Ninth day of the trial
Witness Konrad Okólski, age 63, resident of Warsaw, Infant Jesus Hospital, Oczki Street 6, doctor, director of Infant Jesus Hospital, relationship to the parties: none, sworn.
Presiding Judge: Please present what you know concerning this case.
Witness: Your Honor, I can only present the German attitude towards a small section of social life in Poland, namely towards Infant Jesus Hospital, which I was in charge of and where I had served as director since 1932, so before the bombings of 1939 and, later, not for the entire duration of the occupation, as I was at Auschwitz from June 1940 until the end of 1941, and after that I was excluded from hospital matters as I was deemed most likely unfit and disloyal, and I was demoted [as a physician] to the contagious diseases hospital on Grochowska Street, where they believed I would see the end of my days among the tuberculous [patients].
Then I became the director again, spontaneously taking charge of the hospital on the first day of the uprising, and that has not changed since. Therefore, there is necessarily a kind of a gap in my testimony, for which I cannot take responsibility, although I will shed some light on it, but there might be some inaccuracies that could be explained by those who replaced me back then.
Presiding Judge: Can you, therefore, provide information on what happened before June 1940?
Witness: I can give you very precise information for that period. If Your Honor allows: in order to illustrate the attitude of the military authorities towards the Polish society and their intention to destroy that nation, whatever the circumstances, I would like to go back to September 1939. You see, as early as the first days of the war, Infant Jesus Hospital was a bombing site. For the time being, those were incendiary bombs. I’m stressing that, since it’s been said in here earlier that Warsaw was not bombed for a longer while. The premises of Infant Jesus Hospital covers a very wide area. It is closed off by Chałubińska Street from the east, Lelewela Street from the west, Oczki Street from the south, and Nowogrodzka Street from the north, and so Infant Jesus Hospital covers an area so vast that, from the altitude planes would fly at during the attack on Warsaw, pilots would certainly be aware of what kind of area they were dealing with, especially since they surely must have received intelligence about it as well. Besides that, the hospital was protected by Red Cross markings. I’m not saying there was a barrage of artillery shells on a daily basis. There could have been some incidental bombs that failed to reach their intended target.
Prosecutor Sawicki: I’m sorry to interrupt, but I would ask Your Honor for the Witness to testify only regarding the occupation period instead of talking about military operations.
Presiding Judge: Perhaps you should limit your testimony to the occupation period, Doctor.
Witness: I insist that Your Honor allow me to describe a single situation because it is very typical. On the one hand it shows why so many people were killed in the hospital in September 1939 and, on the other hand, it will let me present the virtue of the Polish soldier. I’ll start from the critical moment – 25 September. Two planes appeared that day over the hospital and started dropping bombs. Many wards were reduced to rubble. We went to rescue people trapped in the rubble. A few hundred people were buried alive. While we were getting these people out of the debris of the hospital premises, the same two planes descended as low as the height of the tree, a hundred-year-old chestnut, and from that altitude they began shooting at us. That was the system of destroying the sick and the wounded, and the entire white-coat medical staff. I think the court should be aware of this fact.
As an antithesis of such an attitude, I want to provide you with another fact. A soldier in the rank of corporal brought a wounded German to the first-aid station. It was during the first 10 days of September. The soldier’s arm was wounded. It wasn’t a particularly severe wound. Seeing how tired the Polish soldier was, I gave him a glass of wine to drink. He then gave it to the German soldier and said: “Let him drink first, he’s wounded, and I am well.” I think this fact illustrates the high culture, spirit, and virtue of the Polish soldier.
That was in September. I will now move on to the occupation time. The main historical figure of that time was Dr. Schrempf. He was the main German medical authority in Warsaw. His assistant’s name was Strohel, a forensic assistant and, unfortunately, a graduate of the University of Warsaw. These two would constantly barge in the hospital and cause all kinds of hardships and hindrances in the hospital life. One of Schrempf’s first orders was to remove all Jews from the hospital, forbid their treatment, and to remove all Jewish doctors (up to the third or fourth generation). It was done so aggressively that my Jewish colleagues had to run to avoid any affliction.
