AUGUST 5
1944
Wola Massacre of Polish Citizens: Through the initial phase of the Warsaw Uprising, between 40,000 and 50,000 Polish citizens, including members of the Polish resistance movement, Armia Krajowa (Home Army) were massacred by Nazi Germans and collaborators, in the Wola district of Warsaw. Units of Dirlewanger's Gang were joined by local police units in the mass shooting of Polish civilians. In a matter of two days, they rounded up and shot over 40,000 Polish people. The Dirlewanger Gang burned three hospitals with patients still inside, while the nurses were "whipped, gang-raped and finally hanged naked, together with the doctors" to the accompaniment of the a popular German song "In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus". This was followed by a drunken melee as they raped and murdered their way through the Old Town of Warsaw, slaughtering citizens at random. They murdered several thousand of the wounded in field hospitals, and set the buildings on fire with flamethrowers. According to reports, "the Dirlewanger brigade burned prisoners alive with gasoline, impaled babies on bayonets and stuck them out of windows and hanged women upside down from balconies." The Germans expected to quash the Uprising easily, but Polish resistance was unrelenting and fierce. The fighting in Wola continued until August 5 to 12, 1944 after which the Germans regained control of the district.
Polish insurgents liberated Jews from a Nazi forced-labor camp: During the first days of the Warsaw Uprising, the "Zośka" scouting battalion of the Armia Krajowa's Radosław Group led by Ryszard Białous and Eugeniusz Stasiecki stormed into the Gęsiówka sub-camp in one of two German panther tanks where they captured and engaged the Germans in a fierce battle that ensued for about an hour and a half. The Poles succeeded in killing most of the SD guards, and captured others. Many of the Germans fled. The Polish insurgents set free 360 Jewish men and women, before they were forced to withdraw. Many of the freed Jews joined the ranks of the Polish resistance to fight against the Germans. (Gęsiówka camp was then used by the Soviet NKVD to imprison Polish resistance fighters, who subsisted in captivity under appalling living conditions. Later the camp was taken over by the Polish communist secret police using the camp as a prison and labor camp, for criminal and political prisoners until 1956.)
Radium Institute: Soon after the Warsaw Uprising began, the notorious SS RONA troops broke into the Radium Institute, a hospital and research centre, at 15 Wawelska Street, that was founded by Marie Curie. After they looted the hospital, robbed the staff and patients, they set fire to the library, destroyed the food, pharmacy and much of the hospital equipment. They were about to execute the staff and patients but decided to keep the patients and eight staff members, while the remainder were sent to Zieleniak camp. That evening, the nurses were gang-raped. The next day the building was set on fire and some of the patients were burned alive. About 60 people escaped death by hiding in the building's cellar and chimneys. By August 19, RONA troops captured the remaining survivors in the building, and murdered 50 critically-ill patients on the spot. The remainder were sent to the Zieleniak camp, where they were, according to eye-witness reports, executed by a shot to the back of the head. In total, about 170 people (patients and staff) were murdered
SECRET AND PERSONAL FROM PREMIER J. V. STALIN TO THE PRIME MINISTER, Mr W. CHURCHILL (no.313) "I am in receipt of your message about Warsaw. I think that the information given to you by the Poles is greatly exaggerated and unreliable. I am impelled to this conclusion by the mere fact that the Polish émigrés claim that they have all but captured Vilna with Home Army units, and have even announced this on the radio. But, of course, that has nothing at all to do with the facts. The Home Army consists of a few detachments misnamed divisions. They have neither guns, aircraft nor tanks. I cannot imagine detachments like those taking Warsaw, which the Germans are defending with four armoured divisions, including the Hermann Goering Division." (August 5, 1944)
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