Officials, World War II veterans and residents visited sites around the city to mark the 78th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, a heroic act of resistance in which poorly equipped Polish fighters took up arms against the country’s Nazi German invaders.
Every year on August 1, people in Warsaw, and much of Poland, stop to the sound of sirens at exactly 5 p.m. to remember "W Hour," the time when the insurgency began in the dark days of German occupation.
A day of ceremonies included roll calls of honour and wreath-laying as well as speeches, prayers, poetry readings and the singing of patriotic songs.
Poland's President Andrzej Duda on Monday commemorated the victims of the 1944 Wola Massacre, in which the Nazi Germans killed thousands of Warsaw residents in retaliation for the insurgency, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Andrzej Duda said of the WWII massacre: “It was certainly the single biggest act of extermination of Polish civilians during World War II, but it was also likely the single biggest act of extermination in the entire World War II, not just in Poland, but in all the countries.”
Duda has previously said that the 1944 Warsaw Uprising demonstrated that "the Polish people are unvanquished, that they cannot be easily subjugated, that they cannot be suppressed without resistance, that they are proud and strong, and that they are no stranger to heroism and bravery even at the price of death.”
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki paid tribute to the insurgents during a ceremony at the Warsaw Uprising Museum early in the day.
He told those at the ceremony that “the barbarity displayed by the Germans at the time was unimaginable, while the heroism [of the Warsaw insurgents], the struggle for freedom, the fight at all cost, including at the cost of one’s own life, was then, and is now, for us, a model to follow, a model for all generations.”
Morawiecki has previously said that fighters in the Warsaw Uprising were not only "fighting for the future of the nation” but defending fundamental human values such as patriotism, truth and honour.
Polish lawmakers in 2019 passed a special resolution in which they saluted “all the heroes of the Warsaw Uprising" and said that the insurgency was “one of the most heroic and tragic Polish battles of World War II" and the largest military operation by any underground resistance movement in German-occupied Europe.
The 1944 insurgency lasted 63 days before it was put down by better equipped and more numerous German forces.
The heroic act of resistance left the city razed to the ground and resulted in the death of some 18,000 Polish fighters and 200,000 civilians.
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Source: Polish Radio, IAR, PAP, TVP Info
Click on the audio player above for a report by Radio Poland's Michał Owczarek.