Name day: Marian, Oswald
Sunrise 5:18 am; sunset 8:37 pm; air temperature: 16°C
Sunny; Vistula river level: 163 cm



          After 1 am, first Allied droppings are taking place. The equipment lands, among others, in the position of the "Chrobry" battalion at Kazimierz Wielki Square.

          At 7 am, the SS and police troops attack Wola, trying to clear the thoroughfare to the Kierbedź Bridge. The Reinefarth and Dirlewanger troops, reinforced with armored units of the SS "Hermann Göring" Panzer Division, begin a general attack along the axis Wolska-Chłodna-Saxon Garden.
          The goal of this maneuver is to liberate General Stahel, the commander of the German garrison, and Governer Fischer, both isolated in the Brühl Palace on Saski (Saxon) Square, and to recapture the east-west thoroughfare through Wola and the Kierbedź Bridge to Praga.
          Despite the heroic efforts of the insurgents, the Germans, supported by heavy artillery fire, tanks, heavy machine guns and aerial bombing, make progress, reaching Kerceli Square in the evening.
          Immediately after seizing the parts of the Wola district, the Germans begin to slaughter its civilian population. The inhabitants of Wolska, Elekcyjna, Płocka, Górczewska and Działdowska Streets are dragged out of their homes and executed. The Nazis deliberately kill children before the eyes of their mothers, throw babies alive into the fire, enjoy themselves by hunting people.
          The houses are bombarded with grenades and incinerated. In the evening, piles of dead bodies linger in the streets. Those not executed yet are herded up and forced to remove the corpses. The bodies are thrown into burning houses or stacked up in piles, poured over with petroleum and set on fire in places of mass executions.
          The SS storm into the Wolski Hospital on Płocka Street and kill its director, Dr. Marian Piasecki, Prof. Janusz Zeyland, and the chaplain, Rev. Kazimierz Ciecierski, on site. Next, they execute 60 members of the personnel and ca. 300 wounded and sick patients. The staff and the sick of St. Lazarus Hospital on Leszno Street meet the same fate.
          On August 5, 20 000 inhabitants of the Wola district lose their lives in a massacre committed by the German butchers.
          SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Reinefahrt notes down in one of his reports to the command that he is running out of ammo for further executions.
          The "Black Saturday" in Wola marks the apogee of mass executions of civilian population, which in the following days will amount to 50 000 casualties.

          In the early hours in Mokotów, a group of women from a house at 1 Puławska Street is used as a human shield for tanks hastening to the relief of a German squad occupying the so-called "Small PASTa" (Polska Akcyjna Spółka Telefoniczna - Polish Telephone Joint-stock Company) on Piusa XI Street.

          The "Golski" soldiers capture a German field hospital on Śniadeckich Street.

          The "Zośka" battalion storms a camp on Gęsia Street (the so-called "Gęsiówka"), setting free 348 Jews of different nationality and opening the way to the Old City.

          The Home Army Commander issues an order prohibiting alcohol consumption by the insurgents during the battle for the city.

          Marceli Porowski "Sowa" ("Owl"), the District Government Delegate for the Capital City of Warsaw, takes over full civil authority in the city by being appointed the Civilian Commissar of Warsaw.