Warsaw Rising

Warsaw, Poland

July 20, 2025

Around the corner from the Supreme Court is a section of the wall that once encircled the ghettos where citizens of Warsaw had been rounded up between 1940-1943. A map is mounted on it and on the pavement nearby are some of the ghetto boundary markers. The note on the wall seems inconspicuous for the scale of inhumanity and unspeakable cruelty:

Approximately 360,000 Warsaw Jews and 90,000 from other towns were herded into the ghetto where 100,000 died of hunger. The summer of 1942 saw 300,000 being deported and killed in the gas chambers of Treblinka. In an uprising from mid-April to mid-May of 1943, fighters and civilians perished either in combat or in the systematically burned ghetto buildings. In November of 1943 the remaining population were killed in the concentration camps of Majdenik, Poniatowa and Treblinka.

Warsaw had already been occupied for four years when the citizens’ pent-up yearning for freedom gave vent in an uprising. The largest underground movement in WWII, their story is told via photographs, poignant memories and some recorded interviews at the Warsaw Rising Museum. Outside the museum is the larger-than-life monument to the heroes of this uprising. Across the street are statues of the women who fought alongside.

The call went out for 17:00 hours on August 1, 1944. The Polish underground resistance, called the Home Army was to mobilize, the timing chosen to coincide with the retreat of German forces from Poland, ahead of the incoming Soviet forces. The aim was to liberate Warsaw and assert Polish sovereignty before the Soviet Union which already controlled eastern Poland, could assume control. The imminent threat of mass roundups of able-bodied Poles by the Germans served as an equally important motivator.

Commanded by Gen. Tadeus Bor-Komorowski, a crowd of some 50,000 attacked the relatively weak German garrison and within three days had regained large parts of the city. The jubilation was heartfelt and their words speak louder than any that I can write.

But they failed to capture key transport and communication depots and on August 25^th, the Germans responded with a brutal assault. Forty thousand Polish civilians were massacred and Warsaw went up in flames. Snippets of first-hand accounts are horror personified.

The expected Soviet help never arrived. The Red Army remained idle for reasons that are debated until today. Western Allies were not allowed to use Soviet air bases to airlift supplies to the besieged populace. Designed to last ten days, the uprising now was in siege mode. Sewers were used to move between different parts of the city, the sewer guides, both men and women.

Finally on September 13th, Josef Stalin allowed limited humanitarian aid but it was too little, too late. On October 2, after 63 days, the last of the Home Army surrendered.

Bór-Komorowski and his forces were taken prisoner and the rest of the city’s population were deported. Long lines of people were marched to camps for forced labor and to concentration camps. The city itself was razed. A model shows the extent of destruction, adding the final touch to the nightmare.