The Massacre in the Jesuit monastery on Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw was a Nazi German war crime perpetrated by members of the Waffen-SS on the second day of the Warsaw Uprising, during the Second World War. On 2 August 1944 about 40 Poles were murdered and their bodies burnt in the basement of the Jesuit monastery at 61 Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw. Among the victims were 16 priests and religious brothers of the Society of Jesus.
In December 1935 a Jesuit monastery (Dom Pisarzy, literally: "The House of Scribes") was established at 61 Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw's district of Mokotów. Soon after the Nazi occupation of Poland began, this part of Mokotów became part of the so-called German district in Warsaw. Many of the surrounding buildings were converted into a barracks for various German military or police units. [1]
On 1 August 1944, the Polish Home Army began an uprising against Nazis in Warsaw. Polish insurgents attacked a number of German-held buildings on Rakowiecka Street and in its surroundings, but they were repelled by the better equipped and more numerous Wehrmacht and SS troops. [2] The monastery and its inhabitants suffered no harm on that day. However, over a dozen Polish civilians, surprised by the outbreak of the uprising away from their homes, took refuge in the premises of the monastery. [3]
In the morning of 2 August the monastery came under fire of German light anti-aircraft guns from nearby Mokotów Field. [3] Nobody was injured but a few moments later about 20 Waffen-SS soldiers, led by non-commissioned officer, burst into building. [lower-alpha 1] They claimed that gunshots were fired from the monastery's windows. At that time, about 50 Poles were present in the building – including 25 priests and religious brothers, 12 non-clergy employees as well as over a dozen refugees. Among them was 10-year-old altar boy, Zbyszek Mikołajczyk. [4]
SS soldiers conducted a quick search but were unable to find anything confirming the allegations. Shortly afterwards, some of them left the monastery, taking with them Father Superior, Fr Edward Kosibowicz. They claimed that father superior need to make additional explanations to their commander. In fact, Fr Kosibowicz was taken to the nearby Mokotów Field and there he was shot in the back of the head. [4] In the meantime, those priests who spoke German tried to calm down the atmosphere, by starting conversation with the remaining soldiers, but without success. [5]
After a while, SS men gathered all Poles in the monastery's boiler room. Next, they were called one by one by the soldiers, robbed of all precious belongings (jewellery, watches etc.) and finally led to the small room in the basement, which was previously occupied by a coachman employed in the monastery. When all Poles were gathered in the coachman's room, SS soldiers hurled grenades into the crowd and opened fire with machine pistols. In next few hours, soldiers repeatedly came back to the place of massacre and systematically executed those Poles who still gave some signs of life. [6] According to the survivors, SS men were accompanied with a 10-year-old German boy who help them to find wounded victims.
His voice reverberated throughout the room from time to time: "Achtung! Der lebt noch! O hier, hier, er atmet noch!" The impression was horrible because next what was heard, was a sound of machine pistol fire series, accompanied with child's laugh and clapping. [7]
When soldiers temporarily left the basement, 14 survivors, mostly wounded and pretending to be dead among a pile of bodies, left the room. Four Jesuits and one unidentified woman hid in the monastery's kitchen (behind the stack of firewood), while the others found shelter in the monastery's boiler room when they also met a man who had hid there prior to the massacre. Shortly afterwards SS soldiers returned to the place of massacre, doused the bodies with gasoline and set them on fire. Probably a few severely wounded victims were burnt alive. [5] The SS men also completely plundered the monastery and set fire in many of its rooms.
