slowly plodding on, step by step, we eventually got to the fork in the storm drain at ul. Górnośląska. Our guides had already told us that the manholes over it were open and there were Germans at the top, throwing grenades and carbide down into them, just for a lark. And indeed, we could see patches of light flickering on the water under the open manholes. We could hear grenades exploding from afar, and we recognised the familiar smell of carbide. You had to wait until there was an explosion, and straight after the blast jump over the “accident black spots” one by one.

Someone was yelling and hurrying in our direction. I tried to put a dressing on the wounded man’s head. It all happened in almost total darkness. Finally, it was my turn to jump. I cleared each of the manholes in turn, one, two, three, and could hear the grenades exploding behind me, surprised that I was still alive. Twice I stumbled on corpses. Finally I got to some kind of a chamber, where the water was knee-deep. In the darkness, the guide led me up to a rope ladder. You had a climb of about 3 metres, but once you did it, you were safe and got to a channel for aleje Ujazdowskie. Eventually I made it. A little rope suspended diagonally helped you find the right route in the dark. I turned right, for plac Trzech Krzyży. The thick, sticky muck went up to my waist.

I trudged on slowly, dragging my feet through the sludge and holding on to the slimy walls. It seemed I had been on this route for 24 hours. I lost the sense of time. Finally, there was a waft of fresh air. Then I was almost blinded by a carbide lamp. Someone was stretching out their arms to me, put a rope round me, and hauled me up to street level. The manhole was right opposite the Wilcza corner on aleje Ujazdowskie. They took me into the entrance way to a house, washed my face and eyes, gave me a sip of vodka and some delicious hot soup, and the chance of a rest. Later I reported to General Monter.⁴¹

Nonetheless, that macabre expedition took 12 hours. I was given 12 hours’ leave to go home. I crossed the barricades. My military coat was wet and dirty, and there was stubble on my face, but it was all set off by my officers’ cap and distinctions, my pistol and kit bag, and that won me admiration. Someone pressed a pouch of tobacco into my hand, and someone else gave me a bottle of spirits—a fortune: you could buy 2 kg of wheat for it! I was nearly home, No. 53 on the Koszykowa. The house was still there.

My family and friends gave me a welcome as if I had come back from the dead, for they had heard that I had been killed. I changed and took a bath in the precious water my family and friends fetched with such a lot of dedication, in bottles and by the bucketful. I was glad my nearest and dearest were alive, and that I was alive, too. When the night came, there was no reaction from me to the air raids, and I didn’t want to go down to the shelter, either. I turned a deaf ear to all the bangs, the bombs and the gunfire. After all, the Germans were all of 300 metres away—very far away.

Next day I attended a briefing with the commander on ul. Krucza. Surrender and the bitterness of defeat, sorrow and grief for the dead, and a sense of having done my duty as a doctor and a soldier. We put our surviving wounded in the hospital at No. 15 on ul. Śniadeckich.

There were more dressings to be done, operations to be performed, and plaster casts to be applied. Then I would be taken along with them to the POW hospital in Stalag IVB in Germany. But that’s another story, as Kipling said.

Without going into the political aspects or analysing the strategic concepts behind the Uprising, I have to say that fate made me take part in a heroic fight to the death against the hated Nazi German oppressors. I was in the hardest fighting in Wola, the Old Town, the Czerniaków bridgehead, Mokotów, and the City Centre. I watched the unprecedented heroism of those boys and the tragedy of their deaths. I saw them weep for a comrade who had been killed or for a position they had lost; I saw their happiness whenever they made a successful assault or captured the enemy’s weapons. I saw young girls working as orderlies and running out to the forefront to help the wounded; they knew very well that any moment they could meet with the same fate.

Was I scared? Yes, for sure. My heart stopped whenever I heard the whizz of an approaching bomb. At such times I tried to put on a smile and whistle in the wind. I knew the wounded were looking up to me and wanted to be comforted and reassured. Apparently that’s how I behaved.

Straight after our first sabotage operation people were saying I was like bromide,⁴² and that was the nom-de-guerre I got—“Dr Bromide.” Did I do everything a doctor could have done? Today I have my doubts. I think I did what could have been done given the circumstances. I think that any doctor in my shoes–any decent doctor and good Polish citizen–must have behaved in the same way in such circumstances.

