New Zealand Listener – August 24, 2019

AUGUST 24 2019 LISTENER 29

troops to cross the Vistula River and help

drive the hated Germans out. Poles took

heart from a Radio Moscow propaganda

broadcast on July 29, which urged them to

rise up and promised help in wiping out the

“Hitlerite vermin”.

In fact, Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator

and supposed liberator of Eastern Europe,

had no intention of committing troops to

the intense fighting that was raging in the

streets and squares of Warsaw. It suited him

for the German Army to crush the uprising,

because in doing so, it would eliminate the

people most likely to resist his plan to install

a pro-Soviet government in Poland once the

Germans had been defeated.

Accordingly, Stalin ordered his army to

halt on the eastern bank of the Vistula,

immediately opposite Warsaw, then waited

while the Germans did his dirty work for

him. Allied planes dropping munitions and

other supplies to the Polish fighters were

denied the use of Soviet airfields, forcing

them to fly all the way from Italy with

greatly reduced payloads because of the

extra fuel they had to carry.

The uprising, which lasted a remarkable

63 days, was the fiercest challenge to Nazi

rule in any occupied country. Heinrich

Himmler, leader of the Nazi SS, said it was

the fiercest fighting of the war and com-

pared it with the epic Battle of Stalingrad.

But Stalin’s refusal to help the Home

Army, which he contemptuously dismissed

as “a handful of criminals”, ensured the

rebellion’s failure. It also cleared the way

for the installation of a communist regime

that would prolong Polish repression for

another 47 years.

MARKING HOPE AND DESPAIR

The uprising is most strikingly com-

memorated by a famous bronze sculpture

in Krasiński Square that shows resistance

fighters surging forth from the ruins of a

collapsed building. Another monument

nearby depicts others scrambling down a

manhole into the sewers that served as vital

communications and supply lines for the

Home Army.

But the small, discreet plaques in unlikely

places speak just as eloquently of Warsaw’s

tragedy. The one in Wawelska St is in a style

known as Tchorek plaque, after the sculptor

who designed them. At last count, there

were still more than 160 Tchorek plaques in

Warsaw, each marking a place where fight-

ing took place or Poles were executed.

Another memorial, a simple, low stone

monument at the corner of Daleka and

Tarczyńska streets, in the Ochota district,

stands where 17 civilians were shot and

their bodies burnt.

It’s just a few steps from what was the site

of the apartment building from which my

wife’s parents were ordered at gunpoint in

August 1944 before being transported to

Germany with tens of thousands of others

and put to work in a Mauser factory pro-

ducing weapons for the Nazi war machine.

When my wife and I walked down Daleka

St two months ago, candles and flowers

had recently been placed at the base of the

monument – evidence that the victims of

Nazi infamy are not forgotten. The apart-

ment building where my in-laws lived was

destroyed, like the rest of Warsaw, as part of

the German retribution for the uprising. An

office block now occupies the site.

Ochota was the scene of some of the most

vicious reprisals. It’s estimated that 10,000

civilians were killed there in a rampage of

mass murder, arson, looting, torture and

rape.

Another low-key plaque, on a wall at 104

Grójecka St, commemorates scores of civil-

ians who were killed with hand grenades in

a basement, and others who were shot in a

backyard. The perpetrators included regular

German soldiers, as well as members of the

so-called Kaminski Brigade – officially SS

Sturmbrigade Rona.

It was a soldier from this unit who gave

my parents-in-law five minutes to pack

whatever they could fit into a small bag (my

mother-in-law chose her wedding photos)

and assemble in the street before being

marched to a transit camp.

My mother-in-law, who died this year

aged 96, recalled a teenage girl being shot

in the neck by a drunk soldier because she

was slow to respond to an order. She was left

to bleed to death in the gutter. Yet my in-

laws could be considered among the more

fortunate residents of the Ochota district.

They survived the war and eventually emi-

grated to New Zealand.

My late father-in-law’s brother wasn’t so

lucky. He was one of many Poles who died

in Sachsenhausen concentration camp,

which was used primarily for political

prisoners and prisoners of war. His family

assumed he was executed.

HOSPITAL A TARGET

On a wall in the porch of St Hyacinth’s

Church in Nowe Miasto, or New Town

(although it dates from the 15th century),

we came across an account of yet another

atrocity. The church was targeted by Stuka

bombers intent on destroying a makeshift

hospital that had been set up in the crypt,

which was also used to shelter civilians.

Bombs pulverised the church but the

hospital, remarkably, continued to func-

tion until it was overrun by the Germans in

early September. All the medical staff were

executed and the remains of the building

were blown up, burying 500 people beneath

the rubble. After the war, it was considered

too difficult to exhume the bodies, so the

ruined crypt was sealed under a marble floor

and the victims permanently entombed.

Ochota wasn’t the scene of the worst

Warsaw massacre. In the city’s Wola district,

more than 40,000 people were murdered.

As the Germans advanced through the

city’s streets, they systematically cleared the

buildings, executed all the inhabitants and

burnt their bodies. Civilians were placed in

front of tanks as human shields and cap-

tured fighters were shot on the spot.

Boy scouts and girl guides who had par-

ticipated in the uprising as couriers and

messengers were shown no more mercy

than adult combatants. The aim was to

D

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FR

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(^) FA
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OL
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CT
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N
Between 150,000
and 200,000 Polish
civilians were killed,
mostly by execution.
Karl du Fresne’s parents-in-law had time to
pack only a few possessions, including wedding
photos, into a small bag.