The last victim of the massacre was Fr Franciszek Szymaniak (Jesuit, military chaplain). Unaware of what happened, he returned to Rakowiecka Street to take the consecrated host, and he was shot dead in the monastery's chapel. [8]
Around 40 Poles were murdered in the Jesuit monastery on Rakowiecka Street on 2 August 1944. Among them were eight priests and eight religious brothers of the Society of Jesus, [lower-alpha 2] at least eight women and a 10-year-old altar boy. [9] [10] Polish historians were able to identify 32 victims of the massacre. [9]
Retired colonel Zołoteńko told me, that after the execution in the monastery he asked one German soldier what happened with the priests, especially with the father superior. Soldier answered in German: "They are all dead. I will do the same with every other priest"
— testimony of fr. Aleksander Kisiel. [11]
On the night of 2–3 August, five survivors who were hiding in the kitchen, escaped from the monastery. Four Jesuits left Warsaw and found shelter outside the city. However, the woman who had initially accompanied them, returned to the Motoków, to find the children she had left in her flat before the uprising began (according to fr. Jan Rosiak she survived the war). [12]
After two days Poles who had hid in the boiler room established a contact with inhabitants of nearby tenement house. On 5 August Polish military nurses sent from Home Army's hospital secretly evacuated all of them. [13]
In the first days of the Warsaw Uprising Germans transformed nearby Stauferkaserne barracks at 4 Rakowiecka Street into provisional prison. Polish prisoners (usually civilians captured in the Mokotów) were used as forced labor. Among the prisoners was one Jesuit, fr. Bruno Pawelczyk. He lived in the monastery on Rakowiecka Street but the outbreak of the uprising surprised him in other part of city. Shortly afterwards he was detained by Germans and imprisonment in the Stauferkaserne, where he joined a kommando responsible for disposal of bodies covering Mokotów streets. When his team reached the ransacked monastery, fr. Pawelczyk was able to convince his fellow prisoners that it will be easier to wall up the room full with the bodies, than move the bodies and bury them somewhere else. It made possible to identify many massacre victims after the war. [14]
After the war, remnants of the victims were put in four coffins and buried under the floor of the same room in the monastery's basement, where massacre took place. Father superior Edward Kosibowicz, and fr. Leonard Hrynaszkiewicz – Jesuit priest who was killed during the uprising at Warsaw New Town – were also buried in the same place (but in separate coffins). The room was transformed into a chapel. [15]
In the 1950s victims of the massacre were commemorated with two commemorative plaques. One of them, designed by sculptor Karol Tchorek, is displayed on the wall of monastery (facing Andrzej Bobola Street). Second is a free-standing one located near the church's fence on Rakowiecka Street. [16]
Fr. Władysław Wiącek, one of the Jesuits murdered on 2 August 1944, has been accorded the title of Servant of God. He is currently one of the 122 Polish martyrs of the Second World War who are included in the beatification process initiated in 1994, whose first beatification session was held in Warsaw on 17 September 2003.
The Warsaw Uprising, shortly after the war also known as the August Uprising, was a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occurred in the summer of 1944, and it was led by the Polish resistance Home Army. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance. While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the Polish resistance and to destroy the city in retaliation. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during World War II.
Piotrków Trybunalski, often simplified to Piotrków, is a city in central Poland with 71,252 inhabitants (2021). It is the capital of Piotrków County and the second-largest city in the Łódź Voivodeship.
Around six million Polish citizens are estimated to have perished during World War II. Most were civilians killed by the actions of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Lithuanian Security Police, as well as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its offshoots.
Mokotów Prison is a prison in Warsaw's borough of Mokotów, Poland, located at 37 Rakowiecka Street. It was built by the Russians in the final years of the foreign Partitions of Poland. During the Nazi German occupation and later, under the communist rule, it was a place of detention, torture and execution of the Polish political opposition and underground fighters. The prison continues to function, holding prisoners awaiting trial or sentencing, or those being held for less than one year.
Wierzbno is a neighbourhood, and an area of the City Information System, in the city of Warsaw, Poland, located within the district of Mokotów. It is a residential area, with most of its eastern area consisting of villas and tenements, and its western area, and a portion of its eastern area, consisting of multifamily residential large panel system-buildings.
Crimes against the Polish nation committed by Nazi Germany and Axis collaborationist forces during the invasion of Poland, along with auxiliary battalions during the subsequent occupation of Poland in World War II, included the genocide of millions of Polish people, especially the systematic extermination of Jewish Poles. These mass killings were enacted by the Nazis with further plans that were justified by their racial theories, which regarded Poles and other Slavs, and especially Jews, as racially inferior Untermenschen.
