For a more general timeline of the Warsaw Uprising, we recommend

visiting this website

For more information on the Warsaw Uprising, we recommend

visiting this website

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Beginning of The Warsaw Uprising:

   The Warsaw Uprising started on August 1, 1944, about 5 years after the Nazis invaded Poland at the beginning of WWII on September 1, 1939. The town of Warsaw was sectioned off into different parts, one of them being the "Old Town".  The mission to reclaim this part of Warsaw was assigned to the Wigry battalion. Thus, this is where Janka's story takes place. 

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• Fun fact:

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   The Polish battalions from the Old Town wore brand new Panther jackets and helmets from a German army clothing depot they had previously overtaken. The soldiers and nurses wore the Polish red and white flag on the sleeve of their left arms during days of battle. This allowed Polish soldiers to distinguish themselves and identify impersonators of the Polish army. Also, Polish and German fighters were distinguishable as they fought on opposite sides of the streets.

 

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• Love Story:

 

   At the start of the German invasion, schools were closed and illegal schools opened instead. Classes were held in secret locations and classes were small. Janina, finishing her final year of secondary school at the time, completed her education at one of these secret schools. Her favourite teacher was her French teacher. It was at this school that Janina met Vladek who would become her boyfriend and, later, her fiancé. The young couple was madly in love. When recruitment started, both of them joined the Resistance or "home army", also known as AK or Armia Krajowa (Army for the Country in English). Janina joined as a nurse and Vladek as a soldier. Unfortunately, Vladek was critically injured by a machine gun in the first few days of battle. He had 11 bullet holes around his stomach. Medical supplies were scarce, and Janina was forced to hold his hand and watch as the life leaked out of her fiancé, until he lay limp in her arms in the early August of 1944. She would never let herself love a man like she did Vladek. Vladek’s family, like many others during the war, died out. A bomb fell onto his family home, killing his parents and sister. The only “photo” remaining of Vladek is a photo of Janina and two of her friends, where Vladek was taking the photo, and his shadow can be seen on the ground.

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Tank explosion (August 13):

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It seemed to be a peaceful day in the Old Town. People were walking in the streets, sitting in their homes and simply enjoying life as much as they could during wartime. This day would turn out to be when one of the most tragic polish wartime events, occurring right at their doorstep.

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Young soldiers, mostly teenagers, were defending and keeping watch on a barricade in one of the streets in the Old Town when a tank approached. The tank was not a full-sized tank but rather a smaller version of a German Panther tank called Bogwart B IV. This particular tank was one of the first newly invented remotely guided weaponized vehicles used in the war. Essentially, the tank was controlled by a remote so no German soldiers would risk their lives while heading to the front lines. The tank was supposed to approach and go on top of the barricade and open a drawer containing an explosive which it would then release before returning to its base. However, due to the drawer malfunctioning, the bomb failed to explode and the tank remained on the Polish barricade. Because the remote-controlled tank was a new invention, few people understood the underlying danger of the bomb being carried within.

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The Polish soldiers rejoiced and joked that they now owned a tank. One of the young men was able to get the tank running and the group drove the tank through the narrow streets up to the town’s centre. They considered the vehicle a trophy and a victory over the enemy. Small children joined the teens, either riding on the roof of the tank or running behind it. It seemed to be a sort of joyful parade; children laughing and having fun with their prize on display for everyone to see. They had unknowingly overlooked the threat of a bomb. 

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The narrow road the tank was located in at the time would cause the effects of the explosion to triple. This was due to the explosion being set to a confined space, preventing the heat from spreading. Janina would witness the explosion from a second-floor balcony on a building located just above where the tank was. Here is how she remembers the explosion and how she survived. At least three buildings were destroyed. Everyone in the impacted area died except for two people, one of whom was Janina. All the children and teens were included among the dead. Blood rained down, intestines flew in the air and brains splattered and stuck to walls. The surrounding area was filled knee-deep with human remains: pieces of hands, legs, guts, blood; humans reduced to nothing but pieces. The air smelled of burnt meat and the streets were a flood of red. The heat of the explosion had been so strong that the human flesh from the corpses was cooked with meat falling off the bone. 

