Officials, World War II veterans and residents are expected to visit sites around the city to mark the 80th 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.
Ceremonies usually include roll calls of honour and wreath-laying as well as speeches, prayers, poetry readings and the singing of patriotic songs.
Poland's Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said on the eve of the anniversary that the revolt eight decades ago was among the bloodiest insurgencies in Polish history.
President Andrzej Duda has said that the 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 lawmakers last week passed a special resolution in which they saluted "the heroes of this great uprising, both the soldiers of the Home Army and other military formations who took up arms against the German occupiers, and the civilian inhabitants of Warsaw who died, were wounded, and lost their possessions."
Officials have 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.