I have been left with the satisfaction of having done my duty, and am proud to have the genuine friendship and gratitude of those of my wounded patients and comrades-in-arms who have survived. Time has erased many of the details, dates, and faces from my memory, but I am trying to save what I still remember by putting it down in writing.

Dr Cyprian Sadowski has given an account of some of my exploits in his memoirs.⁴³ In his books Zośka i Parasol and Kamienie na szaniec Aleksander Kamiński⁴⁴ has written the story of the battalion in which I served as a physician. Finally, a group of insurgents tell the story of their part in the Warsaw Uprising in Pamiętniki żołnierzy baonu Zośka. This book presents a lot of information on the medical service, and a list of girls who worked as orderlies and liaison soldiers for Battalion Zośka and were killed. They died with Red Cross armbands on their forearms. Many of them were killed under the Red Cross flag on the barricades and in the air raids on the hospitals, as the enemy did not respect any of the international conventions or principles of the law of war. That’s why I had no qualms about putting my lancet aside from time to time and switching to a pistol and a grenade.

I was defending my life and the lives of the wounded in my care. I would like to thank all those who went through those hard times with me and helped me in my work and in the fighting, especially Dr Jerzy Kaczyński. Thank you for your fraternal cooperation.

Translated from orginal article: Zygmunt Kujawski, “Chirurg w konspiracyjnej warszawskiej służbie zdrowia.” Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim, 1971

