Massacre at the Jesuit monastery on Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw

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The crime scene. The photo from 1945.

The massacre in the Jesuit monastery on Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw was a mass murder of several Poles carried out by the German occupiers on the second day of the Warsaw Uprising , which took place in the Jesuit monastery in the Warsaw district of Mokotów . On August 2, 1944, the soldiers of the Schutzstaffel murdered almost forty people - including eight priests and eight brothers of the Society of Jesus and almost twenty lay people (including at least eight women and a ten-year-old boy) - in the Jesuit House of Writers at 61 Rakowiecka Street.

The monastery during the lesson "W"

At the time of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, the Jesuit monastery was in an exceptionally unfavorable location because Rakowiecka Street was one of the most important centers of German resistance in Mokoktów. In the immediate vicinity of the monastery there were strong units of the occupiers, u. a. in the mighty SS-Stauferkaserne at 4 Rakowiecka Street, the anti-aircraft barracks at the beginning of Puławska Street, the building of the Warsaw University of Natural Sciences ( Szkoła Główna Gospodarstwa Wiejskiego w Warszawie , SGGW for short ), in the Pole Mokotowskie (the anti-aircraft batteries ) the Wawelberg School and Mokotów Fort.

On August 1, 1944, the soldiers of the Polish Home Army (5th district “Mokotów”) attacked the German positions along Rakowiecka Street. That day, the monastery was not drawn into fighting. When the shooting took place in the streets, several civilians (including ten-year-old acolyte , Zbyszek Mikołajczyk) were hiding in the writers' house and were unable to return home due to the fighting. On the evening of August 1st, there were about 50 people in the monastery: 25 monks, 12 lay people and a dozen random people who looked for refuge there.

Invasion of the Germans

The body of priest Kosibowicz, exhumed in 1945

The silence did not last long. On the morning of August 2, the monastery was shelled by German anti-aircraft guns from the nearby Pole Mokotowskie. The shelling did not bring any casualties, but soon a 20-strong SS unit stormed into the writer's house - most likely sent from the nearby Staufer barracks. SS men accused the Poles of having shot at German soldiers from the building. After a cursory search, which did not lead to any evidence of these allegations, the Germans took the superior of the monastery, Father Superior Edward Kosibowicz, out of the building - ostensibly for additional explanations at headquarters. In fact, Father Edward Kosibowicz was shot in the back of the head in Pole Mokotowskie.

At the same time, the Germans gathered the remaining residents in the central heating cellar, which was located in the basement of the monastery. The attempts of the monks, who mastered the German language, to talk to SS men and to relieve the tension failed.

The massacre

After a while, the Germans began to take the residents out of the boiler room one by one. After being robbed of valuable personal belongings, they were all taken to a small room that had previously been occupied by the monastery coachman. When all Poles had gathered in the basement, the Germans opened fire with machine guns and pelted people with grenades. Fatal shots were fired for several hours. Witnesses testified that SS men were accompanied by a 10-year-old boy from a German family who pointed out the perpetrators to these Poles who were still showing signs of life.

“A small German boy comes into the room who has joined SS men and follows them every step of the way. Now and then you can hear his child's voice. ,Caution! He's still alive! Oh here, here, he's still breathing! ' The SS men follow the movement of his hand and then a series of shots can be heard, accompanied by children's laughter and clapping of their hands. "

After the perpetrators left, fourteen people escaped from the pile of bodies - most of them were injured. Nine survivors hid behind a pile of coal in the boiler room. The others found refuge in the monastery kitchen behind the firewood that was kept for the winter. Shortly after their escape, the Germans returned to pour gasoline on the dead and set the corpses on fire. Not all were dead, however, some people were burned alive (badly injured Poles).

The last victim of the massacre was an insurgent chaplain , Father Franciszek Szymaniak SJ. Unsuspecting, he came to the writer's house to fetch consecrated hosts . He was shot in the monastery chapel .

On August 2, 1944, the Germans murdered almost 40 people in the area of ​​the House of Writers on Rakowiecka Street 61 - including 8 priests and 8 brothers of the Society of Jesus (not counting Priest Kosibowicz) and over 20 non-religious persons (including at least 8 Women and a 10 year old boy). It is impossible to determine the exact number of victims because only 32 names of the victims of the massacre are known.

“The retired Colonel Zołoteńko told me (…) that after the execution in the monastery he asked one of the Germans what happened to the priests and especially to the superior of the house and received such an answer in German: All killed, every priest I will shoot in such a way. ” - the testimony of the priest Aleksander Kisiel.

Escape of the survivors

After the crime, the Germans ransacked the monastery and set fires at several points on the building. However, they did not discover the Poles who survived the massacre. On the night of August 2-3, five people hiding in the kitchen decided to flee the building. Four monks managed to get to a safe place after separation and numerous difficulties. The fate of the fifth person, an unidentified woman, who returned to the Mokotów district to look for children left at home, is unknown. Father Jan Rosiak, who was in the group of refugees, claimed that the woman survived the uprising.

