Poland's capital is marking the 65th anniversary of the heroic but
doomed Warsaw uprising against German occupiers during the Second World
War.
President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk
joined war veterans and Warsaw citizens at the commemoration Saturday.
State officials and veterans laid wreaths in a solemn ceremony at the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Sirens wailed and Warsaw fell
silent for a minute at 5 p.m., the exact time when the uprising's
street fighters attacked Nazi forces.
Troops of the
underground Polish Home Army, using home-made weapons produced by
makeshift factories, fought against impossible odds, but their
rebellion was not crushed until October 2. After two months of battle,
the capital lay in ruins. Nearly 35,000 soldiers - both Germans and
Poles - and an estimated 250,000 civilians were dead.
Tadeusz
"Bor" Komorowski led the Home Army forces, and the uprising was
directed Poland's wartime government in exile, based in London. At
that point in the war, the Soviet Union's Red Army was advancing on
German forces from the east, and the Poles expected the troops
occupying their capital would retreat in a few days.
The
Soviet army stopped at the eastern edge of Warsaw, however, and did not
intervene in the Polish-German fighting. Many Poles' enmity toward the
Soviet Union in later years was based on their belief that the Red
Army's inaction was deliberate, allowing the uprising to run its course
despite the huge casualties, in order to sap the strength of both
Polish and German fighters.
After three months after the
uprising in January 1945, Soviet troops resumed their march westward
and seized control of Warsaw.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.
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