Edward Tomiak was 21 years old during the Rising. He does not appear in the insurgents’ indexes. The Tomiak family came from Poznań, where his father, Adam Tomiak, ran the “Atom” print house. In 1939, they were evicted by the Germans to the territory of the General Government. The family then lived in Warsaw, at 4 Muranowska Street. It was from a window of this building that Edward Tomiak documented sime actions of the Rising taking place at the nearby wall the flattened Ghetto. After the Rising, Tomiak and his brother most probably left the city with the civilian population and were held in the transit camp in Pruszków. From there, they were transported to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. The last letter he wrote from Auschwitz was to his aunt in Poznań in autumn 1944. He was later sent to Melk, a branch of the concentration camp in Mauthausen in Upper Austria. According to the statement by his fellow inmate attached to the photo album, Edward Tomiak died on 7 April 1945, most likely from general exhaustion. He was officially recognised as an insurgent (http://www.1944.pl/powstancze-biogramy/edward-tomiak,55762.html)

Entitled “Destruction of the City” and compiled after the author’s death by his father, Adam Tomiak, the album consists of 180 photographs from the Rising. The album was purchased from a person with no connection to the Tomiak family. The Museum contacted the author’s sister, Janina Hrosenchik, living in the United States. She served as a paramedic during the Rising. After the war, she became an actress, and performed under the pseudonym of Janina Maris. She can be seen in her brother’s photograph as a young woman in a German army camouflage field tunic with a red cross arm-band, standing next to their father, Adam, and a Home Army poster “Do broni w szeregach AK” (”To arms! In the ranks of the Home Army”). Taken mainly in the Old Town,  Tomiak’s photographs are unique documentation of the destruction of that city district. The photos show, among others, various stages of the destruction of the Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Nowe Miasto (New Town), St. John’s Cathedral at Świętojańska Street, and the townhouses at the Old Town Market Square. They include shocking images of the casualties, shredded bodies, and scattered pieces of clothing, taken most likely after the explosion of a German heavy explosive carrier in Kilińskiego Street. A large group of the images are copies coloured in red. In this manner, Adam Tomiak wanted to emphasise the horror – burning buildings, with small silhouettes of people on the rooftops trying to extinguish the fire. How the negatives were preserved after the Rising has never been found.  Their state of deterioration suggests that they must have been damaged and developed mould before the copies were made. An interesting element are the pseudo-panoramas made up of several prints to show one view.