18 Nowolipki Street. The St. Augustine church.
The church was finally erected in the year 1896.
In November 1940 the church found itself at the area of the Warsaw ghetto. Just when the ghetto had been closed down, in the church a warehouse was formed, the one in which goods robbed from Jews were stored. Afterwards, the church was profaned and changed into a stable. During the Warsaw Uprising on the church tower a look-out was situated together with a post of German machine guns. On August 5, during the assault at Gęsiówka (a camp called KL Warschau situated in Gęsia street at the corner with Zamenhofa street at the area of the Warsaw ghetto) the church tower was damaged by a shot of a heavy gun that had been garnered by the soldiers of the battalion "Zo¶ka", i.e. a German tank called "Panthera". After the Uprising Germans set fire to the church roof, as a result of which the organs and all the outer doors burnt down while the outer stone elements of the elevation were damaged.Fire reached both the vicarage and the parish house. Germans had a plan to blow the church up but fortunately they didn't succeed. After the war the church turned out to be the highest and one of just few buildings that had survived at the area of the Warsaw ghetto.
In the year 1947 the partly-rebuilt church could be open again. Reconstruction works lasted until the year 1953.
On the church wall one can see the plaques:
- commemorating the fallen Home Army soldiers of the battalion "Miotła";
- commemorating the fallen Home Army soldiers of the battalion "Kiliński" from X Group of IV Region of the companies: 4 "Watra", 5 "Philips", 7 "Iskra" and the company W.S.O.P. (the Military Service of the Uprising Protection).
|
