Wrocław, 12 February 1948. Judge Jerzy Majewski from the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland heard as a witness the person specified below. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness was sworn and testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Stanisław Trojanowski |
| Age and place of birth | 48 years old, Stavropol, Russia |
| Names of parents | Michał and Gabriela née Dubińska |
| Place of residence | Wrocław, Matejki Street 10, flat 4 |
| Occupation | doctor of medicine |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Criminal record | a) criminal – none, b) political – none |
On 1 August 1944 I was a radiologist on duty in the Child Jesus Hospital in Warsaw. During the first days of the uprising the insurgents were blocking Nowogrodzka Street, and the Germans took positions on Oczki Street. An hour after the outbreak of the uprising, so at about 6.00 p.m., two injured German roadmen were brought to our hospital in a truck. When the less seriously injured one had his wounds attended to, the Germans took him with them, and the more seriously injured one, who had a chest wound, stayed in the hospital for further treatment. Injured Germans were coming to the hospital every single day.
On 2 or 3 August, a group of ten injured armed Schupo men [Schutzpolizei members] came to the hospital. They surrendered their weapons without coercion. In order not to get into trouble with the German authorities, the hospital authorities asked them to make a declaration to the effect that these Germans had voluntarily handed their weapons over for safekeeping.
The weapons were given to a group of Polish insurgents. In order to make it seem that they were acting under coercion, the insurgents demanded the weapons in the presence of the injured Germans.
On 6 August at 6.00 a.m. a German physician, Captain Feliks Borman, who was in charge of the evacuation of the injured Germans from the theater of military operations in town, came to the hospital. We spoke Russian and I took him to the sick Germans. When Borman asked them how they were treated in the hospital, the injured Germans told him that they were well looked after and that they were treated exactly as the sick Poles were.
At 2.00 p.m. on the same day, doctor Borman came with ambulances and began the evacuation of the sick Germans. While the injured Germans were being evacuated, I learned from my wife, who had managed to get to the hospital with news from the nursing school on Koszykowa Street, that our daughter, who was all by herself at Wawelska Street 60, had been seriously injured and was lying in a basement suffering from hemorrhaging. When Borman noticed that I was agitated, he asked me what was wrong and then offered to give me a lift as close as possible to the house at Wawelska Street 60. We left together and went to the building of the Ministry of Communication on Chałubińskiego Street. In front of that building, he put my case to the President of the German Directorate of the East Railway, emphasizing that as a physician I had been attending to the injured Germans. This president told Borman and I to take one of the cars parked in front of that building and drive in the direction of Wawelska Street. We went along Oczki Street to Starynkiewicz square, then we turned into Koszykowa Street and from Koszykowa Street into Sucha Street. As we were driving along Koszykowa Street, I saw the corpses of civilians, mostly men, lying by the paling on the side of the waterworks. On Sucha Street, by the wall on both sides of the sidewalk, the corpses of civilians were lying quite densely. We came along Sucha Street to the barrier separating Langiewicza Street from Wawelska Street. Borman had his papers checked by a German officer, told me to get out of the car and asked me to go with him to a nearby area in order to attend to injured soldiers. I had left the hospital in my white coat. When we were walking through the gardens of the villas, I noticed the corpses of people killed in German uniforms lying in the bushes, and lots of [corpses of] civilians lying on porches, pavements, and lawns. Screams of Polish people and in Russian could be heard all around. Borman told me that the Russian troops were operating in that area. I saw many soldiers in German uniforms, roaming drunkenly around the entire Staszic Colony, laden with various civilian garments.
From Sucha Street we went along Wawelska Street in the direction of the highway and we parked in front of the Academy of Political Science. A major in an SS uniform and a group of SS men were standing in front of that school. Doctor Borman got out of the car and reported to the major. He asked the major to let us go to Wawelska Street 60 in order to take my injured daughter. The major gave us his permission but warned us that there were insurgents in that house who were not, however, shooting in the direction of the Academy of Political Science. According to the major, the situation was worse, as the Russians were shooting in the direction of the house at Wawelska Street 60. I noticed that the soldiers were entrenched on Pole Mokotowskie [Mokotów field] on the side of the playing field in the back of the Navy building up to the Radium Institute, and that they were shooting in the direction of Wawelska Street. Then doctor Borman went to the commander of the Russian troops, who was standing on the other side of Wawelska Street, and asked him to cease fire for a time, as a physician was about to go in the direction of the house at Wawelska Street 60 in order to take away the injured. In everyone’s view, in my white medical coat, I went in the direction of the house at Wawelska Street 60. The mother of my wife lived on the ground floor of that house on the side of Wawelska Street. I began to knock on the shutters and shout, but nobody answered. As I wanted to enter the block of flats, I continued down Wawelska Street in the direction of Pługa Street onto which the block had its exit. While I was walking, I noticed an insurgent observer on one of the balconies who asked me about the situation in town. Without stopping, I provided him with requested information. At the moment when I was approaching Pługa Street, a grenade was thrown in my direction from behind the paling of the Technical Research Institute, and it exploded a few meters behind me. I quickened my pace and when I was approximately halfway to Pługa Street, a second grenade was thrown in my direction. I didn’t know what to do, whether to go on or back off. At that point a soldier in a German uniform came to me from Korzeniowskiego Street and began to shout, “Pan idi siuda.” I came closer to him and when he asked, “Ty chto?” I answered him in Russian, “Wracz.” Then he told me that he had to search me. A few other soldiers approached us. While they were searching me, one of them decided that there was no use talking to me, as I was a doctor of the bandits. Then the soldier whom I approached first answered him that it was not his thing, that I should be sent to komandir and that Kamiński told them not to shoot doctors and engineers. At that moment I noticed that the owner of a villa, Łańcucki, a former director of the “Karpaty” or “Galicja” Petroleum Association, was being led by Kamiński’s soldiers, who were pushing him in the direction of the basement of the villa in which he lived.
Shortly afterwards I heard shots fired in that basement and women screaming. The villa in which Łańcucki and other inhabitants were murdered was situated at Korzeniowskiego Street 4. Until 1 August 1944, the following people had lived in the villa of director Łańcucki: Łańcucki himself, his wife (about 50 years old), her sister, who had a German surname (about 44 years old), his daughter (16–17 years old), his son with a wife, engineer Władysław Łabuć, his wife and two children. At the outbreak of the uprising, the son of Łańcucki and tenant Władysław Łabuć, who had taken his family for a holiday, were not present in the villa. I learned from the accounts of locals and from Mrs Ketlicz Rajska that a similar fate at the hands of Kamiński’s soldiers befell the inhabitants of eight other villas on Korzeniowskiego Street, which constituted a colony of PKO [Polish bank] houses. Among others, the following people were killed then: count Przeździecki, the brother of Konstanty Przeździecki, the owner of the “Polonia” hotel in Warsaw, engineer Gail, and Mrs Turska, the wife of a professor of the Warsaw University of Technology.
At the moment when I was stopped by the Ronowcy [Russian National Liberation Army members], that is, Kamiński’s soldiers, an injured Ronowiec stormed into Wawelska Street and, seeing that I was in a medical coat, demanded that I attend to his wounds. I told him that I didn’t have any dressing materials and that he should seek help in the hospital of the Radium Institute, where his wounds would be dressed. The Ronowiec informed me that nobody was there anymore, as the sick bandits had been executed and the Institute had been set on fire. I noticed that clouds of smoke were appearing on the side of the garden square where the library of the Institute was located. Then I was escorted by one of the Ronowcy along Mochnackiego Street to Grójecka Street. Looking for the komandir, he brought me to the hall of the house at Grójecka Street 43 and ordered me to wait. Before the outbreak of the uprising, the professors of the Free Polish University had lived in that house. When I was standing in the hall, I saw drunk Ronowcy who were leaving the basements of that house laden with various things, preserves, etc. At one point one of the soldiers began to question me, asking what I was doing there. He did not want to believe my words and accused me of being a spy of the bandits. He said then, “we will finish off all the Poles for starting the uprising and preventing the Kamiński Brigade from getting to the Western front, where the Brigade planned to join the British.” Upon hearing this, one of them pointed his revolver at me. I grabbed his hand and called him abusive names. It sobered him up a bit and the Ronowcy became somehow confused.
