Warsaw Uprising: The Stories Behind the Photographs

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Two paramedics and an injured insurgent from the ‘Parasol’ Battalion after climbing out of a canal in Warecka Street at Nowy Świat (City Centre North). Standing in the middle is Maria ‘Kama’ Stypułkowska-Chojecka, at right, Krzysztof ‘Krzych’ Palester, 1944, photo: Joachin Joachimczyk / Wikimedia

Warsaw Uprising: The Stories Behind the Photographs

photography

Agnieszka Warnke

Reading time: 20 min

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Smiles and tears, rush and silence, the struggle and everyday life; 63 days, tens of thousands of victims and images inscribed into the memory of generations to come. Here, we present profiles of ten photojournalists of the Warsaw Uprising and the stories behind their photographs.

After all, it was all of Warsaw fighting – hence I was there on the barricades and in the support area, among the fighting and among the injured, among girls and among boys. […] the look of the streets was changing from one minute to another, and I documented it frequently, as if preparing a chronicle of destruction and all the events presented in slow motion. […] Fear? No, that’s not what one thought about back then.

As Sylwester Braun, one of the photographers of fighting Warsaw reminisced. While there were dozens of similar chroniclers, we know few of them by name, and, after all, they’re worth commemorating not only on special occasions.

Halina ‘Małgorzata’ Bala

An armoured German SdKfz 251 troop carrier captured by insurgents from 8th ‘Krybar’ Grouping in Na Skarpie Avenue from 5th SS Panzer Division ‘Viking’ on 14 August 1944. Photo taken in gardens of the Conservatory in Okólnik Street. First on right stands Captain Cyprian ‘Krybar’ Odorkiewicz, commander of ‘Krybar’ Grouping. Soldier with insurgent’s armband (left of ‘Krybar’) is lieutenant Wacław ‘Aspira’ Jastrzębowski. In foreground, with her back to camera, stands Halina ‘Małgorzata’ Bala-Rueger, as well as journalists from insurgent press and cinematographers from ‘Czołówka’, Home Army Film Company, 1944, photo: Sylwester Braun / Wikimedia

There were three of them who completed a secret photojournalism course: the older brother, Władysław; the youngest of the siblings, Stanisław, and her – Halina for her family and friends, among Press War Reporters (PSW) of the Home Army Headquarters, she was known as Małgorzata. She was born in Starowiskitki, a village outside Warsaw, to a Polish-Hungarian family. Her Hungarian passport enabled her to travel on German trains during the occupation. She worked as a nurse and a distributor of the underground press; during the uprising, she served as a liaison officer for photojournalists and filmmakers. She would also take photographs herself, using a Leica, a camera obtained from allied airdrops.

The first provision of supplies for the insurgents took place during the night between 4 and 5 August 1944. The British aviator Stanley Johnson recalled: ‘We could see Warsaw from afar, since it was one huge sea of flames.’ Photographers could capture those flames using modern small format cameras, whose large-scale production began in 1925. It was the quick, discreet, pocket-sized Leica that gave rise to photojournalism.

Crew of Power Station from ‘Krybar’ Grouping under command of engineer Stanislaw ‘Cubryna’ Skibniewski on grounds of power station in Wybrzeże Kościuszkowskie Street, 1944, photo: Halina ‘Małgorzata’ Bala-Rueger / Wikimedia

During the uprising, Halina Bala was promoted to the rank of sergeant and awarded the Silver Cross of Merit with Swords. After the city’s surrender, the photographer was captured by the Nazis. Then, after escaping a Nazi prison camp, she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Service in France. She spent the post-war years in exile in Great Britain and the United States. She married her comrade-in-arms Leszek ‘Grzegorz’ Rueger.

Stanisław ‘Giza’ Bala

Press War Reporter Stanisław ‘Giza’ Bala tears German flag off PKO Bank building at 9 Jasna Street, on corner of Świętokrzyska Street, photo: author unknown / Wikimedia

The photo in which a photojournalist tears a German flag off the PKO Bank building at 31/33 Świętokrzyska Street has gone down in history. This gesture, just like other acts of destroying Nazi symbols, was a carrier of hope for the liberation of occupied Warsaw. Not only did Stanisław Bala become a hero in this particular frame, but he also immortalized, through the camera’s eye, fighters of the uprising similar to himself and documented the struggle in the City Centre and Wola.

He graduated a mathematical-philosophical high school in Warsaw. He was in the process of preparing for the Olympics as part of the Polish swimming team when the war broke out. He continued his education in a vocational school – the State School of Machine Construction. During the uprising, he shot films and took photographs, such as those of capturing Holy Cross Church and the struggle around the Powiśle power station. After the war, he didn’t touch a camera anymore – sharing his sister’s fate of an emigrant, he worked as an engineer in the United States. From the war recordings made by all the filmmakers of the uprising, only 6,600 metres of tape were preserved, that is, around four hours of film.