Notes

1. Kedyw—Acronym of Kierownictwo Dywersji Komendy Głównej Armii Krajowej, the unit organising and managing sabotage activities for AK, the main Polish underground resistance movement during World War II.
2. Presumably the incident referred to here is the operation code-named Sonderwagen, which was carried out on 26 April 1944 on plac Starynkiewicza, and involved the elimination of German tram inspectors. Source: www.batalionzoska.pl.
3. Bahnschutz—a German unit of armed railway security guards.
4. Jerzy Ludwik Choróbski (1902–1986), a neurosurgeon.
5. Alina Walewicz-Pawlas (1921–1997).
6. The 1944 Warsaw Uprising (1 August – 3 October), not to be confused with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943.
7. Milanówek—a suburban town 35 km (22 miles) west-south-west of central Warsaw.
8. The operation was carried out on 26 September 1943. Source: Anna Borkiewicz-Celińska, Batalion „Zośka.” Warsaw: PIW; 1990: 309–336.
9. Wilanów—now a district of left-bank Warsaw in the southern part of the city; during the war Wilanów was outside the municipal boundary.
10. Chylice—a village about 20 km (12.5 miles) south of central Warsaw.
11. Capt. Andrzej Romocki, nom-de-guerre Morro (1923–1944), commander of the Rudy unit in Batallion Zośka.
12. Powązki Cemetery—Warsaw’s main burial ground, comprising a military part and a civilian section.
13. Góra Kalwaria—a town 34 km (21 miles) upstream from (i.e. south of) central Warsaw.
14. Akcja Taśma (Operation Tape) was carried out in August 1943. AK High Command ordered a series of assaults on German Grenzschutz guardhouses along the eastern border of the Generalgouvernement (i.e. the part of German-occupied Poland not incorporated into Germany).
15. Sieczychy—a village about 80 km (50 miles) north-east of Warsaw.
16. Vilnius was part of Poland prior to the War. Under German occupation the region was separated off from the Generalgouvernement.
17. The two girls who served as orderlies on this operation were Irena Kołodziejska (nom-due-guerre Irena) and Aleksandra Grzeszczak (nom-de-guerre Oleńka). Source: Anna Borkiewicz-Celińska, Batalion „Zośka.” Warsaw: PIW; 1990: 279.
18. The White Eagle—the national emblem of Poland.
19. Filipinka—a Polish hand grenade designed in 1940 by Edward Tymoszak (nom-de-guerre Filip).
20. Vis—a Polish semi-automatic pistol.
21. Kamieńczyk—a village on the River Bug, about 67 km (42 miles) north-east of Warsaw.
22. Wołomin and Radzymin—places respectively 25 km (16 miles) and 34 km (21 miles) north-east of central Warsaw.
23. Aleksander Kamiński’s Zośka i Parasol (first edition: Warsawa: Iskry; 1957) tells the combat history of the Zośka and Parasol battalions during the Second World War, especially during the Warsaw Uprising.
24. SS-Brigadeführer Franz Kutschera (1904–1944), SS and police chief in German-occupied Warsaw, an exceptionally brutal war criminal, assassinated by Polish resistance fighters on 1 February 1944. On the following day the Germans shot over 300 Polish hostages in reprisals for the death of Kutschera.
25. Hour W (Polish Godzina W)—codename for the start of the Warsaw Uprising (17.00 hours on 1 August 1944).
26. The Gęsiówka—the colloquial name for a prison set up in 1941 in the army barracks at the street junction of the Gęsia and Zamenhofa in the part of Warsaw the Germans segregated off for the Jewish ghetto. They used it to confine Jewish detainees and destroyed it in 1943 when they crushed the Ghetto Uprising. Source: Władysław Bartoszewski, Warszawski pierścień śmierci 1939–1944. Warsaw: Zachodnia Agencja Prasowa; 1967 (first edition). English translation: Warsaw Death Ring 1939-1944. Edward Rothert, trans. Warsaw: Interpress; 1968.
27. See the sequel article, “From the Warsaw Uprising to Zeithain POW Camp,” soon to be published on this website.
28. Linia obwodowa (the circular line) is a railway line encircling central Warsaw, with some of the city’s major stations along its route. It was built in 1876.
29. Old Believers—Eastern Orthodox Christians originally from Russia who refused to adopt the church reform introduced by Patriarch Nikon in the mid-17^th century. Many of them migrated to Poland to avoid religious persecution by the tsarist authorities.
30. Junaki—a Polish brand of cheap cigarettes, strong but poor-quality, on the market during the Second World War and under the People’s Republic.
31. Edward Idzi Gobiec (1886–1958), pharmacist, pioneer of the Polish pharmaceutical and herbal medicine industry.
32. The Rudy Company, under command of Andrzej “Morro” Romocki (see above), amounting to about 70 men, managed to get through the heavily manned Saxon Garden (Ogród Saski) to the stock exchange building, which was controlled by Polish fighters. Source: Anna Borkiewicz-Celińska, *Batalion „Zośka.” Warsaw: PIW; 1990: 646.
33. Nebelwerfer—a German gun used to launch mortars, shells, and other projectiles (and in this case grenades).
34. By the time the Uprising broke out, the Soviet offensive had reached the Vistula. In mid-September 1944, a fairly small troop of Poles serving with the Soviets under the command of General Zygmunt Berling was sent out across the river, but the attack was abortive and they were decimated. No more assaults were undertaken from the east bank of the Vistula until January 1945. Not surprisingly, Zygmunt Kujawski was sparing on further information, in view of the censorship under the Communist regime. Source: Szymon Nowak, “Przyczółek ‘między mostami’, Warszawa, wrzesień 1944 r.” http://www.sppw1944.org/index.html, http://www.sppw1944.org/powstanie/przyczolek.html.
35. Praga—the right-bank district of Warsaw, where Soviet forces were stationed at the time but did not help the insurgents (except for sending a small unit of Poles serving with them, see above).
36. The Polikarpov Po-2 (generally known as the Kukuruznik) was a Soviet general-purpose biplane.
37. The Pistole Parabellum, commonly known as the Luger—a German semi-automatic pistol.
38. Everything all right, mate? (German).
39. The Bergmann–Bayard, a German semi-automatic pistol.
40. The Papasha—the Soviet PPSh-41 sub-machine gun.
41. General “Monter”—Antoni Chruściel (1895–1960), commander of the Warsaw Uprising.
42. Bromide—a sedative.
43. Sub-Lt. Dr Cyprian Sadowski (1902–1085), Pamiętnik doktora „Skiby.” Warsaw: MON; 1990.
44. Aleksander Kamiński, Pamiętniki żołnierzy baonu „Zośka”: Powstanie Warszawskie. Tadeusz Sumiński, ed. Warsaw: Nasza Księgarnia; 1957 (first edition).

Notes courtesy of Anna Marek, Expert Consultant in the history of medicine for the Medical Review Auschwitz project.

      

A publication funded in 2020–2021 within the DIALOG Program of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland.