August 20th is the day when Warsaw insurgents captured the PAST building at 39 Zielna Street. On the occasion of the 81st anniversary of this event, on behalf of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, which is located in this building, director Katarzyna Person, PhD, laid flowers.
The building complex at 37 and 39 Zielna Street (commonly known as PAST), built by the Swedish Cedergren Telephone Joint-Stock Company between 1904 and 1910, was an impregnable German fortress and a vital communications center with Berlin and the Eastern Front during the initial period of the Warsaw Uprising. From the eight-story skyscraper, once the tallest in Europe, German machine guns and snipers dominated the entire northern city center. On August 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6, the German garrison repelled successive attacks by insurgents from the Jan Kiliński Home Army Battalion. For days afterward, the Germans remained under siege, cut off from electricity, water, and supplies, and supplied with ammunition and food by tanks. The decisive moment came on the night of August 19-20, 1944, when 250 insurgents from the "Kiliński" battalion, the Home Army's Warsaw Area Staff Protection Company and sapper units of the Home Army's Warsaw District (including a women's mine-laying team under the command of Major Zofia Franio "Doktór") attacked and captured the building after an exhausting fight.
The operation was commanded by Cavalry Captain Henryk Leliwa-Roycewicz, commander of the "Kiliński" Battalion. Success was achieved thanks to a successful combination of mine-laying and sapper operations. In addition to the female mine-laying patrols blowing up the side walls of the building, which allowed assault groups to break in, thousands of liters of oil and gasoline were pumped into the building using a motor pump. The resulting fire forced the Germans to surrender. The capture of the PAST building was one of the greatest successes of the Warsaw Uprising. 115 Germans were taken prisoner (approximately 30 died in combat), and significant quantities of weapons, ammunition, and supplies were captured. The SS men who were part of the PAST garrison were shot on the spot. Insurgent losses amounted to approximately 40 killed and 60 wounded. The building remained in Polish hands until the end of the uprising, although the Polish flag flying on its top was regularly shelled by the Germans.
Polish Jews, members of the "Kiliński" battalion, also took part in the fighting – including Henryk Arnold "Rysio", hiding under the conspiratorial name Ryszard Rudziński, Zbigniew Ryszard Grabowski "Chemik", and Szenfeld "Zielony", known only by his surname.
Major Zofia Franio received the title of Righteous Among the Nations for helping Jews during the occupation, awarded by the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem.
