Warsaw Ghetto Museum and the Remembrance Day of the Civil Population of Insurgent Warsaw

Forty thousand of them died.  The number is not certain, historians are still trying to determine it.  We know the names of six thousand,  including 30 redemptorists from the congregation at ul. Karolkowa – victims of the Wola massacre.  They found themselves in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Insurgent Warsaw: German troops raided the church of St. Klemens Hofbauer on the night of 5 to 6 August 1944. All monks and people seeking shelter in the church were forced to leave it.  They were herded in the church of Saint Wojciech.  There, the Germans will separate the monks and send them to a nearby square. First, they murdered the friars. The prior died last.  The men immured in the church stacked the bodies is a pile.  The Germans set them on fire.  Crosses worn by the friars and keys to the monastery gate will be found two years later, in the ashes that remained after the burning.

Thirteen Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament from Nowe Miasto will die less than three weeks after this slaughter.  They would not leave the church and the civilians in it.  They died under the rubble of collapsing roof.

An opening ceremony of the exhibition entitled “The Benedictine Nuns of the Blessed Sacrament and redemptorists in the Warsaw Uprising”, combined with the promotion of a book by Rev. Prof. Paweł Mazanka under the same title, was held on 2 October, the Remembrance Day of the Civil Population of Insurgent Warsaw, at Plac Męczenników Warszawskiej  Woli . Presentation of the book and a film about monks and nuns in the Warsaw Uprising took place in the Jan Nowak-Jezioranski Auditorium at the Warsaw Ghetto Museum.

Reverend Professor Paweł Mazanka, head of the Department of Metaphysics at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, devotes his time and energy not only to the history of the Order, of which he is a member.  He has cherished the memory of the Jewish residents of his birthtown, Szydłów, for years. We want to talk to him about these interests in the near future.

Halina Postek, PhD

Photos: WGM