Warsaw, 31 January 1947. Judge Halina Wereńko, member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, interviewed the person specified below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations and of the contents of Art. 107 and Art. 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Józefa Pakulska-Barczowa |
| Names of parents | Andrzej and Balbina née Siekierka |
| Date of birth | 18 February 1910 |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Grajewska Street 2, flat 12 |
| Education | Warsaw University Medical Faculty |
| Profession | doctor in the City Infectious Diseases Hospital |
On August 1 1944, at 4.30 p.m., I was called to the Saint Stanisław hospital at Wolska 37, Warsaw, by [an] employee, Kowalski. At the same time, other doctors who lived near the hospital were called in. When I arrived at the hospital, I met Dr Stanisław Kulesza and Dr Mieczysław Rygalski. Other doctors, who lived further away, including Dr Roman Szpikowski, could not appear at the hospital again that day. At the onset of the uprising, Dr Paweł Kubica also arrived in the hospital, as did Dr Jan Barcz on August 2 at dawn. Saint Stanisław hospital had no surgery department, as it was an infectious diseases hospital, so no preparations had been made for the uprising. Only a group of around 15 people from the Home Army field medical unit arrived on August 1, assigned to help dress wounds.
From 1 August to 5 August there were no Germans on the hospital grounds except the wounded. During the day they would drive tanks over Wolska Street, in the evening theywould withdraw to the edges of the city. There was a barricade at the intersection of Wolska Street and Młynarska Street, made of tramway cars.
SS units began the fight against the insurgents in Wola. They would drive the civilians out from nearby houses, including women and children, to cover their tanks, and would follow that human shield to attack the barricades.
On August 3, Idzi Dziedziak was shot in the hospital pharmacy, which he was in charge of. The circumstances of his death were impossible to determine. Between 1 August and 5 August over a dozen wounded insurgents and a few Germans arrived in the hospital. After receiving first aid, the more severely wounded Germans were moved to Wolski Hospital. Beneath the Germans’ jackets we would find silver spoons and forks.
On 5 August, around 12 a.m., the insurgents retreated from the hospital area.
I stress that the insurgents did not conduct operations from the hospital grounds.
The Germans were securing Wolska Street, burning house after house; they usually shot the civilians. While approaching the hospital, they set fire to the neighbouring building, where Franaszek’s factory was. The fire threatened our food stores. As we were not allowed to walk around the hospital grounds and we wanted to save the food, a delegation was sent to the Germans nearby on Wolska Street, asking them if we may save the stores. We obtained their permission. We eagerly set to work moving the food to the “new pavilion”. Our work did not take long.
Around 4 p.m., Germans entered the yard and ordered us to stop working. All the employees and less seriously ill patients were to move to the courtyard, with the doctors in front. I walked out with my husband Jan Barcz and Dr Stanisław Kulesza to the courtyard in front of the tannery adjacent to Wolska Street. In front of the hospital gate, on the roadway of Wolska Street, there was a tank, surrounded mostly by women and children.
We stood in front of the wall of the house at Wolska 39. Opposite from us sat the Germans, with machine guns pointed in our direction. The Germans in front of the gate also pointed their guns towards the hospital gate. They kept firing without pause.
It was hard to tell who was being fired at.
The first victims on our grounds were “Marek” Iliński from Komorów, who was a volunteer from the Home Army field medical unit, and Father Nieczyperowicz, standing deep in the hospital grounds, who had hid in our hospital when he could not reach his flat on Chłodna Street. When “Marek” was shot, his blood sprayed Dr Kulesza. Dr Kulesza fell down, thinking he had been shot. Believing it was my turn, I fell down. The hospital employees, thinking I had been killed, wanted to move me to the pavilion. The Germans, wanting to avoid a commotion, did not let them. I was left on the pavement in front of the isolation ward, with the Germans placing a sentry with a machine gun next to me. This German soon went off looting and I moved over to the next pavilion.
I do not know what happened to my husband after that, I still have no news of his fate. Seeing that the Germans wanted to carry out an execution, Dr Kubica, who was fluent in German, started to explain to them that no [military] operations had been carried out on hospital grounds. The Germans started to ask their observers for information and the execution was suspended. After about two hours everyone was dismissed and allowed to go back to work.
From August 5 onwards, a group of officers from Dirlewanger’s division and officers of the “Hermann Göring” division moved into our hospital, commandeering some of the isolation wards for their quarters and setting up a dressing station for their wounded. There were cases of Germans stealing watches from sick Poles.
On August 9, the SS-men brought two young boys with Home Army armbands and a white- and-red flag to the hospital grounds. Later, as I heard, they hanged those two boys facing each other, under orders from Dirlewanger. A few hours later, after we had intervened with the German doctors, they took down the hanged bodies and took them away.
During the Germans’ stay in our hospital, that is to say for two and a half months, the Gestapo took people from our hospital on several occasions. It happened for the first time on 7 August, then on 13 August, and on 3, 10, 12, 19, 25 and 29 September. They took the convalescents, the sick, hospital personnel and civilians who had somehow managed to find shelter on the hospital grounds.
Dr Schaufler and Wilhelm Belle, a batman who had been found guilty of murder in Germany, were active during the “selection”. What was the fate of the groups who left the hospital wedo not know, some went through the Pruszków camp and were displaced further, of others we know nothing even today.
A group of about 30 men, taken away on 13 August, was supposedly shot, none of them was ever found. The group included Piwnicki, the son of a paramedic from Saint Stanisław Hospital.
During one of the ”selections”, on 13 August, a young boy from the Hitlerjugend pointed out a wounded man, who he claimed to be a Home Army lieutenant, to the Gestapo officers. The Gestapo man took the wounded man in front of Pavilion VII and shot him.
In August, September, and October, during medical testing [conducted by] Dr Wesołowski, Dr Pakulska and Dr Zaleski, we noted about ten cases of rape (including one on a 12-year-old girl). As the victims said, [they had been raped] by the Germans and the Vlasovtsy.
In Saint Stanisław Hospital, the Germans established 1) a temporary dressing station, 2) a car repair station, and 3) temporary quarters for General Dirlewanger from late August to mid- October 1944.
General Dirlewanger’s batman, named Max, bragged of having frequently stolen rings and watches. Carpets and silverware from the city were brought in for General Dirlewanger. On September 25, his birthday, Dirlewanger was promoted to General and held a grand, noisy banquet for the Germans.
On 1 November, our hospital was evacuated. The sick and the personnel were taken by train to Radziwiłłów, then by horse-cart to Studzieńsk.
Of the hospital equipment, the Germans took away around 50 beds without mattresses, laundry room equipment, two disinfection chambers, kitchenware, a microscope, an emphysema apparatus, fire-fighting devices and a car.
At that the report was concluded and read out.