6 March 1946
Dear Madam,
A friend of Gienek’s told me the following: there was a commercial division in the building of the court at Długa Street, and 27 members of the “Parasol” battalion perished there, but this was in the court archives in Krasińskich Square. There was a shelter there, not a hospital, and all of the wounded were gathered there to be later moved through the sewers. However, when they had already been gathered, the commander of “Parasol” issued an order: they are not to be moved, but to remain on the spot together with the female paramedics and doctors from “Parasol.”
Gienek’s friend told me that when he visited Gienek on the night of 1 September, he wanted him to go with them, and said that they would help him. [To which] Gienek lifted himself from the bed, staggered, and said, “I will not go, because I have no strength.” Gienek’s closest friends asked that he be somehow transferred, and it was promised to them. However, when they left, Gienek was not moved and so he and the others were left to their own fate, awaiting the Germans. The sisters were readying sheets in order to surrender, and thereafter no more was heard of him. Only the friend of Gienek’s heard from some other friend that one of the sisters from the staff had escaped from the Pruszków camp, along with another friend. I asked Gienek’s friend to make sure about what he had heard, or otherwise I would go and visit this friend, to which he replied that he had met him by chance in Warsaw, but that he could not talk to him at length, for he had been in a hurry since he does not currently live in Warsaw.
It turned out that the commander who had given the order not to take the wounded had been a German spy, and he was executed in the Old Town. His friend’s account indicates that the Germans murdered Gienek right there, in the archives, or took him away.
I wish you and your daughter all the best.
Please accept the kindest regards from my husband.
J. Błotnicka