We’re approaching the 81st anniversary of the Normandy invasion. It was a decisive victory for the U.S. and our World War II Allies. Historians say it opened the door to liberation from northwest Europe from Nazi Germany occupation. But on my recent visit to Poland, I learned the fascinating, lesser-known story about the heroes of the Warsaw Uprising. A very different story about striving for freedom.
The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.
Pawel Ukielski: After five years of very brutal, cruel occupation of Poland, Polish Home army, Polish underground state, decided to fight against Germans.
Pawel Ukielski is with the Warsaw Rising Museum—devoted to the Warsaw Uprising. That was a World War II military revolt by the Polish resistance in 1944 to free the capital from German occupation.
Ukielski: One of the most touching exhibits we have in our collection is this little prayer written by eight years old girl. She gave the prayer to her father who was going to fight in the Warsaw Rising. He put it into wallet and the wallet put on the left chest. As you can see, there is a missing part of it. This is where German bullet hit, but the bullet stopped on it in the wallet, and he survived. So we can say that this prayer saved his life.
Allied B-24 Liberator planes were a rare beacon of hope and support from the outside.
Ukielski: So the liberator plane, this is full scale replica of the plane. They were bringing hope to insurgents. They were delivering air drops to Warsaw. And we decided to build this replica on a special request of the veterans. So we created this plane based on original American plans from Fort Worth, which were declassified for that purpose because it was still classified as a weapon. And when we invited all the living airmen on 62nd anniversary, when we built this plane, they entered the museum and asked, how did you put it inside? And then we knew that the replica is really perfect.
We also found living history in Warsaw
Zbigniew Rylski (as translated): Back then we had no thoughts about any other things. We’re so entirely focused on the uprising, on the sole goal of driving the Germans out of our country. And nothing else mattered to us.
Zbigniew Rylski is 102 years old and took part in the Warsaw Uprising as a 21-year old young man.
Zbigniew Rylski (via translator): His father at that time was a commander of the Polish Underground Forces in Warsaw, between February ‘42 and February ‘44. On the first day of the uprising, our orders were to take a hospital in Wola, in the Western District, but we failed to take it over. We were immediately destroyed by the Germans. They overpowered us.
For two months, Polish fighters took over large parts of the city and held off brutal Nazi forces. But in the end, they were brutally overpowered by Hitler and his Army. The ensuing crackdown is called among the most brutal episodes of World War II.
So why do the Poles today revere the memory?
Ukielski: Warsaw Rising was one of the most important events for Poland. One, Warsaw was destroyed. Many people were killed, other were expelled from the city. But, the most important that it was fight for freedom, for independence, for democracy.
Rylski (as translated): The Polish nation that is used to live, and wants to live in freedom, wants to live in normalcy, and we were being prevented from that. That is what we were fighting for. And because of that we were convinced that we had to win, we didn’t win, we lost, but in the end, today, we can feel the effects of that fight. Today, we are free and we even help other nations, other people who fight for their freedoms.
Sharyl (on-camera): In the Warsaw Uprising over 200,000 people were killed, and thousands more removed to German concentration camps.
Watch video here.
Read “Last Hope Island” Lynne Olson. She writes about how the Allies screwed the Polish resistance and hung them out to dry for Stalin’s taking.
“[Ehud Barak, other Israeli leaders] Don’t you dare show your faces at any memorial ceremony for the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto, . . . You are not Anne Frank of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, but Hans Frank, the German general who acted to starve and destroy the Jews of Poland. Today the Warsaw Ghetto is right in front of you, targeted by your own tanks and artillery, its name is Gaza.”
—Michel Warschawski, “Absolutely Not in Their Name, Not in Ours”, AIC, January 18, 2009. Quoted in Tony Greenstein, “Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation” (2022).
“Netanyahu has been brandishing Amalek in the wake of the Hamas attack … for the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound … —in other words, a ghetto. … like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany. … The term “open-air prison” … the more fitting term “ghetto” would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”
From “In the Shadow of the Holocaust” by Masha Gessen December 9, 2023 https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust
As a teenager I read Leon Uri’s book “Mila 18” about the 1943 Jewish Warsaw Ghetto uprisng. Early last month, I googled “warsaw ghetto uprising ruins” Looks the same as Gaza today.
In 1943, Nazi SS General Jurgen Stroop liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto. When the poorly armed Jewish resistance fought back, the Nazi’s starved out, burned out, and leveled the ghetto. The survivors were “transferred” to the death camps.
IN 1944, after the Polish 1944 uprising, Hitler ordered, ‘Warsaw is to be razed to the ground .. .’ … Himmler made sure his officers understood exactly what was intended: ‘The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth… No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to it’s foundation.’ … less than 5 per cent of pre-war Warsaw remained intact … in the city of ruins … genocide and urbicide march in lockstep.” https://geographicalimaginations.com/2013/04/24/city-of-ruins/
“The decision we made last night [3-01-25] to completely halt the entry of humanitarian aid [e.g. food , water, etc] into Gaza until Hamas is destroyed or surrenders completely and all our hostages are returned is an important step in the right direction— ‘standing at the gates of hell,’” said Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. “Now, we must open these gates as quickly and as lethally as possible …”
Do you hear echos of Hitler and Himmler in Smotrich’s promise (and President Trumps] to “open the gates of hell.”? Doesn’t take much imagination.
I recall that while the uprising started the Russian troops were marching on Warsaw. The Russians stopped their advance during the uprising and it was assumed they stopped to let the Germans get rid of the rebels so they would not have to.