Poland marks 80th anniversary of Warsaw Uprising, honoring heroes of doomed fight for freedom

WARSAW, Poland -- The Polish capital came to a standstill Thursday on the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, an ill-fated revolt against Nazi German forces during World War II. Sirens wailed, church bells rang and people stopped in their tracks, some stepping out of their cars to pay their tribute to the fallen heroes.

As Poland marked the day of great importance in the national memory, news broke that the oldest surviving insurgent of the uprising, 106-year-old Barbara Sowa, died in the morning. With very few survivors left to take part in the ceremonies, it was a poignant reminder of the passing away of the generation shaped by the sacrifice of World War II.

Among those who stopped in their tracks were Taylor Swift fans who were also out in the thousands for the first of the singer's three concerts Thursday evening in the city. She had warned her fans — many who had traveled from afar — not to panic when they heard the sirens.

Earlier in the day, Polish President Andrzej Duda and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier stood together, heads bowed, to remember those days of August in 1944. They paid tribute to the Wola Massacre, the mass-murder of civilians of Warsaw’s Wola district carried out by the Germans from Aug. 5 to Aug. 12, 1944.

“They were led out of their homes, tenement houses, their homes were set on fire, and they themselves were shot in the streets, and their bodies were burned. Several tons of ashes were collected from the streets and squares of Wola, in order to place them in a common grave,” Duda said.

The German president's bowed head and other symbolic gestures signaled remorse for the crimes of his nation. That Steinmeier "lays a wreath, bows his head, kneels before the commemorative cross,” calls for respect, said Duda, speaking for the nation under brutal occupation from 1939-1945, which suffered the extermination of millions of its citizens, Christian and Jewish, and the near-total destruction of its capital city.

Many Poles feel the symbolic gestures are not enough, and the previous nationalist government in power from 2015-23 — allied with Duda — demanded $1.3 trillion from Germany in war reparations. Germany says it will not pay and the matter was settled with compensation paid to East Bloc nations in the years after the war and with territory given up to Poland.

The government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which took power last December, has toned down the demands but says it would still like Berlin to consider possibilities for compensation.

There remains a feeling in Poland that Germans have done much more to confront their crimes against Europe's Jews than against the Poles, who were viewed as racially inferior in Adolf Hitler's ideology, and subjected to forced labor and atrocities.

Warsaw’s revolt began Aug. 1, 1944, by the clandestine Home Army, which acted on orders from Poland’s government-in-exile in London.

The aim was to free the capital from German occupiers and take control of the country ahead of the advancing Soviet army. Moscow, intending to rule postwar Poland, withheld help and kept its Red Army positioned on the other side of the Vistula River as the capital bled and burned.

The Nazis, with their professional army and superior weaponry, killed 200,000 Polish fighters and civilians and razed the city in revenge.

Today the uprising is remembered by Poles as one of the most important moments in a long history of independence struggles, often against Russia. The courage of the fighters remains a defining memory in the Polish image of itself as a nation willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for freedom.