August 1 marks 78 years since the Polish capital rose against the Nazi German occupiers in a heroic act of resistance known as the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.
Wola massacre
The Polish president commemorated the victims of the 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 Wola massacre: “It was the single biggest act of extermination of Polish people during World War II.”
Duda added that the massacre in Warsaw’s Wola district represented a planned extermination of civilians.
He noted that between 15,000 and 65,000 people were killed in the carnage.
Polish President Andrzej Duda. Photo: Grzegorz Jakubowski/KPRP
“It’s impossible to establish the exact number of those murdered because in many cases the bodies were immediately burnt down,” the president said.
Duda went on to state: “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.”
‘A model for all generations’
Meanwhile, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki laid flowers at the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising in the Polish capital.
He said: “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.”
“Glory to the heroes,” Morawiecki added.
‘An icon of Polish identity’
Deputy Prime Minister and Culture Minister Piotr Gliński described the 1944 Warsaw Uprising as “an icon of Polish identity.”
He added: “Without the Warsaw Uprising, there would be no free Poland … There would’ve been no Solidarity and no political change in Central and Eastern Europe.”
Warsaw Uprising 78 years on
Officials, World War II veterans and residents were on Monday expected to visit 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.
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.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, polskatimes.pl