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When the tank exploded, the building Janina was in collapsed. What saved her was a headless, armless and legless body. A human torso had flown onto her milliseconds before the balcony on the floor above her came crumbling down. The balcony she was standing on did not collapse however. Janina managed to pull herself up and out of the rubble. She was covered in blood which she thought was hers. Upon second look, she realized it was from the corpse that had saved her. Janina had not seen the source of the explosion and assumed the detonation was from Big Bertha, a cannon used to launch large artillery pieces. If Janina’s theory was correct, the enemy would continue to shoot. So, Janina quickly escaped what was left of the building and ran out onto the street at the same time as a male soldier around her age. They were the only two survivors in close proximity to the tank. Neither of them knew what had happened, nor had they realized their clothes had been blown off in their panicked states. They were both covered head to toe in other people’s blood. Their clothes had been blown off from the force of the explosion. The survivors quickly ran out of the area to find help, as those in the surrounding areas approached to provide aid to potential survivors. They were unprepared to see the bloodbath they would walk into.

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Janina had cuts from debris on her arms and legs which were later bandaged. She had a large cut across her face which turned the area around her eye swollen and bruised. She was lucky she did not lose her eye. Janina still has the scar above her eye to this day. Basia who was out of the impact zone at the time, remembers hearing mothers wailing and crying out for their dead children. 350 innocent lives were taken on this day. A large hole was dug and the human remains were pushed inside in a mass grave burial. Today, a plaque located in a memorial park in the heart of Warsaw marks the mass grave.

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To learn more about the explosion on August 13, we recommend visiting this blog

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• Fun Fact:

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Machine guns were one of the most common sources of serious wounds amongst soldiers in The Uprising. Machine guns are difficult to navigate and control while being fired as they are very powerful. Hence, soldiers would fire the guns by slowly moving them back and forth horizontally, creating a spray of bullets similar to water from a sprinkler. When a soldier was hit by these bullets, they would often end up with a dozen bullet holes usually to the lower half of their bodies.

Quick Stories:

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• Delivering Messages

 

Communication was a necessity for armies during the war, especially when certain battalions were under heavy fire. The Wigry battalion in the Old Town had little support from the outside, so when the communications radio stopped working, the messages had to be delivered in person. This proved to be a difficult task as the messenger would often have to army crawl on dirt under the protection of the low barricades made of ripped-off pavement or bricks from destroyed buildings.

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Janina and Basia pulled the short straw in having to deliver a letter to another army section a few blocks away. Basia went first and Janina followed. As Janina crawled forward, she noticed that Basia’s bum was up in the air appearing above the top of the barricade. The Nazis spotted the movement from across the road and opened fire on the barricade. The girls learned the importance of staying low to avoid bum-py roads ahead and, in case you were wondering, they successfully delivered the letter across.

 

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• Stuck in battle

  

Janina was delivering a large bag of sanitary supplies alone when she got stuck while trying to pass through a hole in the ruins of a building. Although this odd situation initially seems funny, at this particular time it was anything but. With bullets constantly flying around the town, whether it was a few streets away or around the corner, it was hard to predict when the next bullet would fly next to you. Janina remembers feeling that she would die there; she and the bag stuck in the gap of cement. Miraculously, after what felt like hours but was probably minutes, she managed to wiggle her way out and continue her assignment. 

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Evacuation

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As the Nazis advanced further into the Old Town in Warsaw, the order came in for the remaining defending soldiers to evacuate. The escape route for the remaining soldiers was through the sewers due to the constant gunfire in the streets and roadblocks. Most of the townspeople stayed during the German advancement as civilians were expected to be protected under the laws of war. The soldiers were gathered into small groups behind the wall of a building before being sent one-by-one to the drain leading to their escape. The escapees needed to sprint across a short open distance to reach the sewer entrance in the middle of the street. Each person was met by another soldier at the drain opening. A few paces up the street, a handful of soldiers positioned themselves at machine guns to defend the street until everyone was evacuated. Or at least, those who could walk. The orders sent out stated that only those who could walk would be allowed to escape through the sewers while those with serious injuries would remain in the town as the injured people might pose a risk by slowing the others down. After the evacuation was finished, the defenders would leave and anyone who chose to stay in the Old Town would be on their own. Remaining in the town was practically a death sentence with German and Ukrainian S.S. soldiers fast approaching, ready to claim their new territory.

