Warsaw remembers 80 years after the city’s WWII uprising

By Jo Harper

WARSAW (AA) – Visitors from around the world have descended on Warsaw as the Polish capital remembers the Warsaw Uprising.

A minute's silence across the city is observed at 5 p.m. to remember the sirens of Aug. 1, 1944 that marked the start of the battle as a signal to the Polish resistance Home Army (AK).

The uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by a European resistance movement during World War Two. In 1944, Poland had been occupied by Nazi Germany for almost five years.

Maria Klos, whose father fought as a 14-year-old in the uprising, brought her English husband and half-Polish, half-British kids to the city for the 80th commemorations.

“My dad was 14 when it started and was fighting with his brother and their best friend in the city. And so as I grew up, we would come back to visit Poland all through the 80s because half my family is still here. And he showed us: ‘Here I was fighting in this street. Here I was fighting in this street.’ And as a child, you don’t really process that. But when you get older, you realize, Oh my God, this was amazing,” she said.

Maria's father, who died 15 years ago, was presented a medal of valor by the then communist authorities in 1987 for his role in the uprising.

“You learn about the history and what it means. For freedom, for keeping the Polish nation together is incredible. To fight oppression after the hell they’d gone through with the occupation of the Nazis, and then they knew what was coming with the Russians,” Maria added. “So to fight for something like that is really incredible, that my family did it and survived it. It’s just to me so, so important. It’s basically who I am.”

Keiichiro Ushio from Osaka, Japan came with his wife to Warsaw for the commemorations on a trip across Europe.

“I wanted to be here for this special moment. I knew about the uprising from the book by Norman Davies. I was impressed by the spirit of the people in 1944.”

Bartlomiej Szpala, a scout from Silesia, said he and his troupe were in the capital to commemorate what “past generations had done to keep Poland independent.”

The main objectives of the uprising were to drive the Germans out of Warsaw and to liberate Poland's capital and assert Polish sovereignty before the Soviet-backed government could take control.

While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Soviet Red Army halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the resistance and to destroy the city. Declassified documents show that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin wanted to exhaust the AK and pave the way for communist rule.

The exact number of casualties is unknown, but it is estimated that 16,000 members of the Polish resistance were killed and 6,000 badly wounded, while 150,000-200,000 Polish civilians died, mostly in mass executions.

In 1939, Warsaw had 1,350,000 inhabitants, and a million were still in the city at the start of the uprising. After the uprising, 85% of the city was deliberately destroyed by the German forces.

“No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation,” SS chief Heinrich Himmler said on Oct. 17, 1944.​​​​​​​

“My grandmother took only one thing from the uprising -- a tiny, black-and-white image of the Merciful Jesus. Having this image gave her hope. All she had left was this tiny image, which she sometimes put up when she prayed, even as an elderly lady,” the director of the Warsaw Uprising Museum, Jan Oldakowski, says in the podcast "Rachunek duszy" (An examination of conscience).