A moment later the man who was escorting me returned and told me to go with him, and led me to the corner of Wawelska Street and Grójecka Street, where he showed me a burning house, the so-called Pekin, on the corner of Radomska Street, and told me to run in that direction. As I was afraid that he might shoot me on my way, I did not want to obey his order, saying that I was afraid and that my legs were failing me. Then he told me that we would run together. A moment later we did.
A tank was coming from the direction of Okęcie, pointing its cannon at the tower of St. James’s church on Grójecka Street. The tank was operated by Germans. We heard a cannon shot and the missile hit an iron tram post on Grójecka Street near the house at number 39. A large group of soldiers from the Kamiński Brigade were standing by that post. The post collapsed and I saw a jumble of bodies just next to it. A few moments later one Ronowiec passed by us and we learned from him that the Germans were allegedly shooting at Kamiński’s soldiers. The soldiers from the Kamiński Brigade were very surprised at that. I was escorted down Grójecka Street in the direction of Okęcie. On the way there I could see how Polish civilians were being killed. Drunk, rowdy Ronowcy would storm into the houses and force people from their flats, stealing all they could. Emptied buildings were being set on fire in such a manner that the Germans were aiming flamethrowers at the windows from their cars and were thus making the houses burn. Besides, I saw that Ronowcy were bringing small cannons to the basements and shooting through the windows, thus killing Polish people who had been gathered there. As I was walking down Grójecka Street, I saw many killed Poles in the gardens of the houses, in potato fields, and empty squares. In some places it could be inferred from the way the bodies were arranged that the civilians must have been executed in groups.
Finally, I reached Zieleniak [market square]. Before I entered it, I met a group of medical- sanitary staff from the Radium Institute, with professor Łukaszczyk at their head. I wanted to join this group and go with them. The escorting Ronowiec had already gone, but at that moment another Ronowiec came to me and asked me whether I was a doctor. When I answered him in the affirmative, he led me to the sanitary post of his brigade, situated at the junction of Opaczewska Street and Grójecka Street. The group of doctor Łukaszczyk comprised 60 people. All were wearing white clothes. I was ordered to attend to the injured Ronowcy. They were being brought in cars from a place hit by a missile fired from a tank stationed by the dormitory. I worked there for about four hours. Four female paramedics, who were dismissed from some sanitary post, joined me in my work. At one point one of them went to use the bathroom and about an hour later I saw her crawling on all fours in the direction of our post from the house to which she had gone. I learned from her that she had been raped by eight Ronowcy. I also saw that a young woman, whom I had known by sight and who was walking in the direction of Okęcie from Narutowicza square, was captured by four soldiers, Ronowcy, dragged to an empty square overgrown with grass, and raped there. The last rapist shot her with a revolver. While they were raping her, I asked a German officer, an air major, to intervene and save that woman, and he answered me jeeringly that they were not raping her but searching for arms.
Apart from that, I saw a patient whom I had known jump out of a burning house. He was stopped by Ronowcy, who let him go after a moment, and then he began to walk away and then run. One of the Ronowcy shouted that he was the one whom he had seen firing from the window. Then the chase began; they surrounded him, and when he slammed into a carriage without a horse, they began to beat him about the head with revolver butts. When, covered in blood, he managed to break away and began to run in the direction of the burning house, one Ronowiec fired at him and killed him on the spot. I saw that the people who were being marched to Zieleniak were being robbed, also of their briefcases, pushed, kicked and rifle-butted.