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Janina and Basia were attempting to escort a 16-year-old soldier towards the evacuation group but it was clear he was too heavily wounded and needed to be left behind. Instead, they managed to support another less gravely wounded soldier towards the end of the lineup for the run-across but the man bravely told them to leave without him as he would only slow them down. It was now the girls' turns. Looking across, all that was left was a sprint and drop to freedom. But, looking back upon the wounded soldiers and the lack of remaining nurses, they made a final decision to stay and risk dying, rather than leave knowing they could have stayed to help. They watched as the last injury-free soldier sprinted across the street and sealed off the passageway to freedom for good. 

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The girls turned and brought the soldier they had almost saved to an archives building, transformed into a makeshift hospital, which they hoped would be considered an official Red Cross hospital. Janina and Basia took off their panther outfits and removed all evidence of being part of the Resistance, exchanging them for white nurse scrubs before entering the archives building. The makeshift hospital was filled to the brim with injured Polish soldiers. Other than the wounded was one doctor, a few Red Cross nurses, Wisia who was another nurse and friends with Janina and Basia, and a priest. As the girls walked through the hospital, they found three of their friends amongst the patients: Robert (16 years old) and two others (in their 20s). The friends were relieved to see Janka and Basia, hoping they would stay and protect them. The young men felt safe with the girls around as though they were a good-luck charm. 

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The priest hurriedly approached Janina and Basia indicating that there was a building burning nearby where injured members of the Gustav battalion needed to be saved and brought to the archives building. The three friends had a feeling that they might not see the girls again with the enemy no longer being denied entry into the Old Town. They prepared to say their final goodbyes. The oldest of the three asked Janina for a kiss which she gave to him. This type of request was common to have one final kiss in their lives. The second oldest boy simply told the girls good luck, thanked them, and wished them a safe and quick return. As Janina turned to leave, Robert stopped her. To this day, Janina remembers what he said word-by-word: “Please stay with me. Nothing bad will happen to me as long as you’re here”. Although it pained her to leave, she had a job to fulfill. Janina told Robert she would come back as soon as she could and headed off. 

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When they reached the burning building, they headed for the basement where the priest had told them to look. As they peered through the smoke, they only saw three men in need of saving. The girls pulled the first man out of the basement and brought him to the first stair landing so they could return to retrieve the others. Just as they were about to head back down, German soldiers entered the stairwell and told the girls to leave or else they would be shot and killed. Janina, gathering courage, went up to the officer and explained that they would leave after helping the three men, but the German replied saying that the so-called Polish soldiers were "banditen" or bandits. The Nazis often referred to enemy soldiers as bandits. This is because enemy soldiers held certain rights under The Geneva Conventions with the privilege of being treated as POWs rather than regular prisoners. Whereas, a bandit was considered a criminal and could be left to die. Basia began to cry, feeling helpless, scared, and miserable. The officer asked why she was crying and Janka told him the smoke from the fire were making Basia's eyes tear up. They did not want to appear weak in front of the officer. The German must have felt a bit of sympathy and respect for the girls as he patted them both on the back saying: “You are brave girls. Go get your men”. The officer directed the German soldiers flanking him on either side, to lead the girls into the dark smoky basement with torches. They helped the girls pull out the injured men to the building’s entrance facing the main street. 

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~~~Only one man among the three soldiers pulled out to the entryway of the burning building would survive the war. Two of them died, left on the doorstep of the building as the flames approached. The third was likely carried away from the entryway by a civilian. The surviving soldier met with Janina and Basia after the fall of the Berlin wall, years after the war had ended to thank them for helping him. The girls were deemed honorary members of the Gustav battalion for their efforts to save the three Gustav battalion soldiers from the burning building.~~~

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As they exited the building, the sound of gunshots rang out from the archives building. The girls rushed towards the makeshift hospital. They saw the priest, doctor, and remaining nurses being escorted out with solemn and dreadful faces, towards the line of civilians who had just been ordered to leave the town by the Nazis.

