From MSN:
“Warsaw stops to remember the
1944 uprising “
As the clock strikes five on
Thursday, Warsaw will come to a sudden halt. Cars will stop, pedestrians will
freeze. For one minute of stillness, sirens will blare across the city. Red and
white smoke will be sent above crowds. This
annual moment of silence is how Poles commemorate the Warsaw Uprising of 1944,
the largest military operation by a resistance movement in Europe during the
second world war. By 1944, years of
German occupation had left the Polish capital suffering from food shortages,
roundups to labour camps and the systematic persecution of Jews - which came to
a head in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943, leaving 63,000 dead. As the
Red Army advanced from the East, Poles were afraid that the Germans would
demolish the capital and turn it into a front-line fortress. At five o'clock on August 1, the Uprising
broke out. In the first few days the Home Army troops, the armed wing of the
underground Polish state, took control of some quarters of the city. Patriotic
elation briefly flooded the streets: Polish flags appeared in windows,
loudspeakers played prewar songs. A month later ammunition ran low and fighters
began to retreat from the city centre. Allied supplies sent by airdrop mostly
failed to reach the uprising. The
Germans took back the city district by district, killing swaths of civilians in
reprisal. By October 2, the uprising had failed. The struggle claimed the lives
of some 18,000 insurgents and over 150,000 total. Remaining Varsovians,
residents of Warsaw, were marched out of the capital as it was plundered. When they returned, the Warsaw they knew had
ceased to exist: 80 percent of buildings had been razed to the ground. "After the war, it was rebuilt, but this
was another Warsaw," said Pawel Ukielski, deputy director of the Warsaw
Rising Museum. The uprising was a turning point in Polish history. It marked
the final two months of the interwar Polish state. Some have argued that its spirit may have been
a motivating factor for the later Solidarity movement, which toppled the
socialist regime in 1989. Debates are still waged about the timing and
leadership of the rising, given its ultimate human cost. Under the socialist leadership, all memory of
the Warsaw Uprising was buried. But
since commemorations took off in the past three decades, monuments have
peppered the capital. All battalions who
took part now have a street, square or statue decked with their name. Some monuments are particularly poignant, such
as the statue of a little boy in an adult helmet, in memory of the children who
served in the uprising. Another forceful
reminder of the scale of the event, the Warsaw Uprising Mound, a 121-metre hill
towering over a panorama of the Mokotow district, was built entirely of the
rubble from the destroyed city. "There is much more public engagement now.
[Until 1989] few spoke about the uprising - all memory of it was kept down,
several insurgents had been arrested, and many others had already passed
away," said Leszek Zukowski, president of the World Association of Home
Army Soldiers. Zukowski fought in the uprising as a 15-year-old. Today, he makes sure to wear a Home Army pin
in his jacket and a symbol used by the underground state - an abbreviation of
"Fighting Poland" in the shape of an anchor - stitched on his tie. The
treatment of insurgents has also changed. Four charities assist former fighters
in their daily chores, such as attending doctor's appointments and grocery
shopping. The mayor's office distributes
annual cash rewards, and this year will also reimburse the trip for those
fighters wishing to attend events in the capital. In the week leading up to the
celebrations, 14 restaurants in central Warsaw offer free meals to former
fighters.
Honouring the combatants
Annual celebrations on August 1
span the entire city, as battalions are saluted in their respective districts.
Candles and flowers heap up on pavements under commemorative plaques. "My
battalion had over 1,500 men during the uprising. Only three of us are still
living. When there were still several more of us ... we would lay flowers in
places where the largest numbers of our friends had perished. That is how we
used to honour the dead," said Zukowski. Every year, there is an official ceremony
outside parliament, followed by a ceremony for insurgents and their families at
the main Military Cemetery. In the evening a bonfire is lit on the Warsaw
Uprising Mound, which burns for 63 days, marking the length of the struggle. Over the years, former fighters have been
eager to share their experiences. "Marking
the day is a reminder for the younger generations that freedom has to be fought
for," said Zukowski. Yet still-living fighters are now over 90 years old. "The
75th anniversary is probably the last one when they can still participate in
the commemorative events." To
Ukielski, this is one of the last moments when "they can pass on their
values as part of a generational relay." As the next generation picks up
the baton, commemorative events are evolving. For the sixth year running, 750 people raced
to the top of the "PAST" building, a key vantage point which was
captured by fighters during the uprising. On August 1, a flotilla of decorated vessels
will sail down the Vistula river through central Warsaw. In the evening, an estimated 30,000 Poles will
gather at Pilsudski Square to sing upbeat patriotic anthems forbidden during
the German occupation, which have regained nostalgic sparkle. The military
scale, casualties and destruction following the Warsaw Uprising still come to
some as a shock. Former mayor of Warsaw,
Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, said that when Boris Johnson, then-mayor of London,
attended the 2014 commemorations, he mistook "50,000 casualties in the
Wola district" as a glitch in translation. He assumed the interpreter had
meant 5,000. On July 25, an exhibition about the Warsaw Uprising was opened at
the Topography of Terror Museum in Berlin. According to Andreas Nachama, director of the
museum, it speaks to the horrors of World War II. "People should be made aware of the fact
that a city of almost one million people was nearly obliterated from the face
of the earth."
^ Warsaw (and Poland in general) gave
more and lost more than almost any other place during World War 2. Not only were
the Poles abandoned by the West (the UK, France and the US) when both the Nazis
and the Soviets invaded and occupied Poland in 1939, but they were also
abandoned by them during the 1944 Uprising and then again from 1945-1989 when
Poland was under Soviet Occupation. Despite all of that Poland and the Poles
continue to be Western-thinking. They are part of NATO, the EU, Schengen and
contribute troops around the globe. It continues to amaze me how resilient the
Poles are (and I’m not just saying that because I am part Polish.) ^
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