Officials, World War II veterans and residents will visit sites around the city to mark the 81st anniversary of the outbreak of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, a heroic act of resistance in which poorly equipped Polish fighters took up arms against the country’s Nazi German invaders.
Every year on August 1, people in Warsaw, and much of Poland, stop to the sound of sirens at exactly 5 p.m. to remember "W Hour," the time when the insurgency began in the dark days of German occupation.
Ceremonies usually include roll calls of honour and wreath-laying as well as speeches, prayers, poetry readings and the singing of patriotic songs.
Officials said on the eve of the anniversary that the revolt more than eight decades ago was among the bloodiest insurgencies in Polish history.
President Andrzej Duda said the insurgents "attacked tanks with bottles of gasoline... without professional training, often without combat experience, but with an unwavering belief that Poland could and must be free."
Duda has previously said the Warsaw Uprising demonstrated that "the Polish people are unvanquished, that they cannot be easily subjugated, that they cannot be suppressed without resistance, that they are proud and strong, and that they are no stranger to heroism and bravery even at the price of death.”
Polish lawmakers last year passed a special resolution in which they saluted "the heroes of this great uprising, both the soldiers of the Home Army and other military formations who took up arms against the German occupiers, and the civilian inhabitants of Warsaw who died, were wounded, and lost their possessions."
Officials have said that the insurgency was one of the most heroic and tragic Polish battles of World War II and the largest military operation by any underground resistance movement in German-occupied Europe.
The 1944 insurgency lasted 63 days before it was put down by better equipped and more numerous German forces.
The heroic act of resistance left the city razed to the ground and resulted in the death of some 18,000 Polish fighters and 200,000 civilians.
Sirens are set to wail, church bells are set to toll, and traffic will stop for a minute's remembrance on Friday as Warsaw commemorates a bloody revolt 81 years ago against the occupying Germans. Image: Polish Radio
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Source: Polish Radio, IAR, PAP, TVP Info