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Janina and Basia rushed back to the archives building, fearing the worst had come.

The girls sprinted up to the archway leading to the hospital courtyard when they were stopped and denied entry by a German soldier. They demanded to be let inside but the guard said there was nothing he could do to help them. Janina looked over his shoulder and spotted another German in the middle of the courtyard who appeared to be the commanding officer. She took a chance and asked to speak with the officer, which the archway guard allowed. 

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Janina quickly walked over to him and, hoping for some pity, said her brother was still in the building and she needed to get to him. All the while, gunshots could be heard from inside. At first, the commander did not acknowledge her. She tried again, and the commander turned to her in a rage, yelling that they were all meant to die and he would shoot her if she didn’t leave. The girls ran back to the archway guard begging for help. The guard’s eyes seemingly softened at their desperate state. Janina offered him her silver bracelet in exchange for the life of her “brother” to seal the deal. The guard could not promise anything but told the girls to follow him around the corner to a side entrance. He told them to wait at the bottom of the stairwell while he went upstairs to check for survivors. He returned a few moments later with a look of shame and defeat, unable to meet their eyes. Looking down at his feet he told them it was too late and gave Janina her bracelet back. As they followed him back around in a daze, they noticed the priest in the courtyard saying his prayers and feverishly giving absolution to the dead of the archive building. The girls grimly headed over to the priest, tears in their eyes, as they linked arms with him and walked away from the massacre behind them. The medical staff from the hospital were either killed or executed. Only the priest, Wisia, Ikar, walked out by Wisia, Janina, and Basia survived the hospital slaughtering and, later on, the war.

~~~At the end of the war, Janina and Basia returned to the archive building to identify the dead for burying. They found out when they arrived that the building had been burnt down along with the corpses. The hospital and its patients had been reduced to rubble and ashes. They managed to find a silver watch and a spoon amongst the remains. Soldiers often stored spoons in their boots for eating as it was hard to come by the utensil when in battle. Janina recognized this particular spoon as the spoon she had given to one of her friends. They identified the watch as a piece of jewellery belonging to another of the three friends. From this evidence, they concluded that the three men had died next to one another.~~~ 

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One of Janina’s biggest regrets in life was leaving her friends alone in the archive building to go save the members of the Gustav battalion from the burning building. However, from an outside perspective to her story, I believe it was destiny that caused her to leave. By staying at the archive building and assuming she had nowhere to escape when the Germans entered, she likely would choose to die alongside her friends. None of them would have survived if this were the case. Her friends died knowing that Janina and Basia would live to see another day and go off to save other brave men like them. The girls had a purpose to live: saving lives and serving their country. Although they were unable to save everyone they wished they could, those whom they helped were given the chance to live, return home, and start their own families and legacies.

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The Journey Out

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A distressed mother approached Basia, wailing and sobbing.  The parent forced a small  girl with an arm amputated from the elbow down into the arms of Basia. As the nurse spoke to the mother and promised to take her daughter to safety, Janina noticed Wisia struggling to support Ikar. Ikar was an injured soldier from the hospital whom Wisia desperately wanted to bring to safety and pulled out before the massacre as she had feelings for the man....

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The Journey Out is a text directly translated into English from Janina's recollection written in the Encyclopedia of the Nurses of the Warsaw Uprising. Click here for the rest of the story.

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Labour camp

 

Towards the end of the war, Janina and Basia were sent to a worker’s camp near the town of Breslau or Wrocław in Polish. Although the conditions in the worker’s camp were better than in a concentration camp, they were less good than in a POW camp because of the forced labour and the rights of soldiers and nurses being left unacknowledged. The prisoners slept in clusters of buildings resembling the layout of those in Auschwitz. There was dirt and lice in the beds. 

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Basia and Janina were assigned to the same room. Janina’s ability to speak fluent German, Polish, and French gave the girls an advantage in surviving. Janina and Bascia both spoke Polish, their native language, and French which they had learned in school. Janina’s father, Tadeusz, an army officer who had fought in WWI and WWII, had taught his daughter to speak German as it was “important to know the language of the enemy at the time”. Tadeusz seemingly had a hunch that WWI would not be the last war fought against the Germans. Janina spoke to the camp guards in German, telling them Basia could speak the language as well, although Basia could not. Because of this, they were both assigned less strenuous working tasks such as filing paperwork rather than digging holes or breaking rocks. 

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Most of the prisoners were either French soldiers and citizens, or Italian soldiers. The common language spoken amongst the prisoners was French. Among the Italian soldiers was a man named Sergio B. Sergio fancied Janina and would often give her extra large servings of soup as a way of flirting with her. The girls often joked with him despite the language barrier and tried to teach him to speak Polish. Sergio would unabashedly show his affection for Janina, often asking how to say phrases such as “I love you” in their language. The girls enjoyed his foreign accent and liked to trick him into saying funny lines like “You have a nice butt” instead. Sergio loved Janina but it was hard for her to fully reciprocate the feelings after her previous traumatising heartbreak.

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Janina and Basia, along with the other prisoners, escaped the worker’s camp during a mass bombing of camps and towns across Poland. Because the women were separated from men in the camp and they had to make a quick escape, they never saw Sergio again.

