STANISŁAWA KOSTAŃSKA

Warsaw, 13 April 1948. Judge Halina Wereńko, a member of the Warsaw District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, interviewed the person specified below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname Stanisława Kostańska, convent name: Marcelina
Names of parents Józef and Antonina n ée Szczepaniak
Date of birth 14 April 1896, the village of Trzebaw, poznańskie voivodeship
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Education teacher seminary
Occupation mother superior at the Institution for Paralytics in Warsaw

The outbreak of the Uprising caught me in the Institution for Paralytics at Belwederska Street 20 in Warsaw. On 4 August 1944, around 1.00 p.m., two women in white overalls with the Red Cross emblem came to the Institution and notified us that wounded people were lying in Belwederska Street, by the steps leading to Dworkowa Street. Three nuns went to the site: Jadwiga Zapolska (currently residing in Seleń upon the river Noteć, poznańskie voivodeship, the Institution for the Elderly), Ewa Lajdgeber (currently residing at the Institution for Paralytics at Belwederska Street in Warsaw), Eufemia Cholewa (currently residing in Poznań at aleja Niegolewskich 17), as well as Stefania Duzy, the paramedic who told us to bring the wounded people to the Institution on stretchers. They said that there were up to one hundred people lying on the ground, 36 of whom were dead, with the rest either wounded or even uninjured. We buried 22 bodies in our garden and 14 bodies in the field behind the garden.

In 1945, the Citizens’ Committee exhumed the bodies.

We set up a first-aid station on our premises and then we sent the wounded and the uninjured who had been brought from the area of the stairs to the insurgent hospital located at Chełmińska Street 19, in the Institution of Divine Providence of the Franciscan Sisters of Blessed Virgin Mary’s Family, so that they would not fall into the Germans’ hands.

I took down the names of the wounded, but the note has been lost.

After the first-aid station was set up, there were wounded people at our place all the time, and very often the Germans themselves, having shot someone, would ask us to pick up a wounded person or a body from the street. A Polish Red Cross team then went out with stretchers and we dressed the wounds inside. At that time, German soldiers would often murder individual civilians.

I do not remember how many wounded were brought to us.

On 1 September 1944, the Germans from Dworkowa Street told us to leave the Institution and we moved to Chocimska Street 4, where we remained until 1 October, when we were ordered to move to the Pruszków transit camp. From Pruszków, we managed to get to Milanówek.

Around 20 September (I do not remember the exact date) at 3.00 p.m., I was at Chocimska Street 4 and heard numerous gunshots. That very evening, I saw the corpses of men laid on the field (where a bazaar is currently located) in Puławska Street, opposite the post office. I know from different accounts that these were the bodies of a group of insurgents, who, having laid down their arms, were executed by German soldiers. It was said that around 300 men had been executed. I do not know the details.

At this point the report was concluded and read out.