Warsaw, [no day] February 1947. Acting investigating judge Halina Wereńko, delegated to the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Warsaw, heard as a witness the person specified below. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
| Name and surname | Wojciech Szymanowski |
| Date of birth | 11 November 1924 |
| Religious affiliation | Roman Catholic |
| Marital status | unmarried |
| Place of residence | Warsaw, Mała Street 13a, flat 19 |
| Occupation | student at the Warsaw University of Technology |
As I was taking part in the insurgent action in the Zośka battalion, 1st company Maciek, Skalski platoon, on 22 August 1944 I got wounded in the leg on the premises of the Ghetto (on Bonifraterska Street, opposite the St. John of God Hospital). I had the wound dressed provisionally, and after some time I was moved to the military hospital at Miodowa Street 23, which had an exit also onto Długa Street 23. The hospital was run by a physician with the rank of major (I don’t remember his nom de guerre), and there were also other doctors such as “Brom”, “Przemysława”, “Bolek” (?).
That hospital was organized, on the second floor of the building, on 15 August by doctor “Brom”. Due to shelling and bombardment, the hospital was evacuated to the basements. The injured people were lying also in the abutting annex on Długa Street. The sick people took up six or seven rooms in the basements of the building on Miodowa Street, but the first one was occupied by injured Germans. There were some 30 people in the first room, the second was an operating room, there were some 20 people in the third, and in the remaining rooms there were about a hundred more people. In total, there were some 150 Polish people in the hospital, and 20 Germans.
I don’t know how many injured people there might have been in the adjoining annexes. In the hospital at Miodowa Street 23 there were some 20 members of the Zośka battalion.
Some injured people and some staff members left the hospital before the Old Town fell, and went through the sewers to Śródmieście. Other attempts at the evacuation of the hospital on the night of 1-2 September were unsuccessful. Eventually some hundred injured people, mostly military ones, remained on the hospital premises. As for the staff, the following people stayed in the hospital: doctor “Przemysława”, sister Karolina (called Ela), the chaplain and about ten young female paramedics.
After an unsuccessful attempt to reach the sewer, I returned to the third room in the morning of 2 September. Two injured Germans were lying there. On the order of doctor “Przemysława”, the paramedics had taken all papers, uniforms, equipment and things which might reveal the military character of the hospital. All these things had been hidden in a place unknown to me, and I don’t know what happened with them afterwards.
At about 6.00 a.m., German bombs fell on the hospital and as a result half of the first room and the entire second room collapsed, the third room was partially covered with rubble, and the further rooms went up in flames.
About 40 percent of the injured people were killed then. This was shortly before the Germans arrived at Krasiński square.
At about 7.00 a.m. I saw the first SS man in the yard of the hospital. After the air raid, the surviving injured people were placed haphazardly in various basements. I know from the accounts of others that the Germans who captured the hospital ordered civilians to rescue the injured people who had been buried under the rubble in the basements of the house at Miodowa Street 23.
At that time I was on the ground floor of the house at Długa Street 23, where some 20 injured people were gathered. There were also two German prisoners of war (one of them was a civilian reichsdeutsch). Shortly afterwards, a patrol of six or seven SS men with rifles pointed stormed into the room – they were shouting that they were looking for bandits. At about 8.00 a.m. – 10.00 a.m. I heard someone yell Alles raus! – and then we all began to go out to the so-called bishop’s garden, where an insurgent cemetery was situated. Those injured who could not walk were carried out by our female paramedics or civilian men. Some 60 injured people and the rest of the staff, including several young girls, gathered in the garden. The civilian populace was gathered en masse just next to us. The SS men formed a tight cordon around the people. A Wehrmacht officer, probably the commander of the unit which had captured the area, asked the injured Germans, who were in our hospital as the prisoners of war, “whether the Poles had been treating them well”. As the reichsdeutsch answered him in the negative, the officer decided that all the bandits should be executed.
At about 2.00 p.m. we were all transported, partially by the civilian populace, partially on foot, to the Wolski Hospital. A few injured people were transported in German cars.
However, some 20 injured people who could not walk were left in the square. I heard that the Kalmyks came there, and that they were kicking and beating the injured people, promising them that they would be executed. Eventually the German commander transported that group of people in cars to the Wolski Hospital, because he believed that they were injured civilians, not soldiers.
The report was read out.