Stefan ‘Kubuś’ Bałuk

Stefan ‘Kubuś’ Bałuk (Home Army) in uniform obtained in Stawki in SS Tarnschlupfjacke camouflage jacket with ‘oak’ pattern. On his chest are service ribbons of Virtuti Militari War Order and Cross of Valour, photo: www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)

On 1 August 1944, a Lutheran cemetery in Wola. ‘There, at 5 o’clock, the “W” hour, the entire “Pięść” Battalion gathered, and it was also there that I began my career as a photographer,’ reminisced Stefan Bałuk. ‘After all, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that in 1939 I went to war with my camera, with which I didn’t part the entire time.’ In the shots we can see bunkers, guard posts, flagstone barricades, and residents of Warsaw fleeing under fire. There are also, however, street vendors, crowded trams, a couple traversing the city on a bicycle. The themes of his photographs were both the struggle and daily life in occupied Warsaw. He didn’t part with his camera during the uprising.

People fleeing under fire from PAST building, sheltered by barricade hastily constructed of flagstones around 121 Marszałkowska Street in City Centre North. First days of August 1944, photo: Stefan ‘Kubuś’ Bałuk

In the fighting capital, he was known as ‘Kubuś’, but as a Silent Unseen he would use the pseudonym ‘Starba’. He spent the first days of September 1939 in Warsaw, his hometown, after which he retreated eastward with the army. He got through Hungary, Romania and Beirut to France, and in 1940 he was evacuated to Great Britain. A few months prior to the ‘W’ Hour he was parachuted around Tłuszcz. In a photo lab belonging to the Home Army unit commanded by Stanisław ‘Agaton’ Jankowski, he would fabricate documents for conspiratorial purposes. He would continue doing the same in 1945, until November, when he was arrested by the NKVD. He was released under amnesty a few months later. He spent several years working as a taxi driver, until he reached for his camera once again as an employee of the Central Photographic Agency. He contributed to the first photo album documenting Warsaw during the uprising, Miasto Nieujarzmione (Unvanquished City), published in 1957.

Sylwester ‘Kris’ Braun

Photograph from Warsaw Uprising. Photographer Sylwester ‘Kris’ Braun next to heavy machine gun post on balcony of townhouse on even-numbered side of Jerozolimskie Avenue, shot from inside the flat, around 17 August 1944, photo: Eugeniusz Haneman / MPW

As a child, he was in awe of the photographs his father had taken in Egypt. One day, he took his equipment and went to play truant in the Bielański Forest. After he returned, he bought all he needed to develop photographs by himself. He created his first work of photojournalism in September 1939. During the Warsaw Uprising, he would register the life of the fighting city for the purposes of the Home Army – his photos took up 80% of the space in the weekly brochures. He took around 3,000 pictures with a Leica Standard, which he would carry around in his pocket without a case, taking it out only for the duration of a shot. The moment for his most important one came while he was standing on the rooftop of his home:

I sat myself down on the rooftop of the townhouse at 28 Kopernika Street. The weather was beautiful, brilliant morning sun, the panorama of the lacerated city plain and clear as day. […] I checked my Leica once again – f/8, 1/200 sec, distance: infinity. […] I spent an hour waiting, vigilant, until I noticed the yellow trail of a missile against the backdrop of the azure sky. Through the camera lens, I saw the missile hit the Prudential and the blooming explosion that followed. I took six photos within three seconds. […] six photos presenting, successively: the moment of the hit, the explosion, the expanding plume of smoke and dust and finally the skeleton of the ferroconcrete (sic) structure. They didn’t manage to destroy the Prudential completely.

[Grzegorz Jasiński, Powstanie Warszawskie: Najważniejsze Fotografie(Warsaw Uprising: The Most Important Photographs), Warsaw 2014]

Explosion of 600 millimetre-calibre bullet fired from Karl-Mörser Gerät 040 mortar at Prudential Insurance Company building at 9 Napoleona Square (today’s Warsaw Uprising Square). In foreground, ruins of development in Świętokrzyska Street. Picture shot from townhouse at 28 Kopernika Street, facing west, 28 August 1944, photo: Sylwester ‘Kris’ Braun / MPW

He hid his negatives in jars and buried them in the ground. Following the fall of the uprising, once he managed to flee from a German labour camp and return to the capital, he found them intact. He continued documenting the ruined city until he left for Sweden and then for the United States. Although Braun’s photographs were well-known in Poland, their author was not. It was only after the investigation conducted by Kurier Polski (The Polish Courier) that the identity of the photojournalist was established.

