80th Anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising

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The tragic epitome of courage, self-sacrifice and valour.

August 1st will always occupy a special place in the hearts of all Varsovians. On this particular day in 1944, the Polish Home Army (Arma Krajowa-AK) initiated an armed uprising against the Nazi occupant. At precisely 5 pm, the call to arms was officially sent out to all combatants in Warsaw and is known as W-hour as in "wolnosc" freedom in Polish.

The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 is often conflated with the dramatic Jewish Ghetto Uprising of April–May 1943 that ended in the deportation of all the remaining Jews in Warsaw to the death camps. The August 1944 Uprising is similarly tragic but involved the attempt of the Polish resistance to liberate the Polish Capital from the Nazi occupant and thus gain an important role in the immediate future of the country. The decision to start the rebellion was taken when the Soviet Army was seen advancing on the Eastern bank of the Vistula River. The AK commanders anticipated that the uprising would last only a few days and that they would be able to quickly free Warsaw before the Soviets entered the city.

The Observation Tower at the Warsaw Uprising Museum opened in 2004.

Over 45'000 combatants participated in the uprising, and initial success saw the AK take control of several city districts. However, after the element of surprise, the Germans quickly retaliated as brutally and violently as possible, not hesitating to massacre innocent civilians on the direct orders of Hitler and Himmler, notably in the Wola neighbourhood where between 40'000 to 50'000 Inhabitants were killed.

Over a period of sixty-three days, the AK freedom fighters stood their ground against a far superior military force, hoping for support from the Soviet army camped across the river. The Allied forces, aware of the uprising, tried to help by organising airdrops, but the distance required to fly was a major impediment, given that the Soviets refused to offer any air support from the territories they controlled, which were, by definition, much closer to the stricken city.

After losing control of the old city and suffering an increasingly high number of casualties, the AK was forced to capitulate on October 2nd. The Uprising saw more than 180'000 victims. This was just the beginning of the suffering and terror inflicted on the AK survivors and civilians alike. The remaining combatants and civilians were rounded up and sent to German labour camps or concentration camps. In an act of indiscriminate revenge, the Nazi victors systematically destroyed the city and razed it to the ground. So much so that over 90% of all historical monuments and 75% of the buildings were destroyed. Over a period of three months up to January 17, 1945, when the Soviet army finally crossed the Vistula to free what had become a ghost city, the Nazis had free rein to organise so-called "Brandkommandos" (fire commandos) to destroy the city and exterminate any remaining populations. Thus ended one of the most dire episodes of Polish history, with the defeat of the Polish Home Army and their failure to liberate Warsaw.

What made the uprising all the more memorable was the support and involvement of the civilian population, women and young children alike, who often played an important role as couriers.

From one hell to another.

The consequences of the failed uprising were both dramatic and far-reaching. First and foremost, the Soviet domination and control of Poland was thereafter unchallenged and complete. The Yalta Conference of February 1945 merely rubber-stamped the partition of Europe into spheres of influence, and Poland was irrevocably lost to the West. Stalin could dictate his terms for post-war Poland, imposing new borders along the so-called Curzon line, thus annexing all territories eastwards.

As part of the integration of Poland into Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe, to discredit the pre-war Western alliance with the Western powers and consolidate the new communist regime, the AK was declared illegal and anti-Soviet, and as a direct result, all previous AK combatants were persecuted, arrested and in numerous instances sent to the Siberian gulags. The remaining AK leaders in Poland were summoned under false pretences to a meeting by the Soviet military commanders in Poland. They were summarily arrested by the NKVD, accused of "illegal activity" against the Red Army, and sent to Moscow to be sentenced in a show trial in 1945. They avoided the death penalty and were sentenced to relatively lenient hard labour terms (between five and ten years imprisonment). This allowed Stalin to claim that he had treated them fairly and skilfully defused any international condemnation. The Polish government in exile was disbanded, and the newly installed Soviet-backed Communist regime in Poland was accepted as the legitimate government of Poland.

The official history of the Warsaw Uprising and of the liberation of Warsaw was dictated by the victor, namely the Soviets who declared that the Red Army had liberated Warsaw in January 1945 and that the AK were responsible for the useless massacre of the civilian population and the destruction of the city going so far as to brand them as fascist and accomplices to the Nazis.

The advent of the Cold War immediately after the Second World War sealed the state of the countries trapped under Soviet influence behind the Iron Curtain. It condemned Poland to a further forty-three years under communist dictatorship.

It was forbidden to mention the Warsaw Uprising or to challenge the official Soviet history of that period. To quote the British historian Norman Davies :

"Party historians who were licensed to talk about war had a strange habit of running out of ink when they reached 1943".

