Hanna Petrynowska (codename Rana), a medical doctor, was killed by SS soldiers who attacked a field hospital which was hidden in the building of PWPW (Polish Security Printing Works) on 28 August 1944. She is said to have disregarded SS order to finish surgery and was executed as a result together with her patients.
She was a sister of Jan Żabiński, who saved 300 Jews as the Director of Warsaw Zoo during German occupation of the capital of Poland. The story was filmed in 2017 in "Zookeeper's Wife' starring Jessica Chastain as Antonina Żabińska, Jan's wife.
Hanna's and Jan's biographies serve as a good example of the Polish response to the evil imposed by German occupants.
They were engaged, not idle in watching all those crimes commited by the German invaders. As for Hanna, she paid with her life for resisting the forces who aimed at the anihilation of Poland and its people during WWII.
Hanna Petrynowska
Image source: Internet
Analysing her life it should be noted that Hanna Petrynowska became pediatrician in 1924 and in 1940 started her work as an in-house doctor in PWPW just right after the imprisonment of her husband who had held that function earlier on. Her husband, Marian Petrynowski was sent to Mauthausen concentration camp and never came back. She started to use codename "Rana" (Eng. wound) after Marian's death in KL Mauthausen.
She was decorated with V class Virtuti Militari Cross posthumously.
Between 5 and 7
August 1944, within THREE DAYS,
German units executed 50,000 civilians of the Wola district during Warsaw
Rising which erupted in Warsaw, capital of Poland, occupied by Germans since October
1939.
Key names to remember as for mass slaughtering, mass rapes,
mass looting as well as mass executions are: Oskar Dirlewanger, Heinrich Heinz Reinefarth, Alfred Spilker and Bronisław Kamiński.
When the Warsaw Rising started, Himmler on behalf of Adolf
Hitler ordered that:
Captured insurgents
are to be executed no matter whether they follow the stipulations of the
Hague Conventions or not.
Civilians, who
are not taking part in the battle, women, children, are to be executed anyway.
The whole city of Warsaw
is to be levelled to the ground, i.e. houses, streets, offices – anything which
constitutes the city.
German troops (mainly composed of SS, renegades, criminals
and former Soviet citizens) were asked to make a passage from the western part
of the city towards the Vistula River in order to allow German transports reach the Eastern Front. When the Rising burst out, Hitler got furious as Warsaw was a
very important transportation hub and not a single transport could have reached
the other side of the Vistula River.
The number of executed was so huge that the piles of corpses
reached the 2nd floor and it turned out that German units do not have enough
ammunition to kill all the detainees…
Heinz Reinefarth reported to General von Vormann: „I have too
many prisoners of war and not enough amunition”. His commanders had no doubts
as for the dilemma. Why? Let us think just of one of the ‘events’ from those
horrifying days.
One of the most notorious examples is when one of the
Dirlewanger units entered an orphanage where about 300 orphans were placed. One
of the soldiers, Matthias Schenk said that he heard Dirlewanger shout: „Don’t waste ammunition, kill all of them with
the butts!”. Schenk still can’t erase from his memory the sight of high steps
with blood flushing down (…)”.
Another terrifying story is what happened to Wanda Lurie. She was a mother of 3, the
oldest was 11 years old. She was expelled from her home with kids who got
executed in front of her eyes. The bullet that was destined to kill her, went
through her neck and she was neither killed nor she lost consciousness. She
fell on the heap of corpses and she remained in such a position for 2 days. On
the third day she decided to organise an escape. Why? She felt movements of her
baby as she was 9 months pregnant. She managed to escape and gave birth to her
baby son on 20 August. The only child who survived the war. Mr Mścisław Lurie
resides now in Warsaw and tries to do his best to keep in memory all what
happened to his family and his beloved city shattered with all those turmoils
of war.
Image: Wanda Lurie with her son
In total 50,000 persons are reported to have been killed
within 3 days. The slaughtering continued till 11 August 1944.
At some point Erich von dem Bach, SS Obergruppenfuerher, the
Commander of all German troops during Warsaw Rising, realised it is more
effective to send the detained to labour camps rather than execute them on the
spot not having any profits of them at all.
Warsaw Rising Museumidentified
57,189 names of the Varsovians and Poles who lost their lives just because
they found themselves in Warsaw in summer 1944. (1)
Heinz Reinefarth was a respected citizen in post–war Germany
holdinga position of a mayor of a
seaside resort of Westerland in Schleswig-Holstein. He was a lawyer and it was ‘impossible’
to bring him to justice due to the lack of evidence (sic!).
Image: H. Reinefarth
Oskar Dirlewanger was hanged in French controlled area of
Germany in 1945 because most supposedly someone recognised him and decided to finally
put his existence to an end.
Image: O. Dirlewanger
Read more:
·Richie, A., Warsaw 1944, published in 2013
·Davies, N., Rising ’44. The Battle for Warsaw.
2004
