Every year on August 1 at 5:00 p.m., sirens sound in the streets of Warsaw. The city is dying. With a minute's silence, the inhabitants of Warsaw pay tribute to the dead and surviving insurgents.
Every year in various cities in Poland, the anniversary of the uprising is celebrated, but in the capital, the celebrations commemorating its beginning are extremely solemn. About the uprising reminds “The “W“ – 17:00. At this hour, for one minute the city is announced by the sirens. Warsaw's public transport, cars and citizens stop to pay their respects to the insurgents and slain residents of the city.
On August 1, 1944, the Warsaw Uprising broke out, which lasted 63 days until October 3, 1944 and was the largest armed liberation uprising in the history of World War II. Almost 50,000 insurgents from the Home Army stand up for armed struggle against the Germans, who have occupied the capital of Poland since 1939.
In conditions of tactical inactivity on the part of the Red Army divisions stationed on the other bank of the Vistula and the unequal forces of the insurgents in the battle against the forces of the German Nazis, the uprising cost the lives of about 16,000 AK insurgents and 150,000 casualties among the civilian Polish population.
About 25% of the buildings on the left bank of Warsaw were also destroyed, and together with the destruction carried out by the Germans after the suppression of the uprising until January 16, 1945, the German Nazis destroyed more than 70% of the residential buildings and 90% of the monuments of culture in the city.
The destruction of the city was preceded by five years of tyrannical oppression by the German occupiers, "Deutsche Welle" recalls. Deportations, mass executions and persecutions are commonplace. After the uprising of the Jewish population in the Warsaw Ghetto was brutally suppressed in the spring of 1943 (the two uprisings are often confused), the oppression in the city intensified even more.
When the Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944, almost one million people lived in the city. 40,000 of them volunteered in the illegal army (Army Craiova) led by the Polish government-in-exile in London. They were initially confronted by 16,000 Wehrmacht soldiers and SS special forces, and then received reinforcements. By this time, the German army was retreating to the east, while the Red Army was closing in. "The Germans planned to turn Warsaw into a fortress, from which it followed that the city would be completely destroyed,” explains Leszek Žukowski, chairman of the largest Polish veterans' organization. "We wanted to prevent this and liberate the city," says Zhukovsky, who was only 15 years old when he took part in the fighting.
For the Nazis, the uprising comes just in time.
“It is good that the Poles did it,", said SS Commander-in-Chief Heinrich Himmler at the time, who probably bears the greatest responsibility for the atrocities in Poland. At the end of the summer of 1944, he told Hitler: "In 5-6 weeks we will be gone. But by then, Warsaw, the capital of this once 16-17 million Polish nation, will be destroyed." Already in the first days of the uprising, the Nazis executed about 50,000 civilians.
The rebels are hoping for outside help. But supplies of arms, ammunition and food dropped by Western allies often fail to reach their destination. Meanwhile, the Red Army remained on the other bank of the Vistula and did not intervene in the fighting. Stalin had no interest in helping the Polish army led by the anti-communist government in exile. After 63 days, the insurgents had to surrender.
Warsaw was subsequently largely destroyed on Hitler's personal orders.
90 percent of all historical sites, including the royal palace, were blown up, as were all bridges and industrial buildings. In the fall of 1944, only a few thousand people survived in the ruins in the center of the city.
The communist regime remained silent for decades about what happened in Warsaw in 1944. Public discussion of the events only began in 1989. And while the heroism of the insurgents is still at the forefront of discussion, today it is questioned the high blood tax that the Polish population had to pay. That is why the hundreds of commemorative plaques in the city in memory of the victims of 1944 remind.