Massacre in the Jesuit monastery on Rakowiecka Street, Warsaw

In December 1935 a Jesuit monastery (Dom Pisarzy, literally: "The House of Scribes") was established at 61 Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw's district of Mokotów.

Polish insurgents attacked a number of German-held buildings on Rakowiecka Street and in its surroundings, but they were repelled by the better equipped and more numerous Wehrmacht and SS troops.

At that time, about 50 Poles were present in the building – including 25 priests and religious brothers, 12 non-clergy employees as well as over a dozen refugees.

When all Poles were gathered in the coachman's room, SS soldiers hurled grenades into the crowd and opened fire with machine pistols.

In next few hours, soldiers repeatedly came back to the place of massacre and systematically executed those Poles who still gave some signs of life.

The impression was horrible because next what was heard, was a sound of machine pistol fire series, accompanied with child's laugh and clapping.

Unaware of what happened, he returned to Rakowiecka Street to take the consecrated host, and he was shot dead in the monastery's chapel.

[9] Retired colonel Zołoteńko told me, that after the execution in the monastery he asked one German soldier what happened with the priests, especially with the father superior.

The woman who initially accompanied them returned to the Motoków to find the children she left in her flat before the uprising began (according to Friar Jan Rosiak, she survived the war).

[13] In the first days of the Warsaw Uprising Germans transformed nearby Stauferkaserne barracks at 4 Rakowiecka Street into provisional prison.

Shortly afterwards he was detained by Germans and imprisonment in the Stauferkaserne, where he joined a kommando responsible for disposal of bodies covering Mokotów streets.

[14] After the war, remnants of the victims were put in four coffins and buried under the floor of the same room in the monastery's basement, where massacre took place.

Leonard Hrynaszkiewicz – Jesuit priest who was killed during the uprising at Warsaw New Town – were also buried in the same place (but in separate coffins).