| A Polish Academic Information Center Exhibit |
| The 1994 Warsaw Uprising - An assertion of sovereignty and hope. |
Shelled by German Artillery
August 29, 1944
In front of the apartment block, we saw the cone crater of an artillery shell. Next to it, by the wall lay the bodies of several soldiers and civilians. In the penumbra of the block's entrance hall, a terrible sight met our eyes. Two women in camuflage uniforms were lying in a pool of blood. The legs of one were missing at the knees. With the last of her strength she was keeping the stumps in the air so as not rest them on the dirty ground. Bloodied all over, she was being given a morphine injection. She kept on repeating: "Help me, I want to live." I put on pressure dressings while a strecher team from the hospital waited to take her away.
Nearby - an even gastlier sight. A woman was kneeling. On her knees lay a girl with both her legs and both her arms missing. The girl was still conscious. Her mother - for as it happened it was she - begged us to give her a morphine shot but would not allow us to put on any dressings "so as not to increase her pain" She whispered to us that the girl had lost so much blood that she was done for. Crying bitterly, the girl kept re peating: "Mommy, I am dying."
From the diary of Teresa Łatyńska
transl: Peter K. Gessner
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