Hospital in Kozienice functioned thanks to the dedicated work of staff which took active part in actions to provide assistance for people who were politically persecuted. Among them were Soviet prisoners of war from camps in the Dęblin and Jews from the ghetto in Kozienice. The hospital was a contact center for Council of Aid to Jews, named after Konrad Żegota, which has helped nearly 2 thousand adult Jews and contributed to saving the lives of nearly 1,500 Jewish children1.

In ghetto in Kozienice was a hospital. It was in the hall of the fire station and it contained a dozen of beds. Mostly stayed there sick for a typhoid fever. Hospital suffered from the lack of medicines and disinfectants. It was because hospital staff many times transported to the ghetto their own medicine, food and clothes. Those helping were: Sabina Kaczyńska, Maria Lewandowska, priest Jan Wronka, dr. Zbigniew Jaśniewicz, dr. Paweł Grygiel, dr. Jerzy Wolski, dr. Eugeniusz Bordziłowski, Jan Wronka, dr. Zbigniew Jaśniewicz, dr. Paweł Grygier, dr. Jerzy Wolski and dr. Eugeniusz Bordziłowski.

Dr. Jaśniewicz describes other forms of assistance: „healthy Jews that were able to get out from the ghetto in the evenings came to the hospital kitchen were we gave them hot soup with bread”2. From initiative of priest Wroniek started “money and food raising” for the Jews that were in hiding at the wilderness of Kozienicka. At night they came to the nearest bunker, where there always was something for them.

To the hospital in Kozienice were transported Jews from the street Wilcza 7 in Warsaw. Ambulance that took them had a typing „Achtung Typhus” which was supposed to scare the Germans and to help avoid control. The Jews remained in the department of infectious to the point of obtaining fake documents.3 Later they were sent to safe houses or partisans groups.

Jews were also hiding in the hospital itself. Of the two Jewish women took care sister Sabina Kaczyńska and priest Jan Wronka. The family of Bursztynów survived a war in that hospital along with one fugitive from the Warsaw ghetto, to whom the mother of Dr. Jaśniewicza gave a fake birth certificate in the name of „Metek Pawlak”4.

„He was a third year medicine student, very smart, knew foreign languages, from Łódź. Mietek later on become a fighter in a guerilla and survived until the end of war.”

The daily life of staff of the hospital in Kozienice was In tremendous stress because they were fighting not only for human life among the sick but also among those persecuted.

Bibliography:

  1. FLV, a Letter from Galina Wronki [K. Kowalik, Ks. Jan Wronka kapłan w służbie Bogu i bliźnim] z 02,09,2013r. Kowalik, Ks. Jan Wronka kapłan w służbie Bogu i bliźnim] z 02.09.2013 r.