The Poles hidden in the boiler room were able to inform the residents of the neighboring houses about their situation after two days. On August 5, nurses from the insurgent hospital evacuated the survivors from the monastery and took them to an area occupied by the insurgents.

memory

The memorial plaque on the wall of the former House of Writers (now the Collegium Babolanum )

After a while the Jesuit Father Bruno Pawelczyk reached the scene of the crime. At the time of the outbreak of the uprising he was outside the monastery, but after a while he was captured by the Germans and taken to the prison in the Staufer barracks. After Pawelczyk had learned of the fate of his confreres, he joined a medical command consisting of the prisoners, which dealt with the burying of the murdered and deceased. When the detachment arrived at 61 Rakowiecka Street, Pawelczyk convinced the other plumbers, instead of moving and burying the bodies, to wall them up in the room where the execution took place. This later made it easier to find and exhumate the bodies.

After the war, the remains of the victims of the massacre were placed in four coffins. The exhumed corpses of Father Kosibowicz and Father Leonard Hrynaszkiewicz (Jesuit, he died in Warsaw's Nowe Miasto district) were placed in their own coffins. All six coffins were buried under the floor of the room where the massacre took place, and the room was remodeled into a chapel. They regularly visited pilgrims who went to the Sanctuary of St. Andrzej Bobola.

Two plaques commemorate this tragedy: the free-standing plaque next to the fence of the sanctuary on the Rakowiecka Street side and the plaque designed by Karol Tchorek on the wall of the Collegium Bobolanum (from the Bobola Street side).

On September 17, 2003, the Bishop of Pelplin, Jan Bernard Szlaga, opened the process of beatification of a group of 122 Polish Nazi victims. Among them was Father Władysław Wiącek, one of the Jesuits who were murdered on August 2, 1944 in the Writers' House on Rakowiecka Street.

Also in 2003 the book was published with the title “ Masakra w klasztorze” (Rhetos Publishing House, Warsaw 2003), [in German: “ Massaker im Kloster” ], edited by Father Felicjan Paluszkiewicz SJ, with a detailed description of the tragic events in the house the writer in the summer of 1944 - including memories and testimony of the survivors of the massacre. On the basis of this book, a forty-minute documentary by Krzysztof Żurowski was made under the same title the next year. The film premiered on August 2, 2004 - the 60th anniversary of the crime.

Remarks

  1. ↑ From the beginning the Germans opened fire against every Pole they saw.
  2. ↑ A man who escaped the Germans before the massacre began and hid in the boiler room is affiliated with them.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Felicjan Paluszkiewicz: Masakra w Klasztorze . wydawnictwo Rhetos, Warszawa 2003, ISBN 83-917849-1-6 , p. 7.
  2. ↑ a b Szymon Datner, Kazimierz Leszczyński (red.): Zbrodnie okupanta w czasie powstania warszawskiego w 1944 roku (w dokumentach) . wydawnictwo MON, Warszawa 1962, p. 124.
  3. ↑ Felicjan Paluszkiewicz: Masakra w Klasztorze . wydawnictwo Rhetos, Warszawa 2003, ISBN 83-917849-1-6 , p. 10.
  4. ↑ a b Szymon Datner, Kazimierz Leszczyński (red.): Zbrodnie okupanta w czasie powstania warszawskiego w 1944 roku (w dokumentach). wydawnictwo MON, Warszawa 1962, p. 127.
  5. ↑ a b Felicjan Paluszkiewicz: Masakra w Klasztorze . wydawnictwo Rhetos, Warszawa 2003, ISBN 83-917849-1-6 , pp. 12-13.
  6. ↑ Szymon Datner, Kazimierz Leszczyński (red.): Zbrodnie okupanta w czasie powstania warszawskiego w 1944 roku (w dokumentach) . wydawnictwo MON, Warszawa 1962, pp. 125-126.
  7. ^ Norman Davies: Powstanie '44 . wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2006, ISBN 83-240-1386-5 , pp. 353-354.
  8. ↑ Felicjan Paluszkiewicz: Masakra w Klasztorze . wydawnictwo Rhetos, Warszawa 2003, ISBN 83-917849-1-6 , p. 14.
  9. ^ A b Maja Motyl, Stanisław Rutkowski: Powstanie Warszawskie - rejestr miejsc i faktów zbrodni. GKBZpNP-IPN, Warszawa 1994, p. 141.
  10. ↑ Felicjan Paluszkiewicz: Masakra w Klasztorze . wydawnictwo Rhetos, Warszawa 2003, ISBN 83-917849-1-6 , p. 8.
  11. ↑ Felicjan Paluszkiewicz: Masakra w Klasztorze . wydawnictwo Rhetos, Warszawa 2003, ISBN 83-917849-1-6 , p. 105.
  12. ↑ Felicjan Paluszkiewicz: Masakra w Klasztorze . wydawnictwo Rhetos, Warszawa 2003, ISBN 83-917849-1-6 , pp. 15-16.
  13. ↑ Felicjan Paluszkiewicz: Masakra w Klasztorze . wydawnictwo Rhetos, Warszawa 2003, ISBN 83-917849-1-6 , pp. 16-17.
  14. ↑ Felicjan Paluszkiewicz: Masakra w Klasztorze . wydawnictwo Rhetos, Warszawa 2003, ISBN 83-917849-1-6 , p. 17.
  15. ↑ Proces beatyfikacyjny ( Memento of 29 October 2012 at the Internet Archive ). meczennicy.pelplin.pl.