Warsaw, Poland — The Polish capital came to a standstill on Thursday on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw uprising, an unfortunate revolt against Nazi German forces during World War II. Sirens sounded, church bells rang, and people stopped in their tracks, some getting out of their cars to pay tribute to the fallen heroes.
As Poland celebrated a day of great importance in national memory, in the morning it emerged that the oldest surviving insurgent of the uprising, 106-year-old Barbara Sowa, had died. With too few survivors to take part in the ceremonies, it was a poignant reminder of the passing of the generation shaped by the sacrifice of World War II.
Among those stopped in their tracks were Taylor Swift fans, who also turned out in their thousands for the singer’s first of three concerts Thursday night in the city. She had warned his fans (many of whom had traveled from afar) did not panic when they heard the sirens.
Hours earlier, Polish President Andrzej Duda and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier They stood together, heads bowed, to remember those days of August 1944. They paid tribute to the Wola massacre, the mass murder of civilians in the Wola district of Warsaw carried out by the Germans from August 5 to 12, 1944.
“They took them out of their houses, from their tenement houses, they set them on fire, they shot them in the streets and burned their bodies. Several tons of ashes were collected from the streets and squares of Wola to be deposited in a mass grave,” Duda said.
The German president’s bowed head and other symbolic gestures indicated remorse for his nation’s crimes. That Steinmeier “lays a wreath, bows his head and kneels before the memorial cross” demands respect, Duda said, speaking on behalf of the nation under brutal occupation from 1939 to 1945, which saw the extermination of millions of its citizens, Christians and Jews. and the almost total destruction of its capital.
Many Poles feel that symbolic gestures are not enough, and the previous nationalist government in power between 2015 and 2023, allied with Duda, demanded 1.3 billion dollars of Germany in war reparations. Germany says it will not pay and the matter was resolved with compensation paid to Eastern Bloc nations in the years after the war and the cession of territory to Poland.
The government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which took power last December, has lowered the tone of the demands But he says he would still like Berlin to consider compensation possibilities.
There remains a feeling in Poland that the Germans have done much more to address their crimes against Europe’s Jews than against Poles, who were seen as racially inferior in Adolf Hitler’s ideology and subjected to forced labor and atrocities.
The Warsaw Revolt began on August 1, 1944 by the clandestine Home Army, which acted under orders from the Polish government in exile in London.
The objective was to liberate the capital from the German occupiers and take control of the country before the advance of the Soviet army. Moscow, intent on ruling postwar Poland, withheld aid and kept its Red Army positioned across the Vistula River as the capital bled and burned.
The Nazis, with their professional army and superior weaponry, killed 200,000 Polish fighters and civilians and devastated the city in revenge.
Today, Poles remember the uprising as one of the most important moments in a long history of struggles for independence, often against Russia. The bravery of the fighters remains a defining memory in Poland’s image of itself as a nation willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for freedom.
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