New Zealand Listener – August 24, 2019

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W

arsaw is a city of

memorials. Not grand,

triumphalist monu-

ments, but small, discreet

ones that are often easy

to miss.

You come across them in

unexpected places: in the foyer of a church, for

example, or on a quiet street in the suburbs.

They don’t celebrate great military victories.

On the contrary, they silently commemo-

rate a nation’s anguish. An

inconspicuous plaque at 15

Wawelska St is typical. It

recalls the events of August

5, 1944, when soldiers of

the notorious Kaminski Bri-

gade – Russian collaborators

under the command of the

German occupying army –

forced their way into the Radium Institute

founded by Marie Curie for the treatment of

cancer patients.

After looting the hospital, raping the nurses

and destroying much of the equipment, they

set the building on fire. Some patients were

burnt alive but dozens managed to shelter in

hiding places. Discovered days later, they were

dragged out and the building was set ablaze

again. An estimated 50 critically ill patients

were shot on the spot. Others were sent to

the hastily improvised Zieleniak prison camp,

where they were executed and their bodies

burnt on a funeral pyre. It’s thought that 170

patients and staff lost their lives. They were

civilians, not combatants, but the distinction

was academic. In the savage German reprisals

that followed the Warsaw Uprising 75 years

ago this month, all Poles were the enemy.

The launching of the uprising by the Polish

resistance movement, on August 1, was a cue

for the Nazis to shed all restraint and adherence

to the rules of war. By the time the rebel-

lion was quelled two months later, between

150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians – women

and children as well as men

• had died, mostly by execu-
  tion, and more than half a
  million had been exiled to
  Germany to work in slave
  labour camps. My wife’s par-
  ents were among the latter
  group.
  As an example to other
  occupied cities, the Germans then began the
  systematic destruction of the city. Hardly a
  building was left intact.

STALIN’S BETRAYAL

The bitter irony was that the Polish resistance,

officially known as the Home Army, was com-

plicit in its own destruction. The leaders of the

uprising made the fatal mistake of believing

the Soviet Army, which was rapidly advancing

on Warsaw from the east, would come to their

assistance against the common enemy.

It was assumed the uprising would last only

a few days – just as long as it took for Soviet

SHOT BY

BOTH

SIDES

The Nazis and the Soviets did their

best to erase all evidence of the

Warsaw Uprising. But the Poles have

a way of enduring. by KARL DU FRESNE

GE

TT

Y^ I
MA

GE

S

THE WARSAW UPRISING: 75 YEARS ON

Stalin ordered his

army to halt, then

waited while the

Germans did his

dirty work for him.

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