~~~Years later, after the end of the war, Janina received a letter from Sergio who had found her mailing information from the Red Cross database. He had sent her a photo of himself along with a love letter from Italy. Janina was unable to reply since contact from Poland to Eastern Europe was blocked off during the Russian invasion shortly after the German downfall. The couple would never reconnect afterwards.~~~

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The girls ran to the railroad where they hoped to find a train. To their luck, all the trains were rushing out of the area and away from the bombings. The girls hopped on the nearest train rolling by and away from the camp behind them. The trains continued without stopping in order to reach safety away from the bombardements and keep the locomotives safe for future army transportation. The train brought them to the mountains. The girls descended the locomotive and went in search of Janina’s family member who was a priest and lived nearby. The priest welcomed them with open arms, providing them with clean clothes and letting them hide in his house. These events happened near the downfall of the Germans in Poland and around the time when the Russians entered the country. Hence, the girls only stayed in the priest’s house for a short period of time before he took them to an older woman’s house in the winter, deeper in the mountains, where they would hopefully be safer. The Russian S.S. started invading the mountainside where they committed war crimes and atrocities such as raping and killing villagers and burning down entire villages. The older lady locked the girls in her large basement and hid the key, determined to protect the girls in case the Russians came to inspect her home. The Russians came but did not do a thorough search of the lady’s house, unsuspecting of the elderly woman. It is possible that she had offered them food in a sign of good will, further erasing any suspicion.