Wiesław ‘Wiesław’ Chrzanowski

Wiesław ‘Wiesław’ Chrzanowski from ‘Anna’ Company of ‘Gustaw’ Battalion in townhouse at 16 Wilcza Street, Warsaw, photo: Wikimedia

A scientist, a photographer, a soldier. It’s thanks to him that we now know what the ditch on Jerozolimskie Avenue looked like, the one that formed a narrow passage between City Centre North and South, or Kilińskiego Street after the explosion of a tank trap. He was a sapper, so he was supposed to examine the vehicle when the blast of the explosion threw him to the ground. He found himself seconds away from death. In his photographs, one can also see resting paramedics, the clearing of the rubble in the building at 32 Wilcza Street, Old Town burning, and the funeral of Captain ‘Harnaś’ (Marian Krawczyk). Wiesław Chrzanowski documented the struggle of the 2nd platoon of the ‘Anna’ company, which he commanded.

Old Town. Damaged houses in Podwale Street. Shot from Kilińskiego Street. From left, successively: outbuilding of Raczyński Palace (Ministry of Justice) – 23 Podwale Street, houses at 38, 36 & 34 Podwale Street, second half of August 1944, photo: Wiesław ‘Wiesław’ Chrzanowski / MPW

After the capital’s surrender, he was captured by the Nazis, but he didn’t stop photographing even when in a prison camp. In a conversation with Aleksandra Ziółkowska-Boehm, he recalled:

We would sleep in a cellblock on heaps of hay. Lübeck was a place of dispatch for American package distribution, and, since German transport was failing, we would receive a package every few days. I took photos of my friends. In an oflag near Lübeck, I drew a few scenes from our treks. I received some scraps of watercolours from a Polish POW and painted a few pictures in colour. [cited from histmag.org]

Ewa ‘Ewa’ Faryaszewska

Ewa Faryaszewska in 1943, photo: State Archives in Warsaw

She used colour film, which was a rarity at the time. Raised in Dąbrowa Górnicza, she was educated in Warsaw, cultivating her aesthetic sensibility and love of art while studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. During the war, she was a liaison officer in the ‘Wigry’ Battalion, and her achievements got her promoted to the rank of corporal. On the day of the outbreak of the uprising, she was in her art studio at 27 Rybaki Street, near Old Town. This was her area of operation: under fire from the Nazis, she would rescue valuable items, fabrics and artworks from churches, offices and private homes. She was killed in late August, during her last such operation.

Burning townhouses in Old Town Square, photo: Ewa Faryaszewska / Museum of Warsaw

One of her rolls of Agfacolor film rescued from the uprising contained shots of ruined Old Town. The 31 frames depicting: destroyed townhouses, barricades, churches, insurgent posters, flames and clouds of smoke, as well as a striking lack of people. She was an amateur photographer, her photos were taken intuitively, some of them over- or underexposed, some of them blurred.

Warsaw Uprising, 1944, photo: Ewa Faryaszewska / Museum of Warsaw / Wikimedia

This is how they were described for Dziennik Polonii w Kanadzie(Daily of the Polish Community in Canada) by Małgorzata Mycielska, the publisher and managing editor of the Museum of Warsaw’s publication Fotografie Ruin: Ruiny Fotografii(Photographs of Ruins: Ruins of Photographs), which includes Faryaszewska’s photos:

In the photos we see, for instance: St. Kazimierz Church in Warsaw’s New Town Market Square, the tower of a Franciscan church, a ruined townhouse in Freta Street. Although these weren’t taken by a professional photojournalist, for historians they are priceless. They present these places in the way a person fighting in the uprising saw them.

Eugeniusz ‘Han’ Haneman

A bang, gunshots, clouds of smoke obscuring Krakowskie Przedmieście. On 25 August 1944, an insurgent vigilantly examines the street through a collapsed wall of Holy Cross Church, holding a rifle – this is the best-known photograph by Eugeniusz Haneman. It was already during the occupation that the composition and framing classes he took from Marian Dederka prior to the war in the Photography High School in Konwiktorska Street in Warsaw, as well as his apprenticeship as a portraitist in the Portret przy Kawie (Portrait over Coffee) and Van Dyck studios bore fruit in the form of a touching documentation of the insurgent capital. It was actually a matter of chance. Unable to reach home on the day of the outbreak of the uprising, he was looking for an alternate route through Nowy Świat Street. That’s where he met Kazimierz Greiger, an owner of a photo shop, who provided him with a camera and the address of the Government Delegation, then in need of photographers.