The Kamiński Brigade probably comprised several regiments. I know this as I heard the soldiers talk about the second, third etc. regiments. The Kamiński Brigade was being used for pacification purposes and consisted of soldiers of Russian descent from the region of Kursk and Oryol. Ronowcy told me in conversation that the uprising was unnecessary and that it prevented them from getting to the Western front and joining the Allies. They believed that by quelling the uprising they were annihilating the communists.
There was no sanitary post in Zieleniak. Once I was summoned to Kamiński, who ordered me to attend to the injured people in Zieleniak. Kamiński had his headquarters on the first floor of a building on the corner of Grójecka Street and Opaczewska Street, from which he was watching the entire area. Under his balcony there was a huge pile of suitcases, furs, and clothes stolen from the Poles living in the surrounding houses. Two corpses, of a blue policeman and a civilian man, were lying just by the pile. The loot was covered with blankets. Kamiński was wearing a bluish German uniform with a German general’s epaulettes, with sewn-on ribbons of orders, and with the Iron Cross on his breast. Kamiński was of middle height and stout build, had a red, squarish, bloated face with a fleshy nose and a slightly drooping right eyelid. He asked me whether I was a doctor and ordered that I be taken to Zieleniak.
In Zieleniak, just by the paling of the Health Facility, I saw several dozen people, inhabitants of the house at Mochnackiego Street 17. Among others, I saw the wife of doctor Jokter, and doctor Biliński. According to the inhabitants, Ronowcy had forced them from the house and marched them in the direction of Zieleniak through a square by the Maria Curie-Skłodowska Institute. While the inhabitants of the house on Mochnackiego Street were crossing that square, a Ronowiec passing by threw a grenade into their group, and then another one, who was sitting with a machine gun in hand, fired a volley at their legs. From what I learned, Ronowcy put on quite a production with the inhabitants, throwing grenades and firing machine guns. I dressed the wounds of several dozen people, men and women, usually older ones. While I was doing this, I noticed that Ronowcy were picking young boys of about 16–17 years of age from the group of people gathered in Zieleniak and were taking them in the direction of the elementary school, from where one could constantly hear single or serial shots.
When I was dressing wounds, the vegetable market of Zieleniak was crammed with some twelve thousand people: men, women and children alike. Sanitary conditions were awful. There was only one pump in front of the square, and people were swarming around it with chance water vessels. Ronowcy were roaming the square, picking young women and raping them in the potato fields.
The injured inhabitants of the house on Mochnackiego Street whose wounds I had dressed should have been taken to a hospital for treatment. They could not walk. Doctor Stanisław Biliński, whom I met on 1 September in Grodzisk [Mazowiecki] (as far as I know, he now resides in Warsaw), told me that these people could not walk to Pruszków, but some of them got there with the help of people who were being marched to Pruszków.
All these atrocities committed by the Ronowcy in the Staszic colony, Lubecki colony and in Ochota were perpetrated on the order of the Brigade commander, Kamiński.
I recall that Kamiński, who was quelling the uprising, was the same Kamiński who, when I had been in Ukrainian captivity in Kamieniec Podolski in 1919,, had been an officer cadet of the Ukrainian army (of Petlura). At that time he had been detained in the guardroom for some misdemeanors. That Kamiński also had a drooping eyelid and spoke idiomatic Polish. What happened to him afterwards, I do not know.
The Kamiński who was in Warsaw during the uprising was being called Mieczysław Władysławowicz by the Ronowcy. Purportedly he was an officer of the military engineering forces in the Soviet army. Doctor Borman, who had his headquarters in the hospital in Tworki, told me on 20 October 1944 that Kamiński had been executed by the Germans, allegedly for atrocities against the Polish people during the Warsaw Uprising.
Another version has it that Kamiński was killed by partisans from Puszcza Kampinoska [the Kampinos Forest]. I don’t know the real names of the commanders of the Ronowcy. The soldiers were addressing them by the names of aerial heroes or other renowned figures, for instance “Papanin” Lewoniewski. The Ronowcy were very shabbily armed. They had machine guns from 1914 and ordinary handguns, and lots of grenades. They were not in possession of advanced weapons.
At this the report was closed and read out before signing.