FRANCISZKA KALINOWSKA

Warsaw, 18 December 1947. A member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Warsaw, 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:


Forename and surname Franciszka Kalinowska née Leśniewska
Names of parents Filip and Ludwika née Nasierowska
Date of birth 15 February 1898, Dzierzgowo, Przasnysz county
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
State affiliation and nationality Polish
Education illiterate
Place of residence Warsaw, Długa Street 5, flat no. 3
Occupation housewife

During the Warsaw Uprising I lived at Długa Street 5 (the back of the house is Podwale Street 25). A restaurant called “Pod Krzywą Latarnią” [Crooked Lantern] was situated there. During the uprising, I don’t remember the exact date but it was after the explosion of the tank, so after 13 August 1944, a hospital was set up in that restaurant. I submit the names of the physicians who ran it: doctor Szumigaj and doctor Dębowski (I don’t know their addresses). I remember that the following paramedics worked there: Właszczuk (I don’t know her address) and Zofia Lady (residing in Warsaw at Inżynierska Street 7, flat no. 27). Zuzanna Jelińska (currently residing in Warsaw at Długa Street 5) was in close contact with the hospital, as her bakery was providing bread for the entire Old Town.

At the end of August, over 50 injured people might have been in that hospital. On 2 September, German troops entered from the direction of Szeroki Dunaj Street and the defensive walls of the Old City, and they ordered civilians to leave the area immediately. As I was leaving the house, I saw that a German soldier did not allow a female paramedic (I don’t know her name) to lead out an injured brother, but instead pushed them back to the hospital. Our group was marched to Mariensztat Street. [On the way] I saw that an escorting German soldier tore an injured daughter, about ten years old, from her mother’s arms and shot her dead. When we were walking along Wąski Dunaj Street to Krakowskie Przedmieście Street I saw burning houses all along the way.

Our group was marched to St. Adalbert’s church in Wola.

When I came back to Warsaw in January 1945, I saw charred corpses in a state of decomposition in the “Pod Krzywą Latarnią” hospital.

I could not tell whether the corpses had bullet marks.

During an exhumation carried out in my presence in that area, the Polish Red Cross removed 69 bodies. In the yard of our house at Długa Street 5, I saw the charred bodies of nine people; I recognized five of them as inhabitants of our house: 1. Zieliński, 2. Mr and Mrs Korzonkowski, 3. Rembalska, 4. a maidservant named Ewcia (I don’t know her surname). These people had remained in the house during the evacuation ordered by the German soldiers. Both these corpses and the corpses from the restaurant “Pod Krzywą Latarnią” were exhumed by the Polish Red Cross and buried in the Krasiński gardens.

In January 1945, on the premises of the sanitary post on the ground floor of an annex of the house at Kilińskiego Street 1, I saw the bodies of 42 people, and five burnt corpses in the gate of that house.

During the same period I saw, in the area between the defensive walls on Wąski Dunaj Street, some 70 bodies of men (in a state of decomposition), and apart from that some scattered bodies of insurgents, judging by the clothes.

At this the report was closed and read out.