Doctors of the Ujazdów Hospital in the Katyń Graves

From 14 July to 30 September 2026 the Museum of Independence showed a panel exhibition on the doctors of Ujazdów Hospital, among some 600 Polish army doctors murdered by the Soviet NKVD in 1940.

What to expect

This was a panel exhibition, not a room of original objects. According to a report from the opening, it consisted of 14 panels telling the life stories of the doctors, with reproductions of documents from the Main Medical Library and the Katyń Museum. The opening was held in the palace Ballroom; the script was by Katarzyna Słojkowska and Rafał E. Stolarski, the curator Dr Jacek Konik. The museum listed no separate ticket for the show: palace admission was 20 PLN full and 10 PLN reduced, and free on Thursdays.

The panels followed 11 doctors, among them:

• Colonel Jan Nelken, a psychiatrist - one panel showed his letter to his wife Irena, written on 20 November 1939 in the Kozelsk prison camp;
• Colonel Stefan Mozołowski and Major Stefan Pieńkowski, both neurologists;
• Lieutenant Colonel Henryk Millak, a bacteriologist;
• Colonel Antoni Szwojnicki, a paediatrician.

The Museum of Independence added a painting from its own collection: “Victim of the Soviets - the Katyń Massacre” by Marcin Belof (1966-1990), a Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts student whose grandfather was among the victims.

Context

Ujazdów Hospital was Poland’s oldest and largest military hospital. It grew up from the late 18th century around the former royal castle at Ujazdów, just south of today’s city centre, and was dissolved in January 1945. In spring 1940 the Soviet NKVD shot nearly 22,000 Polish citizens, among them prisoners of war held in the camps at Kozelsk, Starobilsk and Ostashkov; many were reserve officers who were doctors, scientists or teachers in civilian life.

The museum puts the number of murdered army doctors at about 600, with at least 305 held at Kozelsk and at least 288 at Starobilsk. The Main Medical Library, which made the exhibition, was founded in 1945 by Stanisław Konopka. Its Old Medical Books Department works in one of the surviving pavilions of the old hospital at Jazdów 1A.

What the press says

• Gość Warszawski (16 July 2026, Zofia Grabowska): the Catholic weekly’s Warsaw edition reports on the opening, describes the 14 panels, names all 11 doctors and singles out Jan Nelken’s letter from Kozelsk as a particularly valuable document - warszawa.gosc.pl
• Polish Radio for Abroad, “Magazyn Redakcji Polskiej” (24 July 2026, hosted by Katarzyna Semaan): the final part of this Polish-language programme featured one of the exhibition’s co-authors as a guest - polskieradio.pl

Updates

• 2026-10-01 - the exhibition closed on 30 September 2026 (source: Museum of Independence announcement, in Polish).

See also

• Katyń Museum in the Warsaw Citadel - the Polish Army Museum’s branch devoted to the Katyń massacre, partner of this exhibition and the source of some of its documents.
• Old Medical Books Department of the Main Medical Library - the exhibition’s organiser, housed in a building of the former Ujazdów Hospital; its collections are open with the library director’s permission.
• Museum of Independence - in the same building, the “Borderlands and Beyond” galleries cover deportations and Katyń in more depth than the panels did.

After the show

The panels were first shown on 18 December 2025 at the library’s Old Medical Books Department, for the 85th anniversary of the Katyń massacre; in July 2026 they moved to the Museum of Independence. If you missed it, one of the script’s authors has written it up, with all 11 doctors, their hospital posts and Jan Nelken’s letter. The report appears in “Biuletyn Głównej Biblioteki Lekarskiej - Historia” (year II, 2026, no. 3, pp. 239-244), free as a PDF (in Polish).

Gość Warszawski (16 July 2026, Zofia Grabowska), reporting on the opening, singled out Jan Nelken’s letter from Kozelsk as a particularly valuable document in the show - warszawa.gosc.pl. Polish Radio for Abroad invited one of the exhibition’s co-authors onto “Magazyn Redakcji Polskiej” (24 July 2026, hosted by Katarzyna Semaan) - polskieradio.pl.

Current and upcoming shows at the Museum of Independence:

• The Memory of the Uprising - paintings by Bogusław Lustyk at the Brama Bielańska Gallery in the Warsaw Citadel, the 19th-century tsarist fortress north of the Old Town, until 25 October 2026; the Katyń Museum stands on the same grounds, so the two visits combine easily.
• Forgotten - Lower Silesia - photographs by Radek Jaworski in the same palace at al. Solidarności 62, from 2 to 30 October 2026; abandoned palaces and cemeteries of Lower Silesia in south-western Poland.

Other current shows in Warsaw on a related theme:

• Józef Czapski - L’Humanité / Humanity - at the Warsaw Archdiocese Museum until 29 November 2026; Czapski survived Starobilsk and in 1941-1942 searched the USSR for the missing officers, the doctors on these panels among them.
• 100th Anniversary of the WUM Faculty of Pharmacy 1926-2026 - at the Medical History Museum of Warsaw Medical University, in the university’s Library and Information Centre at ul. Żwirki i Wigury 63, with no closing date given by the museum. It marks a century of a faculty founded in 1926, in the same interwar Warsaw medical world in which the doctors on the panels worked.

Museum profile: Museum of Independence.