Poland commemorates ill-fated 1944 revolt against the Nazis

Aug 1 01:27 PM US/Eastern

Sirens wailed across Poland's capital Friday as the country commemorated a World War II uprising against the Nazi Germans which broke out 64 years ago but failed after two months of bitter street fighting.
Buses and trams flying the red and white Polish flag, as well as private vehicles, drew to a halt, and pedestrians stood still for a minute's silence on the stroke of 5:00 pm (1500 GMT).

That was exact time chosen on August 1, 1944 by the Polish Home Army (AK) to launch a rising in Warsaw against the occupying Nazis.

The Germans had held Poland in their brutal grip for almost five years since their 1939 invasion, but were preparing to retreat in the face of a Soviet offensive.

The AK hoped to take control of the city but was only able to seize pockets of it, and then held out for 63 days against a counter-attack.

"We didn't have any weapons. We attacked German tanks with petrol bombs," veteran Miroslaw Lisek told AFP at a ceremony in the southern district of Mokotow, which the AK evacuated through the city's sewers when it fell in September 1944.

Lisek was just 14 years old at the time.

Around 18,000 Polish resistance members died in the revolt as well as around 20,000 Nazi troops.

Civilians bore the brunt of the violence -- 200,000 were massacred as the Nazis mopped up the resistance street-by-street, or were killed in the crossfire.

Youngsters from Lisek's unit carried messages from the city centre to Mokotow on a route that today is just a brisk half-hour walk.

"Deliveries took a day. Pretty quick, given the circumstances. And it was very dangerous. We were nicknamed 'carrier pigeons', and the German snipers sat on the roofs, picking us off," he said.

"I was one of the lucky ones," he added, his eyes welling up.

The uprising was directed militarily against the Germans, but the political goal was to free Warsaw before the looming arrival of Soviet troops.

In 1939, the Nazis and Soviets had cut a deal to attack and carve up Poland.

The Berlin-Moscow pact broke down in 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and as the Red Army rolled back the Nazis after 1944 it installed communist administrations in its wake.

For Moscow's critics, the Soviets simply let the Nazis do the job of wiping out potential AK opposition to a communist takeover of Poland.

While the Red Army sent some communist-led Polish units to help the revolt, most Soviet troops watched from across the Vistula river.

Britain and the United States tried to help the AK, but Moscow barred their supply planes from landing behind Soviet lines, forcing them to fly risky round trips from liberated Italy.

Some historians back Moscow's version that the uprising was foolhardy -- even though Soviet radio urged Poles to rebel -- and that Soviet troops, rather than holding back deliberately, were recovering from an exhausting offensive which had already claimed hundreds of thousands of their number.

Around 15,000 insurgents surrendered on October 2 after the Nazis agreed to treat them as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

Warsaw's remaining 500,000 civilians were expelled and the city was methodically destroyed by the Germans.

Lisek was sent to a camp in Germany. He was freed by US troops in 1945 and came home that October.

Soviet forces had moved into the heart of Warsaw on January 17, 1945, heralding more than four decades of communist rule during the early years of which AK veterans were executed, jailed or at best harassed.

Lisek recalled how, when he returned to Warsaw, he was pulled in by the communist secret police.

"I was wearing my cap and AK badge, and they told me, 'That's not a uniform fit for a Polish soldier,'" he said.

Because the uprising was such a touchy issue for the communists it acquired iconic status among opposition Poles, and commemorative events have spiralled since the regime's peaceful demise in 1989.

"Today I can be proud of having taken part," Lisek said.

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