His second order was to deprive the patients at the hospital, in numbers greater than 1,500 at the time, of any spiritual aid. The hospital had three chaplains. Those priests were fired at once, arrested, and never allowed to provide spiritual care to the patients at the hospital. In a gesture of great kindness, some German priest, who couldn’t speak Polish, showed up willing to provide such care. The patients refused and remained without help. Sometime later, a Polish priest who was able to provide spiritual aid was brought illegally at night, under the guise of an on-duty medic.
Another great hindrance to the hospital life was the downsizing of staff. Wherever there had used to be three or four doctors hired before the war, there was now one, and the working conditions were impeded greatly by various police regulations and increased working hours, all while the fees were very low. The same applied to lower rank staff and, at a certain point, Dr. Schrempf demanded, by means of an order he stressed and repeated many times, a twelve-hour work day for physical workers and an eight-hour day for intellectual workers. Physical workers resisted the order. Several attempts at negotiations would only lead to Gestapo pressuring me as the one that shared and supported that resistance.
If I also mention the matter of supplying the hospital with food and medicine, I will illustrate sufficiently in just how tough of conditions the hospital had to treat their patients in, and what kind of care the Germans showed. The food situation was very bad. The highest amount the hospital would receive was somewhere between 500 to 600 calories [per patient] daily. Later, it would only drop lower. There rarely was any protein or fat, mostly [just] small amounts. If we somehow managed to endure [this], it was only due to the generosity of the community, or the supplies from before the war. We would also be supplied with nearly no medicines, or the amounts we got were so small it would cause great difficulties for doctors and a very hard situation for the patient. There was no shortage of thefts as well. The ophthalmic clinic was robbed. Its former professor, Laube, before leaving for Kraków upon his promotion by the Germans, robbed the ophthalmic clinic of its equipment; he took very important, valuable instruments, impossible to find today; he also stole from the library. That was also the case for the histopathology and anatomy facilities. Later, during the uprising, the entire hospital was robbed of X-ray equipment, apparatuses for physical therapy and diathermy, [and] two-way radio devices. All instruments were taken from us as well.
That’s what the situation was like during the occupation. But these were difficulties of purely administrative nature. Other than that, there was also a whole range of orders and ways to destroy the staff and the patients by purely police-like, military methods.
During that time, many doctors were arrested, shot down, taken to camps where their lives ended, or had not yet been found. If Your Honor wishes, I may present the list of victims of Infant Jesus Hospital. The list speaks for itself.
Presiding Judge: From what period?
Witness: After the German invasion ended, I allowed myself to commemorate the entire deceased staff of our hospital. Plaques with the names of those who died were therefore embedded in the ruins of the hospital. Each of those plaques describes in detail who died and when. As such, there is a plaque from September 1939. There is one with 28 names and another with 24, all staff members. Besides that, they show names of 250 patients and other incidental people who died in the hospital. In the second period, there are mainly names of doctors, since most deceased were doctors. That list covers 30 people. Finally, the fourth list comes from the uprising – the German army or administration cannot be directly charged with this one. Four hundred people died in total. If Your Honor wishes, I can present that list.
If I may, I would like to describe one more case regarding a patient from Wawer.
As luck would have it, one of the severely shot in Wawer miraculously crawled out at night from among the corpses and was brought to Infant Jesus Hospital. I was informed of it and we secretly treated him in the hospital. Treatment took nearly five weeks, and nobody knew he came from Wawer. His name was Józef Wasilewski. As though with a premonition, I discharged him from the hospital shortly before finishing his treatment and he remained hidden in his apartment, where the treatment was finished. My feelings were right, as just two days later two Gestapo officers came asking if Józef Wasilewski was in the hospital. By an unusually lucky coincidence I had something to use to my advantage. As it turned out, at the same time there was another Józef Wasilewski in the hospital, who had nothing to do with Wawer or the other patient. His condition was not connected with the occupation: he had testicular tuberculosis and his testicle had to be removed. When Germans arrived, I said, “Yes, he’s here.” I had orders to absolutely not discharge him, God forbid. Very well. Two days later, they called me and the doctor who treated Wasilewski – of course I don’t mean the patient from Wawer, but the one who had his testicle removed. They took us to Gestapo. There, they asked if he was unwell. “He is.” “How was he wounded?” “He never was.” “What do you mean ‘he never was?’ That’s the one from Wawer.” “Impossible, we don’t have any patients from Wawer. We have a patient named Wasilewski, his medical record is right here.” There was some great confusion. But the colonel interrogating us did not want to believe our story and Dr. Łopuska, may she rest in peace, and I were to be taken to the Sejm Hotel cellars, which was where the executions took place. As we were on our way there, we were turned back. As it turned out, some general or I don’t know who, who assisted with the interrogation but didn’t speak, asked the colonel interrogating us, after we were taken away, why he did not believe us. The colonel responded that we were lying, because it was the man from Wawer who was severely shot during an execution and they had to get him, or he was going to tell the whole world about the Wawer execution. Apparently the general in question stood up for us when we were gone, or for some other reason the colonel changed his attitude toward us, turned us back from the way to the cellars and, as he apologized for the misunderstanding, sent us back to the hospital.
