Museum director Jan Ołdakowski told reporters Tuesday that this year's programming was built deliberately around communal experiences — moments when people do something together rather than simply observe. He framed the approach as an echo of the fighters' own outlook.
"This is also a kind of message from the insurgents. They always said that when Poles stand together, nothing can break them", he said.
Ołdakowski described the uprising itself as carrying a brutal contradiction at its core: it opened with young volunteers convinced that armed struggle was the only route to a free Poland and to their own personal liberty, and it closed with a city reduced to rubble. Art, he argued, is uniquely equipped to convey that kind of paradox.
A newcomer's take on loss
That artistic framing sets the tone for the anniversary's opening event: the July 25 release of composer Błażej Król's album "Łączy nas..." ("What Connects Us..."), unveiled at a concert in the museum's Freedom Park featuring guest performers Daria ze Śląska and Andrzej Piaseczny. Its 12 tracks, built around the events of August and September 1944, place listeners inside moments of danger and decision, working through loss in nearly every register — from the dread that precedes catastrophe to the shattering of a child's innocence.
Król, who isn't from Warsaw and rarely spends time there, called the record a deliberately outsider's view of 1944. He acknowledged real hesitation about taking on "such a serious, very intense subject" — and a longstanding aversion to romanticizing war.
That changed, he said, after time spent with Ołdakowski and touring the museum, where the history he encountered diverged sharply from what he'd learned in grade school. The experience, he said, gave him license to approach the material his own way: through emotion, impression, and fragments of scenes that might have unfolded at the time.
A month of remembrance
The album's release also marks the start of this year's photography competition for images taken during the commemorations — rebranded last year as "Memory 'W' in Frame," named for photographer Eugeniusz Lokajski.
The following day, July 26, brings a family-oriented outdoor event in Freedom Park, "It Started Around the Corner: The Uprising in the Districts," alongside a Mass for uprising veterans, scouts and Warsaw residents. On July 27, the museum releases "Photographer at War: 36 Frames," a book on wartime press photographers; two days later it opens "SPLOT: Can a Dress Be a Uniform?," an exhibition tracing how the war reshaped what Varsovians wore. That same day, the museum courtyard hosts the opening ceremony for a scouting rally tied to the anniversary, and on July 30, uprising veterans gather in Freedom Park with President Karol Nawrocki and Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski.
On July 31, the eve of the anniversary itself, an open-air version of the wartime-photographer exhibition opens at the Royal Łazienki gardens. August 1 centers on "W-Hour," the moment the uprising began: an outdoor studio in Freedom Park hosts veterans sharing their accounts starting at 3 p.m., followed at 5 p.m. by a citywide tribute marked by air-raid sirens.
That evening, crowds gather at Pilsudski Square for communal singing of uprising-era songs, backed by an orchestra and choir under Bartlomiej Wasik. The museum also stages the premiere of "It Wasn't Hot," a theatrical work drawing on writing by Anna Świrszczyńska and Miron Białoszewski, directed by Aleksandra Bielewicz. Alongside these events, volunteers and scouts taking part in the rally will stand honor guard at memorial sites across the city as part of a campaign called "Freedom Connects," distributing Fighting Poland emblem pins to participants.
The commemorations continue into August: a city-wide game called "Labyrinth '44: An (Un)Ordinary City" runs its fifth edition on August 2 inside the historic Hall B of Warsaw's municipal bus depot, alongside a bicycle ride retracing uprising battle lines through the Ochota and Mokotów districts. On August 5, a memorial march for civilian victims sets off from the monument to the 50,000 residents of Wola killed by German forces during the uprising, with organizers reading victims' names aloud along the route.
The Warsaw Uprising remains the largest armed resistance operation carried out anywhere in German-occupied Europe. Between 40,000 and 50,000 fighters took up arms on August 1, 1944, in what was meant to be a brief campaign but stretched on for more than two months. Roughly 18,000 insurgents were killed and 25,000 wounded, while civilian deaths reached an estimated 180,000. The roughly 500,000 residents who survived were driven from the city, which German forces then almost entirely destroyed.
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Source: PAP