Rainer Joseph Karl August Stahel was a German military officer. He is best known for his retreat from Vilna and the command of the garrison of Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Arrested by the NKVD in Romania, he spent the rest of his life in Soviet captivity.
The Ochota Massacre was a wave of German-orchestrated mass murder, looting, arson, torture and rape, which swept through the Warsaw district of Ochota from 4–25 August 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising. The principal perpetrators of these war crimes were the Nazi collaborationist S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A., the so-called "Russian National Liberation Army", commanded by Bronislav Kaminski.
Verbrennungskommando Warschau was a slave labour unit formed by the SS following the Wola massacre of around 40,000 to 50,000 Polish civilians by the Germans in the early days of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
Tchorek plaques are a common design of memorial plaque in Warsaw, Poland, used to commemorate places where battles or executions took place during the German occupation of the city during World War II. They are based on an original design by sculptor Karol Tchorek from 1949.
The Palmiry massacre was a series of mass executions carried out by Nazi German forces, during World War II, near the village of Palmiry in the Kampinos Forest northwest of Warsaw.
"W" Hour, also spelled as W-Hour(Polish: Godzina „W”'), was the codename for the date and time that began Operation Tempest in German-occupied Warsaw, and hence the Warsaw Uprising. The exact time was 5:00 PM on 1 August 1944.
Executions in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto (1943–1944) – mass executions of Polish Political prisoners and people of Jewish descent carried out secretly by German occupiers in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto.
The execution at Powązkowska Street - a mass murder of 22 Warsaw residents of Powązki by the Germans on 1 August 1944. This execution, which claimed the lives of men living in a house at 41 Powązkowska Street, was one of the first German crimes committed during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.
The massacre at 111 Marszałkowska Street - a crime against the civilian population of Warsaw committed by the Germans during the Warsaw Uprising. On August 3, 1944, next to the "Pod Światełkami" tavern, the crew of a German armoured car shot about 30-44 Polish civilians - residents of tenement houses on Marszałkowska Street No. 109, 111, 113.
Stauferkaserne prison - a provisional prison, and at the same time a gathering point for expelled Warsaw residents, established by the Germans during the first days of the Warsaw Uprising on the grounds of the SS-Stauferkaserne barracks at 4 Rakowiecka Street. In August and September 1944 over a thousand residents of the district passed through the SS barracks in Mokotów. They were detained there in harsh conditions and were subjected to extremely brutal treatment. During the Warsaw Uprising, the Stauferkaserne area was the scene of numerous executions, the victims of which were at least 100 people.
The Suppression of Mokotów was a wave of mass murders, looting, arson and rapes that swept through the Warsaw district of Mokotów during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Crimes against prisoners of war and civilians of the district were committed by the Germans until the capitulation of Mokotów on September 27, 1944, although they intensified in the first days of the uprising.
The Massacre in the Mokotów prison was a mass murder of residents of the Mokotów Prison in Warsaw by the Germans on the second day of the Warsaw Uprising. On August 2, 1944, soldiers of the Waffen-SS - SS-Pz. Gren. Ausb.-und Ers. Btl. 3 shot about 600 Poles on the premises of the prison at 37 Rakowiecka Street. It was one of the biggest crimes committed by the Germans in Mokotów during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. During the massacre, some prisoners actively resisted the Nazis, which allowed several hundred people to escape to the area controlled by the insurgents.
During the German invasion of Poland, which started World War II, Nazi Germany carried out a number of atrocities involving Polish prisoners of war (POWs). During that period, the Wehrmacht is estimated to have mass murdered at least 3,000 Polish POWs, with the largest atrocities being the Ciepielów massacre of 8 September 1939 and the Zambrów massacre of 13–14 September. Most of those atrocities are classified as war crimes of the Wehrmacht. Jewish soldiers with the Polish Army were also more likely than others to be victims of various atrocities.
The Suppression of Wawrzyszew was an pacification operation during the Second World War, enacted by German forces on the population of the village of Wawrzyszew. It took place on 3 August 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, and as part of it, 30 inhabitants of the village were killed, the buildings set on fire, and remaining population displaced.