I’m stressing this fact because the Wawer man might prove useful to the Tribunal. His name is Józef Wasilewski. I don’t know where he lives at the moment, but I do know he’s alive, because a year and a half ago he came for a medical certificate concerning his stay at the hospital and numerous wounds, as much as a dozen.
That would be my very short report on the period until June 1940. In June 1940, I was arrested by Dr. Schrempf himself. Namely, I was summoned to his office at Daniłowiczowskiej Street where, under the charges of sabotage against Dr. Lauber and the director of the department of hospital administration, Dr. Orzechowski, whom I believe I mentioned earlier, I was arrested amidst spiteful insinuations and taken to Gestapo.
I don’t know if I should talk about what came next, since Your Honor most likely knows how prisoners were treated there. In short: I was hit in my face a few times, then thrown in a cellar at Szucha Alley, then I was in Pawiak, [I was subject to] interrogations, and finally on 14 August, [I was] sent with the first transport to Auschwitz.
Presiding Judge: What accusations were made against you?
Witness: General sabotage, it was vague.
Presiding Judge: Who interrogated you?
Witness: I wasn’t interrogated by Gestapo at all. Nor was I on Wiejska Street.
Judge Rybczyński: And the colonel?
Witness: That was about the man from Wawer.
| Judge Rybczyński: | Who was that colonel? |
| Witness: | I don’t know the name. I’d recognize him by his physiognomy. He was quite tall. |
| Presiding Judge: | Is he not present in this room? |
Witness: No.
Presiding Judge: Defendant Meisinger (Defendant Meisinger stands up).
Witness: That’s not him. Should I talk about my personal experience on Szucha Alley, in Pawiak, and Auschwitz?
Presiding Judge: Maybe not Auschwitz.
Witness: On Szucha Alley, the Gestapo did not beat me like they commonly did with others. But I was hit in the face several times, without any discussion, without questions asked, without personal details. I fell twice, but later I managed to stay upright. Then I was brought one floor down where they collected my personal details and took any belongings I had on me. Following that, I was brought down further, to the cellar, where they put me up against the wall and held me like that, no talking or looking around [allowed], for several hours.
After those several hours, a car arrived and I was taken to Pawiak, and there I stayed underground for eight days. After eight days, I was taken to a common cell which was filled with a dozen people; [a cell which] was intended for just a few. I survived this way until the first transport took me to Auschwitz. It was the eve of the Assumption of Mary, 14 August 1940. I returned by the end of 1941. If it’s of any interest to Your Honor, I may show photographs of how I looked after my return from Auschwitz.
Presiding Judge: Perhaps you should give your weight.
Witness: I weighed 89 kg [before Auschwitz], and 43 kg after I came back.
Judge Grudzinski: What were you accused of?
Witness: General sabotage. I had already been accused of sabotage [as part of the] hospital administration department of Municipal Administration, in October or maybe November; there was this kind of an overseer, or advisor, or some sort of upper rank officer, by the name of Piątkowski. Acting on behalf of Schrempf, whether he was an overseer or a spy, he had his grip on the entire hospital administration department, and its director, Orzechowski, who must have been a nobody compared to him. That Piątkowski… he accused me. It was [regarding] the matter of twelve-hour working days in the hospital.
