Merciless monsters | Nazi war crimes during the Warsaw Uprising

‘The beginning of the Uprising was greeted with much euphoria. At last we would no longer allow ourselves to be slaughtered like sheep. It was high time to say “enough”. Soon, we thought, the Red Army would be joining us in a Warsaw we had liberated. ‘Our home lay in the outlying district of Ochota. Tragically the Germans were quickly able to isolate it & direct powerful & ruthless units against it. As they secured apartment block after apartment block, they massacred all the inhabitants, at the rate of a couple of thousand an hour. ‘My brother, two & a half years older than I, was my superior in the Home Army & the person to whom I was to report. He had been instructed to report at a prearranged location once the Uprising started, but had not been told when that would take place, so he was at home resting. He immediately sought to make his way though the air was thick with bullets. Just outside our house, however, a series from an automatic smashed both his knees. Though he no longer able to stand on his own, we got him to a nearby hospital. However, amputation was not possible: there was no doctor who could perform it, nor the means to do so. It was hopeless. ‘Later, the Germans units entered the hospital, ordered all the wounded who could walk into the courtyard & shot them, the doctors & nurses also. Then they set the building on fire. The building across the Street was still in our possession & from it we saw the remaining wounded, those who could, drag themselves to the windows. They shouted to us, imploring us to shoot them, better than to be slowly fried alive. I knew my brother was lying on that ward. The feelings of impotence & helplessness that I experienced are hard to describe. After the Uprising, my mother helped collect & inter the charred remains.’ ~ Witold Górski, ‘I Was 16 at the Time’ Video: Scene from ‘Miasto 44’, showing Nazi troops massacring patients who could not be evacuated from a hospital. A wounded German who’d been under Polish care reveals himself, before a German-speaking insurgent makes a remark, is shot, & another patient blows up himself & his wife who refused to leave his side along with the SS criminal.