Warsaw, 15 December 1945. Judge Halina Wereńko interviewed the person specified below as a witness. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the gravity 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 | Zbigniew Woźniewski |
| Age | 31 |
| Names of parents | Michał and Marta |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Płocka Street 26 (Wolski Hospital) |
| Occupation | pulmonary surgeon |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Criminal record | none |
Before August 1944, I worked as an assistant at Wolski Hospital. I encountered the Germans for the first time on 5 August of that year, when an SS unit rushed into the hospital and ordered everyone present to go down to the lobby, as the hospital was to be burnt down.
Thanks to the intervention of one of the patients, a woman who had a special permit to stay in the hospital, I did not leave the hospital with the sick and with my fellow doctors. Around 6 p.m., upon entering the director’s office I saw the bodies of hospital director Dr Marian Józef Piasecki, Prof. Janusz Zeyland M.D., and the hospital chaplain Kazimierz Cieczerski. All three were lying on the floor; I noted they had been shot in the head.
I could not find out the reason for their shooting.
The next day I realised that I had 98 of the most seriously ill patients in the hospital who could not leave. I also saw that there were some ten bodies of men in hospital clothes [lying] in Wolska Street in front of the hospital. I suppose they had been shot when the sick were driven from our hospital to a transit camp. There were also bodies of a group of civilians whom I did not know. I buried the murdered – the director, the professor, and the chaplain – and I revived the hospital. In the morning of 6 August, around 8 a.m., two surgical nurses of our hospital arrived. They were excluded from the evacuation in order to maintain a German field medical post created in Wolski Hospital.
Around 2 p.m., a man shot during the execution that had taken place on 6 August at 6 a.m. arrived in our hospital. His name is Piotr Dolny, at that time he lived at Młynarska Street […], he now lives in Włochy. He presented the following bullet trajectory: entry near the cervical vertebrae, then through the mandibular bone, exit – left corner of the mouth.
In the afternoon of that day I received a group of doctors, nurses, and sick people from Karol and Maria Hospital on Leszno Street.
From what I know, while the patients and some of the personnel were being evicted from Karol and Maria Hospital, Dr Włodzimierz Kmicikiewicz had been called out and shot in the head in front of everybody.
More details on the events in Karol and Maria Hospital can be provided by Dr Tadeusz Hroboni, Dr Jan Bogdanowicz, and the registered nurse Wanda […], whose address is known to Dr Hroboni.
Over the following days, I took care of the sick and performed administrative work for the German field medical post, which would later move on elsewhere, leaving our hospital without any protection whatsoever and exposed to constant visits from […] marauders, who usurped the right to review the sick, threatening the doctors with shooting if the patients at Wolski Hospital would not have their linen changed frequently enough, would not be fed properly and would not be sufficiently clean.
On 6 and 7 August, the hospital warehouses were completely looted by the German police. After that period (i.e. after 24 August) there was an […] invasion of military looters, who started to carry away hospital property by car. They took the X-ray machine, all of the equipment from the bacteriology lab, some of the surgical instruments, typewriters, telefax machines, several sets of hospital beds and so forth. One of the German doctors I talked to urged me to try and have any personal property I may have had [at the hospital] removed as soon as possible, as the hospital building would sooner or later be torched and razed to the ground, as would all of Warsaw.
On 28 October 1944 I received an order from the German police [Schupo, Szupo in the original testimony]) to leave the hospital within two hours and head to the Western Railway Station, from where we were to be sent to a transit camp. On that day I had 21 people in my last hospital crew. […] had already been evacuated, all of them, over the course of October.
In spite of the clear instructions to head to the Western Railway Station, I ordered a horse harnessed to a cart. We took the remaining livestock and headed down Wolska road to a local facility of our hospital in Pszczelin, near Brwinów. We were halted by the German sentries at the city limits. They asked for a pass, which we obviously did not have. We were then told that we would be shot as looters. We avoided immediate execution only because two men were dragged out of a car parked ahead of us, searched, and shot (in the head). One of the men who did this was an SS-man named Berger, who had visited Wolski Hospital and recognised us as its last crew.
Of the Germans I came into contact with in that period and who had been particularly cruel, I can name: [...]chel, the Stabsarzt, around 34 years old, a stupid, conceited man of little merit. He ordered the doctors to finish off the insurgents in Maltański Hospital at Senatorska Street and refused them medical help.
I learned that from nurse Barbara Warda (residing at Wolska Street 26, in Wolski Hospital).
Berger, whom I mentioned above, was nicknamed Rote lump by many Germans due to his bloodthirsty nature. Distinctive features: […], freckled, lisping, some 40 years of age. He would shoot Poles without any investigation. As I have mentioned, he shot two people in my presence.
The survivors of the mass execution on [5] August 1944 were: prelate Bernard Filipiuk (residing at Miastków, Garwolin commune); Dąbrowski, employee of Wolski Hospital; and Jan Napiórkowski, graduate of the Faculty of Medicine, whose address can be obtained through Wolski Hospital.
From another mass execution I know […] Bogdan, a janitor at Wolski Hospital, who survived and is still employed at Wolski Hospital.
At that the report was concluded and read out.