 

~~~German, Austrian, and Russian axis soldiers were afraid of going deep and up into the Polish mountains called the Tatra. Their fear originated from the survivalist mountain men living there called Gorale (go-ra-leh). Gorale were notorious for carrying shepherd’s axes or ciupaga (ch-ooh-pah-gah) in Polish. The mountain men were often possessive of their territory and those that entered, especially if they were enemy, would likely not return alive. This fact did not stop the Axis soldiers from destroying easily accessible towns at the base of the mountains.~~~

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After the Soviet Troops left for Berlin, Janina and Basia thanked the old lady and left, heading North into the Tatra mountains towards Warsaw. They mostly walked, heading home over the course of several months on foot, and occasionally hitch-hiking. Their only possessions were the clothes given to them by the priest, a sled to carry them on, and one pair of wool underwear. Although it sounds silly, the panties were a precious item to them as it helped keep them warm from the low temperatures and prevented  illness. The girls took turns sharing the clothing item on cold days and kept it on the sled on warmer ones. One day, they realised they had lost their prized possession. They feverishly started looking for the underwear when some Austrian deserters escaping through the mountains stumbled upon them. The young men asked the girls what they were doing walking in the mountains so late at night. Basia and Janina simply replied they were looking, without providing more insight. The guys stated they would help as they had torches to light the way, and began looking alongside the girls. After a while of aimless walking without any luck, they Austrians asked the girls once again what they were looking for. They figured they might as well tell them the truth and told them they lost their only pair of wool panties. According to Janka, the men laughed so hard that there were tears in their eyes and they could barely move from doubling over. As the laughter finally died down and the hope of finding the underwear faded, the guys offered to accompany the girls on their journey after taking a liking to them. The girls refused, preferring to go alone, and continued on. Upon their return to Warsaw, they saw nothing but ruins and destruction. They headed to their childhood homes, afraid of what they would find or rather, would not. 

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Return home

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After the girls escaped from the work camp, they headed back to Warsaw to return home. The journey back was frightening but the fear of not knowing what they would come back to was even worse. They eventually reached Warsaw, a beautiful European town now turned into ruins and ashes. As they approached Janina’s neighbourhood, Janina closed her eyes and refused to open them. Janka warily asked Basia whether or not her house was still standing. Basia happily delivered the good news, that yes, it was indeed still standing in one piece. Janina quickly rushed to her door to see her family. Her mother, Natalia, was so overcome by joy and sadness and overwhelmed that her daughter was still alive that she fainted upon seeing Janina. Later on, Janina accompanied Basia to her house where Basia’s mom did not initially recognise her, her daughter having left a bubbly bright girl, and returning exhausted and matured beyond her years. 

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Janina and Basia went off to war as determined hopeful teenagers. They returned home as strong, tenacious, and resolute women who had experienced traumatizing events no person should ever have to witness. Janina and Basia aged both physically and mentally beyond their years over the course of the war.

 

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Conclusion

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During the war, it was difficult to find the time and means to hold a proper funeral and burial. Hence, courtyards and open spaces were often turned into cemeteries with quickly dug graves or mass burials. The graves were not dug very deep and everytime a bomb hit, the corpses would resurface and the graves would need to be redug. The identification process of the ashes of her friends, along with the minimal and rushed courtyard cemeteries and lingering smell of death in the air are what caused Janina to want to leave Warsaw when the war was over. 

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After the war, the Soviet occupation continued for decades to come. Revealing that you were a member of the Polish army or Resistance would lead to life in jail or even death until the 1980s as they considered the Polish soldiers ``bandits” rather than heroes. Thus, Janina and Basia, along with many others, did not receive any credit or thanks for their contribution to the fight for freedom. Janina was interrogated on multiple occasions about her involvement in the Warsaw Uprising and her relationship with her father who served as a highly ranked army officer. The risk of being found out further contributed to her fleeing Warsaw. Janina was forced to frequently switch identities and addresses. Among her fake names was the name Joanna, which she later named her daughter. Janina remained in Poland but switched towns several times before settling in Szczecin (sh-teh-ch-in) and later Poznan. The Old Town and the rest of Warsaw had to almost be fully reconstructed after the many bombings and battles in the streets. Today, the town is lively and colourful and proudly displays and honours their Polish wartime heroes and citizens. Basia still resides in Warsaw.

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A pub was built by the Soviets above the mass grave from the self-driving tank explosion. The pub, perceived as a huge sign of disrespect by the Polish, was removed in the 1980s after the Russian occupation ended. The pub was replaced by a remembrance cross and memorial park which are still there today in Warsaw. Flowers are placed at the mass grave on a regular basis. 

 

Janina has a son and daughter and three grandchildren. She is 98 years old as of December 11, 2020. She enjoys looking out at her garden and likes photos of flowers, hence the reason why most of the pages on this website have flowery backgrounds.  Basia will be 98 in January. She has two sons, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. They are still best friends and frequently call each other.

 

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Thanks

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I would like to thank my grandma or babcia (bab-chah) Janina and our dear friend Basia from the bottom of my heart for sharing the stories of the unimaginable horrors they faced and their unmatchable bravery. A huge thanks to the many soldiers, nurses, engineers, and war-time workers for bringing peace to the world. Thank you to my mom for sharing these stories with me and thanks to others who continue to share war stories and let legacies and memories live on.