It is almost impossible to imagine the anguish and despair of the people who experienced the Warsaw Uprising, fighting for freedom, such an essential and fundamental notion that has inspired so many other revolutions and battles around the world, to not only suffer defeat at the hands of their occupying tormentors but then to be shunned and branded traitors by their fellow compatriots and government reduced to silence for fear of their own lives.

Freedom is the first victim of oppressive regimes, and the communist regime in Poland was no exception. After Stalin's death, the Polish authorities slowly adopted more lenient policies under the influence of the Church, but change was a long time in coming. The surprise election of Karol Wojtyla as Pope in 1978 was significant for Poland, particularly when the Pope visited Warsaw soon after his election and acted as a catalyst in the quest for freedom of the Polish people. In his homily on Victory Square on June 2nd 1979, the Pope alluded directly to the Warsaw Uprising :

"There is no way of understanding the city of Warsaw, Poland's capital, which in 1944 undertook an unequal battle against the invader, abandoned by its powerful allies if one fails to remember that Christ the Redeemer with his cross on the (Cracow Faubourg), lay under those same ruins... (...) We cannot forget the Polish men and women, the victims, who paid with their lives. We cannot forget the heroism of the Polish soldier who fought on all the world's fronts 'for our freedom and yours'.".

The wave of self-confidence and enthusiasm that followed the Pope's visit and his words cannot be underestimated. Poland would never be the same again, and the success of the Solidarity movement under Lech Wałęsa was a sign of times to come. For sixteen months, between August 1980 and December 1981, a wave of freedom swept through the country, and for the first time, free debate, particularly about recent history, flourished. The leaders of Solidarity saw themselves as the spiritual heirs to the Warsaw Uprising. For the first time, the government accepted official recognition of the uprising and a statue was erected in the old town depicting a thirteen-year-old boy soldier, Cpl. Antek who was killed in the combats on August 8 1944. The free speech of 1980-1981 had broken the official taboos about the Uprising, and the Communist authorities were unable to put the genie back in the bottle, even when Solidarity was suppressed and martial law imposed.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communist rule in Poland, and the free democratic presidential elections of December 1990 won by Lech Wałęsa, the floodgates were finally open, and the rehabilitation of the AK and the Warsaw Uprising began in earnest.

The sacrifice of the Warsaw freedom fighters in 1944 has been progressively recognised, understood, and celebrated. On the 60th anniversary, the Warsaw Uprising Museum was inaugurated. At W hour, the emergency sirens mark the moment, and everybody observes a minute of silence, wherever they may be. Buses stop on the streets, cars on the motorways, and the city comes to a standstill.

Celebration of W-hour

The fall of communism could not erase in one go the pain inflicted over almost half a century. The crimes of Hitler and Stalin have left an indelible mark on Poland and on Polish history.

The silencing of the Warsaw Uprising could not be undone. The damaged and the discriminated could not be properly compensated. The elderly could not be restored to their youth. The dead could not be resurrected. The hope was for one thing alone: that the Rising be properly remembered.

Belated tribute to the Warsaw 44 heroes.

80 years on, we can genuinely say that the members of the so-called Generation of Columbuses, i.e. the class of 1944, have not only been remembered, but they are at the pinnacle of what freedom means and represents. They are forever graved in the marble of Polish history. The wheels of history turn slowly, but they ultimately always point to the truth.

As we enjoy the privileges of life in modern Poland, a country that is leapfrogging other Western European countries and will soon be at the top of the class of all EU nations, we owe an immense debt of gratitude to those freedom fighters of 1944. It may seem irrelevant, but the mere fact that Taylor Swift will give her first concert in Poland at the National Stadium today on the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising is important evidence that their fight was not in vain. Taylor Swift may or may not be aware of the importance of today's anniversary. But therein lies the paradox: one of the world's major cultural phenomenons of the 21st century will be performing in Warsaw, a scant few metres away from where 80 years ago, a soldier looked out across the Vistula nervously and saw for the first time the Soviet army approaching.....

When we commemorate a minute of silence at 5 pm this evening, let us remember the spirit, courage and belief of the hundreds of AK combatants and civilians who stood up to take action against one of the most sanguinary and evil occupants ever to set foot in Warsaw. Imagine what they were thinking when the call to arms came through, and imagine the following sixty-three days of intense fighting, where horror upon horror was inflicted on the proud Varsovians. Abandoned by friends and allies, within a stone's throw of the Red Army that turned more than just a blind eye, they fought day and night for the only thing that mattered in their eyes: freedom. The price they paid, and that Warsaw paid, cannot be underestimated, but yet ultimately, the example they set for the future generations made it all worthwhile.

Freedom is a sacred commodity that should never be underestimated, be it in Poland, Ukraine, Europe or the United States of America.