The Bersohn and Bauman Hospital during the Warsaw Uprising

During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and its liquidation, the Bersohn-Bauman Hospital was located on the so-called Aryan side. From August 1942 until the turn of 1942/1943, the buildings stood empty, although much of the equipment, including operating rooms, was still there. In early 1943, the Children's Clinic was moved here from Litewska Street, which had become part of the German district (the modern hospital on Litewska Street was intended to serve Volksdeutsche families and the growing number of German officials and soldiers). Within 24 hours, staff and doctors from Litewska had to transport patients and essential clinic equipment to the abandoned building of the former hospital for Jewish children. The hospital staff and patients practically witnessed the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. During this time, among others, a nurse worked there. Irena Kanabusowa, who, together with her husband Feliks, hid Jews in their apartment in Żoliborz and performed facial plastic surgery on people with a clearly Semitic appearance, as well as operations to remove traces of circumcision.

In 1943, a pediatric clinic, a vaccination center, and several hospital wards were opened at Sienna Street, accommodating 140-160 young patients. Hospital staff continued their clinical work, and at the turn of 1943/1944, clandestine pediatric classes were also held there for students of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Warsaw.

At the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, the hospital was headed by pediatrician Rajmund Barański, and the surgeon was Jan Kossakowski. From the very first days, the hospital complex served as the main medical facility for the Home Army Group "Chrobry II," numbering approximately 3 men, organized at the beginning of the fighting in the area of ​​Towarowa, Grzybowska, Sienna, Żelazna, Miedziana, and Ceglana Streets. Considered the best-equipped insurgent facility in the city center, the hospital initially operated under difficult conditions. As Halina Szwykowska (Laskowska during the uprising), who worked in the Information and Propaganda Office, recalled, it took several days for a larger quantity of medicines, dressings, and surgical instruments to arrive from private practices and airdrops. However, on the second day of operation, 70 patients were admitted. In the following days, many more, mostly seriously wounded soldiers, were admitted. Barański and Kossakowski were supported by, among others, surgeons Kornel Żabski and Józef Dryjski, the nursing team was headed by Irena Modrzejewska.

Dr. Roman Born-Bornstein, head of the medical service in this combat zone, recalled that both support staff and nurses and doctors also performed heavy physical labor, which he disapproved of, given the lack of qualified medical personnel and the overload of surgeons, in particular. Indeed, carpenter Feliks Strąk administered anesthesia, and the suturing of abdominal integuments was entrusted to medical students. Sometimes, liaison officers and medics became "opportunistic" scrub nurses, transporting the wounded from other parts of the city. Surgeries were performed without sterilization, with flashlights and motorcycle headlights serving as lighting. Those operated on in such conditions often died within days from infections. Others died from starvation. Nurse Stefania Wanda Krysiewicz-Tarnawska recalled two burned teenagers who went into battle armed only with bottles of gasoline. She recalled that "the boys were lying next to each other, almost naked, under a kind of gauze mosquito net to protect them from flies. There was a strong smell of pus. They spoke to me quite cheerfully, probably under the influence of anesthetics. The chances of survival were known."

In total, surgeons performed over 30 surgeries daily, and over 1800 procedures were performed during the 63 days of the uprising. Lack of medical records makes it impossible to determine how many of these were successful. Blood was also collected for wounded soldiers. Despite the difficult conditions, hospital regulations were observed: daily rounds were held by the head physician, accompanied by doctors and nurses. In addition to the regular medical and support staff, scouts cared for the sick. Their duties also included obtaining food, including bringing, often under fire, flour and grain from the mill on Prosta Street, as well as burying bodies and searching for the wounded in the rubble of the constantly bombed and shelled areas around the hospital. The wounded were housed in the basements and rooms of nearby houses, including those at Śliska 62, Twarda 40, and Chmielna 34. In size, the hospital on Śliska and Sienna Streets, along with the surrounding houses and basements converted into its "branches," was second only to the hospital on Długa Street.

Despite its military, field character, the hospital also served as a pediatric clinic. For the sake of its young patients, they even managed to obtain powdered eggs and fresh milk daily. However, food shortages were constant, and hunger reigned. In this situation, exhausted infants requiring urgent care were transported in laundry baskets to the Warsaw Children's Hospital, under the care of Irena Kanabusowa.

Several Jewish fighters, participants in the uprising, were also associated with the hospital. It is estimated that between several hundred and several thousand Jews and people of Jewish descent fought in the ranks of the Home Army, as it is impossible to precisely determine the number of those who fought under false identities and who died anonymously. Besides armed combat, Jews also served in auxiliary units, many serving in the medical and sanitary services. Among them, Adina Blady-Szwajgier, employed at Sienna and Śliska Streets as a pediatrician from 1940, later transferred to the branch on Leszno Street, worked as a doctor in several insurgent hospitals. After leaving the ghetto in January 1943, she served as a courier and liaison for the ŻOB (the Home Army command refused to grant a unit composed of Jewish fighters the status of a separate national unit, so they formed an independent platoon within the People's Army). Also working with Adina at the time was a registered nurse, Alina Margolis, later Marek Edelman's wife. Alina was the daughter of Dr. Anna Margolis, the head of the tuberculosis ward at the Bersohn and Bauman Hospital. In an excerpt from her memoirs about the Warsaw Uprising, Blady-Szwajgier writes: "I saw it all. The wounded and the dying, the air raids and snipers shooting civilians, the ten- and twelve-year-old boys maintaining communication between districts through the sewers, the lack of light and water, the doctors operating by candlelight, the uninterrupted procedures as the blast shattered the windows in the operating room..."

Teodozja Goliborska-Gołąb, a long-time head of the hospital laboratory, was also a member of the ŻOB. She had been hiding on the "Aryan" side since mid-1942. After the fall of the Warsaw Uprising, she and other ŻOB members took refuge in a bunker in Żoliborz, from where they were evacuated in November 1944 by a team organized by the staff of the Polish Red Cross hospital in Boernerów. Dr. Goliborska, along with colleagues from Sienna/Śliska Street and doctors from the hospital in Czyste, secretly conducted scientific research on starvation disease in children, which was published after the war by the Joint Distribution Committee. Due to his position, the aforementioned Major Born-Bornstein, initially deputy of the Home Army Group "Chrobry II," later head of the sanitary service of District IV of the Home Army Śródmieście District, also visited the hospital on Sienna.

The hospital building itself was not spared destruction and fires, but it survived until the last days of the uprising. Hospitalized patients were gradually moved to basements and cellars, while the less seriously injured were sent to hospitals and infirmaries in other parts of the city. After the capitulation, the evacuation of Warsaw's medical centers, including the facility on Śliska Street, began, sponsored by the Polish Red Cross. The hospital was included in the Warsaw III evacuation group, covering Śródmieście-Północ. Some patients and staff were transferred to Milanówek in several stages, while others found themselves in Kraków, where they were distributed among local hospitals and buildings annexed for emergency purposes. The deserted and partially devastated building on Sienna and Śliska Streets survived until soldiers of the First Polish Army and the Red Army entered Warsaw. In the spring of 1945, an exhumation of the bodies of those buried there during the Warsaw Uprising was carried out in its courtyard.

                                                                                                                                              Konrad Zieliński