ANTONINA CHOJNACKA

Warsaw, 8 July 1948. A member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, Judge Halina Wereńko, heard as a witness the person specified below; the witness did not swear an oath. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations the witness testified as follows:


Name and surname sister Antonina Chojnacka
Parents’ names Józef and Franciszka née Jędrzejczak
Date of birth 20 May 1900, Drużyn, Grodzisk Wielkopolski district
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Education nursery seminary
Place of residence Skrzeszewy, near Żychlin
Nationality Polish
Occupation orphanage supervisor in Skrzeszewy

At the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising I was a manciple in the Saint Joseph Retirement Home in Warsaw at Zakroczymska Street 1. Sister Franciszka Chłopkówna, now mother superior of the Sisters of the Family of Mary in Ciechocinek, was a supervisor there. There were about 250 elderly women and 3 elderly men in our Home. At Franiszkańska Street 6a there was also a home for elderly ladies run also by the Sisters of the Family of Mary, and there were, as far as I know, about one hundred elderly women there. The insurgents were in control of the Home’s grounds and we were under German fire all the time.

On 30 August 1944 the Home was bombed. Some of our residents were killed then, but I cannot tell how many. On 31 August some man came, he was Polish I believe, and notified us that we had to leave the Home immediately. I did not see German soldiers then. I left the Home with other sisters and some 50 elderly women. When we were leaving, I did not know which basements had collapsed and in which basements the elderly ladies who could not walk were left. As a manciple I was not in charge of such things, but some sisters were going there to take care of the elderly ladies: sisters Regina Słyszówna, Kazimiera Masłowska (in charge of our little hospital) and Jadwiga Jankowska, a secretary of the Home – now all of them live in the house of the Sisters of the Family of Mary in Wieluń upon Noteć, Czarnków district (Saint Joseph Home). In a laundry of our Home, in the basement, there was a hospital for up to 20 ladies. When on 31 August 1944 I was leaving the Home, the laundry was still accessible.

In February 1945 I was in Warsaw and I went to see the Home. I saw then, both in the laundry and in the corridor of the Home, human remains lying on beds.

On 31 August 1944, when we left the Home, we were directed towards the Citadel. I asked some Germans in uniforms there – I did not recognize their ranks – what would happen with the sick who had remained in the Home. They told me that the injured and the sick from the Old Town would be taken in cars to a hospital. Thus they did not allow us to go to the Home but took us to Stawki Street. At some square the uniformed Germans segregated us. They separated from us the elderly and the sick, but promised to transport them in cars. The rest of us, including me, were taken to the Saint Adalbert church and later to the Pruszków transit camp. Since then nobody has heard from those people who were to be transported in cars. From the group of elderly ladies who left the Home with us five live to this day – all live now in the Wieluń Home. As for names, I remember Nowakowska, Segajewska, and an elderly man who is an in-house cobbler. How those people had left Warsaw, I do not know.

At this the report was closed and read out.