Infant Jesus Hospital was one of the biggest [hospitals]. There was large pressure to introduce twelve-hour work days in hospitals. Employees of other hospitals would take [example] after Infant Jesus Hospital, therefore, this twelve-hour work day wasn’t in effect anywhere. Piątkowski accused me of sabotaging the establishment of twelve- hour work days and during the meetings he would repeatedly state that I was a saboteur, crossed out with black ink from the list of directors, and that I was headed for the camp. His last statement took place by the end of January or in February 1940. I was only arrested on 21 June.
At last, I would also like to say something about the uprising period. I can give you some facts.
Since the moment I was arrested until the outbreak of the uprising, I did not hold office as the director. On 1 August I took charge as a self-proclaimed director since my replacement never showed up in the hospital and I was living there at the time.
The stance of Infant Jesus Hospital was that of a hospital that is neutral towards either party; both were its permanent guests. We had many wounded [people] from both [sides]. One day – on the tenth day of the uprising, or so, I can’t remember well – a parlimentaire appeared at Infant Jesus Hospital with an enormous white flag from the German army group leader and a letter addressed to me. The letter said: “I demand surrender. Shall the hospital not surrender within three hours, it will be bombed and burnt with its patients and staff.”
I responded to that letter appropriately through my envoys – an old lady, a Red Cross nurse, and a doctor that: “A hospital is a hospital. In accordance with international rules it is not a warring party and if, despite this statement, the hospital is to be bombed, I want to make clear: along with the Poles, any Germans staying in it will die as well.” That left a huge impression on them: that there were Germans inside the hospital.
After a few hours, a German envoy returned with request if he could make sure whether there really were Germans in the hospital. “Go ahead,” [I responded]. They came, they saw that there were, in fact, over a dozen severely wounded Germans at the hospital. After that, there were no more disturbances, bombings, or executions, and for the entire duration of the uprising we had no trouble in that regard.
After a short while, the hospital was filled with, as they were called, Vlasovtsy. I believe Your Honor knows who Vlasovtsy were, no explanation needed. They devastated the hospital awfully. Not only did they plunder property, not only did they spoil and pollute the hospital completely, but what stood out the most is that they simply raped a lot of women, whether they were patients or employees. As a result, I had to relocate the obstetrics clinic, which is normally located outside the hospital, and move it inside the hospital to protect the sick women from being raped by Vlasovtsy.
During that time, two forced evacuations took place – first of the men, then of the entire staff, with the exception of the severely sick patients. The entire staff, women and assistants, and doctors had to walk on foot to Pruszków. It was with great hesitation and only as a result of my clear statement that I was not going to leave until the patients would be evacuated that I managed to stay behind [with the severely sick], together with one more doctor. We were alone with those patients for around a week until I gradually formed new staff, with whom I tended to the patients until 25 October 1944. During the evacuation of 25 October, I was not allowed to leave anyone to guard the hospital for protection of the property inside, but I was allowed to come once or twice a week from Piastów (where I stayed to set up a new hospital) to take the remaining property. There was, however, less and less of it every time I came back, plundered by local inhabitants or Germans, so in the end, the hospital lost at least a half of what it owned.
I don’t know if that was under the Warsaw administration or not, but, in any case, a man named Dr. Lambrecht was in charge of the Piastów sanitation department. I must say, there was a massive hunt for Jews hiding behind various identities. Some were employees, and many were patients. Unfortunately, it often ended in the military police showing up suddenly, taking them outside the hospital premises to be shot dead. Most recently, they pulled one lawyer out of his bed – I can’t remember his name at the moment – and shot him down right outside the hospital doors, on the premises, then told the staff of that ward to bury him right there, behind the doorstep. That would be all.
Attorney Wagner: Who arrested you during the first arrest in connection with Wasilewski?
Witness: That was not an arrest, I was arrested in June.
Attorney: Who detained you and took you?
Witness: I was summoned, so I went with Dr. Łopuska to the Sejm Hotel – to the third or fourth floor, I believe – where I was interrogated by some colonel.
Attorney Wagner: Do you remember what unit was stationed there?
Witness: No.
Attorney Śliwowski: Did Dr. Schrempf arrive with the army?
Witness: I don’t know if he did, but within the first few days after Warsaw surrendered, I came across him.
Presiding Judge: Thank you. You are dismissed. I am ordering a recess until nine o’clock tomorrow morning.
(End of the session, 6:45 PM)