From US News:
“Poland Marks 80th Anniversary
of Warsaw Uprising, Honoring Heroes of Doomed Fight for Freedom”
(Poland's President Andrzej Duda,
left, shakes hands with Germany's President Frank-Walter Steinmeier prior to
their talks at the Belweder Palace in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday Aug. 1, 2024.)
The Polish and German presidents
bowed their heads to the cadence of a military drum as they paid tribute
Thursday to Poles slaughtered by Nazi Germany during the Warsaw Uprising of
1944 on the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the ill-fated revolt. As Poland
marked the hallowed day, news broke that the oldest surviving insurgent in
uprising, 106-year-old Barbara Sowa, died in the morning. With very few
survivors left to take part in the ceremonies, it was a poignant reminder of
the passing away of the generation shaped by the sacrifice of World War II. Later,
the city will stop and sirens will wail to pay tribute to the insurgents.
Taylor Swift, who is giving the first of three concerts Thursday evening in
Warsaw, warned her fans on social media not to panic when they hear the sirens.
Many are traveling from far away for the performance.
Polish President Andrzej Duda and
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier stood together, heads bowed, to
remember those days of August in 1944. They paid tribute to the Wola Massacre,
the mass-murder of civilians of Warsaw’s Wola district carried out by the
Germans from Aug. 5 to Aug. 12, 1944. “They were led out of their homes,
tenement houses, their homes were set on fire, and they themselves were shot in
the streets, and their bodies were burned. Several tons of ashes were collected
from the streets and squares of Wola, in order to place them in a common
grave,” Duda said.
The German president's bowed head
and other symbolic gestures signaled remorse for the crimes of his nation. That
Steinmeier "lays a wreath, bows his head, kneels before the commemorative
cross,” calls for respect, said Duda, speaking for the nation under brutal
occupation from 1939-1945, which suffered the extermination of millions of its
citizens, Christian and Jewish, and the near-total destruction of its capital
city.
Warsaw’s revolt began Aug. 1,
1944, by the clandestine Home Army, which acted on orders from Poland’s
government-in-exile in London. The aim was to free the capital from German
occupiers and take control of the country ahead of the advancing Soviet army.
Moscow, intending to rule postwar Poland, withheld help and kept its Red Army
positioned on the other side of the Vistula River as the capital bled and
burned. The Nazis, with their professional army and superior weaponry, killed
200,000 Polish fighters and civilians and razed the city in revenge.
Today the uprising is remembered
by Poles as one of the most important moments in a long history of independence
struggles, often against Russia. The courage of the fighters remains a defining
memory in the Polish image of itself as a nation willing to make the ultimate
sacrifice for freedom.
^ From the German President asking
the Poles for forgiveness to Taylor Swift warning her Fans about the
Anniversary Sirens before her Concert the 80th Anniversary of the
Warsaw Uprising is International – too bad the 1944 Uprising wasn’t. ^
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