80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising

This year Poland commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising.

The 1944 Warsaw Uprising was the single largest military effort undertaken by resistance forces to oppose German occupation during World War II.

The heroic rising against the German occupation lasted for 63 days, between the 1st of August and the 3rd of October 1944. Soldiers and civilians took part in an uneven struggle for freedom and dignity, being carefully watched by the Soviet troops from the other side of the Vistula River. The Soviet Union denied any help to the insurgents. Warsaw was also largely left alone by most allied forces, who were reluctant to send airplanes with food and ammunition.

However, due to the pressure of the Polish Government in exile the allies launched an operation called  the Warsaw Airlift, in order to drop supplies such as weapons, ammunition, medicines, food and clothes to the those struggling for freedom in the heart of occupied Europe.

Pilots from different countries took part in this dangerous operation. Apart from the Poles also British, South African, American and Canadian pilots volunteered for these incredibly dangerous flights. Despite their heroic efforts, most of the drops landed in the parts of the city that were occupied by the Germans.

Maurice Sanders who was on board of Liberator KG-938 „A” on 15 August 1944 over Warsaw said that: „The city was on fire, there was a lot of smoke and haze around. The Germans were shooting at us all the time as we went in and of course we were within range of rifle fire let alone anti-aircraft guns.”

(Warsaw Airlift – Incredible Stories that Really Happened, Michał T. Wójciuk)

This operation was only possible because of the shared beliefs of the pilots and the Polish people. Simple values that created the Western Civilization like freedom, independence, respect for the life of individual human beings and faith in God made them risk their lives and make great history.

One of those on the ground, waiting with great hope for help, was Witold Stanisławski, to whom this site is dedicated. He participated in the Warsaw Uprising and was killed by the Germans almost at the end of the battle, on the 29th of September 1944.

His personal story of bravery and heroism can be seen as a symbol of many other individual stories of soldiers and civilians caught in this unprecedented historic situation.

The Warsaw Uprising for years has been studies by the historians of different nationalities. There is a vast range of material available, mainly in English. However, it has largely been forgotten by the international public. The 80th anniversary is a good moment to recall some numbers and opinions of those who witnessed the battle and those who write about it today.

Numbers

About the Warsaw Uprising

Norman Davies, historian

My aim in writing Rising ‘ 44 was nothing more complicated than to tell the story of one of the great tragedies of the twentieth century. It is a story that has never been properly told, even though it reveals some fundamental truths about the Second World War and challenges many conventional assumptions. For half a century and more, it was the subject of severe censorship by post-war authorities who did not wish to see the historical realities publicized: and, as a topic of acute embarrassment for the Western Powers, it has not been given prominence in the Western interpretations. Although it resulted in the near-total destruction of one of Europe’s ancient capitals, and in enormous loss of life, it was never brought for examination before the Nuremberg Tribunal.

Rising’ 44, The Battle for Warsaw, 2003

Jan Stanisław Jankowski, Government Delegate for the Polish Home Army

We wanted to be free and to owe freedom to ourselves.

Tadeusz Ruman, pilot

We didn’t think about the losses then, what pried most on our minds was the sight of Warsaw on fire and the thought of our brothers down there, dying.(…)
          Our last flight was the most dramatic. We reached Poland with only two engines working. Four of our planes were lost. That time I flew on a Liberator. The German fired at us furiously in the district of Mokotów. It was dark, and flying too low we didn’t even had a chance to jump with parachutes. Therefore, we decided to head southwards in order to gain altitude, and then parachute.
          

SS Chief Heinrich Himmler

As soon as I heard the news of the uprising in Warsaw, I went to the Führer: […] I said: At the same time, I also gave orders for Warsaw to be totally destroyed.

Extract from a speech about the Warsaw Uprising on September 21, 1944

The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation.

SS officers' conference, 17 October 1944

Bogusław T. Czewiński, prosecutor at the Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation

The Pacification of the Warsaw Uprising. Criminals have remained unpunished. No criminal of the Second World War has been sentenced in Germany for these crimes against humanity or genocide.

Article in the Institute of National Remembrance, 1st of August 2018

Milan Kundera, writer

The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history.

Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.

Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 1979

The video

This short video is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather Witold Stanisławski, one of many, often nameless, heroes of the Warsaw Uprising 1944, who looked up in the sky hoping to see allied airplanes.