70th Uprising

From DW

"Poland marks 70th anniversary of Warsaw Uprising"

Poland is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi German occupation. Almost 200,000 people were killed over 63 days before residents were forced to surrender. Polish citizens honored the fighters and victims of the rebellion on Friday by laying wreaths, sounding horns and singing insurgent tunes. Veteran resistance members gathered along with local dignitaries in Warsaw's Mokotow district to remember those killed. It was on August 1, 1944, that thousands of Warsaw residents and Polish underground fighters rose up against German forces, believing that the approaching Red Army would soon liberate the city. But little Soviet help arrived, and residents held on for 63 days before being forced to surrender, with almost 200,000 people killed in that time. The Nazis expelled the survivors, with many sent to labor or concentration camps, and set the city ablaze.  Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski on Friday laid flowers at the graves of the revolt's commanders. On the eve of the anniversary he said the Warsaw Uprising had been a "battle for the unity of the nation." "Freedom is not something you buy in a shop...sometimes you have to pay for freedom, and not just enjoy it," Komorowski said. Commemorative events are taking place throughout Warsaw, with Polish red-and-white flags decorating the city. "It's difficult today to imagine the past hell," said Jan Ciechanowsk of the state Office of War Veterans and Victims of Oppression. "It's difficult to imagine the destruction, the victims among the (Polish) soldiers but, above all, among civilians," Ciechanowsk said.

^ The Poles are celebrating and remembering the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising and at the same time talking about how the British, Americans and Soviets did nothing to help them in their fight against the Germans (the Soviets even stopped near Warsaw and waited for the Poles and Germans to kill each other and only after the Germans won did the Soviets take up the fight against them again.) What the Polish Government seems to forget is that the Polish Government-in-Exile and the Polish Resistance did the same thing a year earlier when they stood-by and watched the Polish Jews fight the Germans during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Ghetto Uprising lasted almost a month and resulted in thousands of people being killed and deported to death camps. Had the Poles teamed-up with the Jews and fought the Germans together they may have stood a better chance - if nothing else they could at least claim a moral victory. I have Polish ancestry and it makes me upset to know that Poland and the Poles forget that part of history. Poland, like most of Eastern Europe, was anti-Semitic long before the Germans came. It was the Poles that had the Ghetto benches and quotas at their schools along with pogroms in their towns before World War 2. The Germans knew this and so that's the main reason all the Nazi Death Camps are in Poland. Even after the war the Poles attacked the Jews (as late as 1968.) These is something that the Polish Government and Polish people should remember when they remember their own Uprising against the Germans. There's a saying: "The enemy of my enemy is m friend." That clearly wasn't the case back in World War 2 otherwise the Poles would have helped the Jews against the Nazis. With all this said I do still think it is important to remember the Poles that did help the Jews and those that resisted against the Germans. Very few countries and people actively fought against the Germans. The Poles started in 1939 and didn't end until 1945 which ended with 80% of Warsaw destroyed (from the 1939 bombing of Warsaw, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.) The Poles (Jewish and Christian) have suffered a lot in their long history yet they never gave up the hope that they would one-day live in their own country without occupiers or invasions and they have since 1991. ^

http://www.dw.de/poland-marks-70th-anniversary-of-warsaw-uprising/a-17826429