Eugeniusz Haneman, photo: Warsaw Uprising Museum

‘Han’ mostly documented the struggle in the City Centre and Powiśle, usually accompanied by Sylwester ‘Kris’ Braun. He managed to rescue 15 rolls of film from the uprising. Following the surrender, he was taken to a transit camp in Pruszków, after which he moved to Kraków, where he held the position of cinematographer at the Film Institute. Eventually, however, it was in Łódź that he found his place on Earth. He graduated from the Łódź Film School with a degree in cinematography; he then taught photography there and documented the city in his photos in his spare time. Haneman’s long list of awards includes, for instance, the honorary title of Artiste Fédération Internationale de l’Art Photographique.

Joachim ‘Joachim’ Joachimczyk

Joachim Joachimczyk during Warsaw Uprising, talking to soldiers from ‘Sokół’ Battalion (first on left), 1944, photo: Warsaw Uprising Museum

The photographs by Joachim Joachimczyk, born in Swornegacie in Kashubia, were for a long time shrouded in mystery. He only became a war photojournalist in 1942, following training in the Bureau of Information and Propaganda’s Department of Photography. He was one of the most fertile authors of shots from the areas of the City Centre, Powiśle, and Upper Czerniaków. He documented the struggle, daily life, and the few festivities among the insurgents.

City Centre North. Insurgents using bags of sand to reinforce connecting ditch through Jerozolimskie Avenue between townhouses no. 17 (now 23) and 22, incredibly important as the one connecting the two parts of City Centre. Ground floor of house no. 17 visible in background. Shot facing south, 23 August 1944, photo: Joachim ‘Joachim’ Joachimczyk / MPW

Of his thousands of negatives and prints, only some were preserved, mainly photographs taken in August 1944 with a Leica. The Kodak films were lost – both the ones a Wehrmacht soldier discovered in the prison camp and undertook to send to Poland (he didn’t) and those buried in a school building and hidden in the cellars of Count Ronikier’s house in Róż Avenue. For a long time, the surviving photographs bore only the date. the place and the pseudonym ‘Joachim’. It was only in the 1960s that Professor Władysław Jewsiewicki undertook actions that helped identify the author’s name.

Eugeniusz ‘Brok’ Lokajski

Photographer Eugeniusz Lokajski with cat in front of gate of townhouse at 12 Moniuszki Street in Warsaw, 1944, photo: Wikimedia

Prior to the uprising, he was a portrait artist (photographs of the Kometa Theatre actors taken under occupation are mixed with pre-war pictures of family and friends) and a sports photographer (thanks to his passion for athletics, which he leveraged into Polish and world championship medals). In 1942, he opened his own atelier. When he had to stand in defence of the capital, he parted neither with his rifle nor with his camera. After viewing the photo album Eugeniusz Lokajski BROK, published in 2021 by the Warsaw Uprising Museum, Chris Niedenthal said:

Although he photographed in such difficult conditions, he captured numerous wonderful shots, frequently out of focus, blurry, or underexposed, and yet stimulating the imagination with their imperfection. They enable us to feel as if we were there together with the figures in the pictures, experiencing the same emotions. One may say, then, that Lokajski managed to achieve the quintessence of photography – to freeze-frame a significant (albeit sometimes seemingly trivial) moment and – what’s equally important – to convey the emotions accompanying this one and only moment, one of many moments of beautiful, young people’s insurgent struggle.

City Centre North. Group of insurgents from ‘Kiliński’ Battalion in front of PAST building at 37/39 Zielna Street. In window of building, in forage cap, second lieutenant Antoni ‘Tosiek’ Agopszowicz being supported, 20 August 1944, photo: Eugeniusz ‘Brok’ Lokajski

Through the lens of his Leica, he shot Nazi war prisoners, streets covered with rubble, field kitchens, hospitals and insurgent weddings. His position as a liaison officer, and then the commander of the ‘Koszta’ company made it easier for him to document the preparations for the struggle. He remained close to the people and the action. In fact, too close – he died on 25 September 1944 under the rubble of a bombed townhouse at 129 Marszałkowska Street. It was the day when he was supposed to take photos for fake documents which were meant to enable the insurgents to flee the city safely in case of a surrender.

Jerzy ‘Jur’ Tomaszewski

Jerzy Tomaszewski, photo: Wikimedia

When the war broke out, he was only 16 years old. He was too young to fight with a gun in his hand, so he enrolled in a secret photography course. The Germans employed him at the Foto-Rys studio, where he would develop the occupants’ photographs depicting the layouts of buildings, executions, and the ghetto. Along with other Polish employees, Jerzy Tomaszewski would take microphotographs

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