Poland marks 80th anniversary of Warsaw Uprising
The presidents of Poland and Germany have paid tribute to Poles slaughtered by Nazi Germany during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
Jewish Ghetto Police guarding the gates of the Warsaw Ghetto, June 1942. Credit: German Federal Archives via Wikimedia Commons
The Polish and German presidents have bowed their heads to the sound of a military drum as they paid tribute to Poles killed 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 day, news broke that the oldest surviving insurgent in the uprising, Barbara Sowa, 106, died in the morning.
With 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 the Second World War.
13,000 Jews were killed in the ghetto during the uprising (some 6,000 among them were burnt alive or died from smoke inhalation). Of the remaining 50,000 residents, almost all were captured and shipped to the death camps of Majdanek and Treblinka.
Later on Thursday, the city will stop and sirens will sound to pay tribute to the insurgents.
US singer Taylor Swift, who is giving the first of three concerts on Thursday evening in Warsaw, warned her fans on social media not to panic when they heard the sirens.
Polish President Andrzej Duda and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier stood together, heads bowed, in remembrance.
They paid tribute to the Wola Massacre, the mass murder of civilians of Warsaw’s Wola district carried out by the Nazis from August 5 to August 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,” Duda said.
“Several tonnes of ashes were collected from the streets and squares of Wola, in order to place them in a common grave.”
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 August 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 Nazi occupiers and take control of the country before 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 burned.
The Nazis, with their professional army and superior weaponry, killed 200,000 Polish fighters and civilians and razed the city in revenge.
The uprising is remembered by Poles as one of the most important moments in a long history of independence struggles, often against Russia.
By: Vanessa Gera/AAP
