Warsaw Uprising: We should pay our respects to them

August 1, 1944, 5 p.m., Warsaw. Polish fighters manage to storm German occupier bases and raise their own flag again. Soviet tanks were approaching the capital, but the Polish government in exile had decided that they did not want to be liberated. The city was supposed to liberate itself and set a sign of the strength and independence of the Polish state. At exactly 5 p.m. – later known as the W hour in the collective memory – it starts. On the same day, SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered a retaliation with all severity.

Today the town in the Wola district commemorates the 63 days of the uprising in a museum. This and the Ochota district are considered to be the districts in which the SS acted particularly brutally. Up to 50,000 civilians were killed there in the first five days of the uprising. The former secret symbol of the Home Army PW is emblazoned on the museum building. The abbreviation stands for Polska Walcząca, German: Fighting Poland. Today it can be found on T-shirts or as stickers on street lamps and even street cleaning cars. There is great interest in the exhibition on the Warsaw Uprising. In the queue in front of the entrance, a woman informs acquaintances on her cell phone: “There’s such a monstrous snake here, you can’t even imagine it.”

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Małgorzata Czerwińska-Buczek is not at all surprised. She worked in the museum herself and met many contemporary witnesses of the uprising there and became friends with some of them. She tells the “nd” that the survivors’ stories touched her so much that she would have considered it a “crime” not to record them in writing. She did this with a book. Whereupon other contemporary witnesses contacted her. Czerwińska-Buczek also dedicated herself to their stories and for this reason gave up her job at the museum.

Posters of remembrance are present throughout the city and also decorate buses. The layout is appealing, could also be advertising for a cultural festival. Remembrance is obligatory, regardless of how successful or not the rebellion may have been, says Małgorzata Czerwińska-Buczek. “The insurgents wanted nothing less than freedom – we have to respect that.” On the anniversary, the sirens wail all over Warsaw at the so-called W hour. All city traffic comes to a standstill and people pause to remember. »It is a date on which there should be no quarrels among one another. On this day we should all feel like Warsaw residents.«

After the defeat of the uprising, Hitler ordered Warsaw to be “completely destroyed.” This was followed, as in the Warsaw Uprising Museum in one 3D-Animation can be seen from a bird’s eye view. A stone desert. When the first German troops conquered Warsaw in September 1939, the city still had 1.3 million inhabitants. After the uprising fell, fewer than 1,000 people lived in the ruins. “This is the city that my mother experienced when she was seven,” a museum guard explains to visitors. And to “nd”: “People come here who have experienced this or whose family history is intertwined with it.”

“The insurgents wanted nothing less than freedom – we have to respect that.”

Małgorzata Czerwińska-BuczekMuseologin

The political scientist and history editor of the daily newspaper “Rzeczpospolita” Marek Kozubal explains Remembrance Day as an “element of our national identity”. He reports on a representative survey that was recently carried out and has not yet been published. It has shown that Poles perceive the uprising of 1944 as one of the most important turning points in national history. This makes it part of events such as the “end of Soviet rule” in 1989 and the country’s accession to the EU and NATO. In his opinion, the memory of the uprising is alive as long as there are contemporary witnesses and relatives. After that, the journalist suspects, it will fade away. This is precisely why the museum makes a particularly important contribution. »The history of the uprising shows how close – unfortunately even today – the idea of ​​ruins and war is. We see this in Ukraine,” said the editor.

A dull heartbeat can be heard almost throughout the exhibition, occasionally accompanied by the howling of bombs being dropped. In the dimly lit rooms, it is sometimes difficult to read the information texts. Visitors are guided through life and death in the days of the uprising across paved floors or through a replica of a sewer. “You have to have lived through all of this to understand that Warsaw couldn’t help but fight,” is written on a wall, including notices from the time of the German occupation. Elsewhere, leaflets call for battle: “The armed struggle for the liberation of the capital has begun! Three days of fighting against the occupier brought us great tactical and moral successes… Long live independent Poland!” In a film shown in August 1944 in a cinema in the middle of rebellious Warsaw, there are images of the wounded and of the destruction of the city. “Lonely Warsaw continues to fight,” it says here.

She doesn’t speak as a historian, says Małgorzata Czerwińska-Buczek. She sees herself as the voice of the survivors with whom she spoke. “The five years of occupation were hell for these people, but they told me that the moments of the uprising were the most beautiful in their lives because for the first time the possibility of liberation was felt.” The only thing that the Warsaw residents* inside in 1944 would have been retaliation. The day the uprising began “was the opportunity to take revenge for the years in hell that no one should ever have to go through.” Małgorzata Czerwińska-Buczek is also convinced that an uprising would have occurred spontaneously, with or without the call of the Home Army.

Today’s commemoration is partly mixed with unease that the fight was hopeless and that it was actually doomed to failure from the start. Critics believe that the huge number of victims could have been avoided. You can hear different judgments in the museum via telephone receivers. The historian Jan Ciechanowski calls the uprising a “great misfortune”; it led to “a useless shedding of Polish blood.” Małgorzata Czerwińska-Buczek believes that despite different opinions, “all Poles should stand together on this day. There are only a handful of survivors left and we should unite around them and express our appreciation to them.” The people not only fought for a free Poland, they also rebuilt it after the war. The Polish journalist and publicist Adam Krzemiński recently wrote in an essay: “Ultimately, one should not blame the victim, but rather the perpetrator.”

I speak to a young family in the museum who are initially open to telling me about their impressions. But when I introduce myself, they suddenly say that they don’t want to talk to the German media. Are the wounds still that deep? Or have new ones been added in the meantime?

A large stage has been set up in the adjacent Wolności Park (Freedom Park), and a children’s choir is rehearsing its performance for the 80th anniversary of the uprising. The boys and girls warble: “W – wolność (freedom), W – Wspólnota (community), W – Ważne (important).” Curious people, attracted by the bell-like voices, take photos of the young singers. Soldiers stroll around the grounds and take selfies in front of the museum.

A mother who came from Szczecin with her daughter to see the exhibition asks me to photograph her with the museum and the “PW” visible on it. She says that her brother’s birthday is August 1st, the day the uprising began. People always celebrate together, there is a barbecue. “But at 5 p.m. we interrupt the celebration and then we pause for a moment.” That’s important to them. And she would like to pass this tradition on to her daughter. She emphasizes: “It must be remembered so that history does not repeat itself.”