I was ten when the uprising broke out. I have seen many executions of ordinary residents. All my male neighbors died in Hala Mirowska, says Marian Grabowski, an inhabitant of Warsaw. He added that during the first days of the uprising, the inhabitants mainly sat in the basement.
The man lived in Warsaw throughout the occupation. His father – Władysław Grabowski pseud. Wróbel – was an insurgent. He fought in Wola and the Old Town. He survived, found himself in the US Army, and found his family after the war.
Marian Grabowski stayed at home with his mother and two brothers. When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, he was 10 years old.
“We had a great idea of what was happening during the Uprising. There was a Gestapo building above the famous Karowa snail and a sniper was sitting there. The Germans had a very good field to fire from there,” he recalls.
“We saw that someone was hit by a bullet all the time. People wanted to get to their homes by the jump across Karowa, and the insurgents to their units,” he adds.
“We even tried to make an undermining under Karowa Street, but it would be at least 50 meters long, so we gave it up,” he recalls. During the first days of the uprising, the inhabitants mainly sat in the basement. There was no shortage of food then yet, because – as Marian recounts – everyone still had some supplies.
Later, together with other Varsovians, Mr. Marian with his mother and brothers was led through the Saxon Garden at Hala Mirowska. From Hala Mirowska, the family went to the West Railway Station, then to a camp in Pruszków, and then to a camp in Breslau (Wrocław) and a labor camp in Görlitz.