Veterans mark 60th anniversary of Warsaw uprising
Veterans of the Warsaw Uprising laid wreaths and sang patriotic songs today as commemorations peaked with a visit by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a high-profile mission to atone for the Nazis’ brutal crushing of the revolt that began exactly 60 years ago.
Schroeder was to join Polish leaders as well as US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in honouring the estimated 200,000 Poles who died in the two-month uprising.
Remembrance of the unequal 63-day battle against Nazi troops by the Home Army resistance movement and civilians – even children – has provoked an out-pouring of patriotism this week in Poland.
Red-and-white Polish flags fluttered from balconies and buildings in Warsaw, which was rebuilt after being systematically destroyed by the Nazis after the uprising collapsed.
In contrast to the communist era, Poles now could also bitterly recall in public that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s Red Army stood by on the east bank of the Vistula river while the Germans brutally quashed the uprising.
Ageing veterans gathered this morning to lay flowers and sing patriotic songs in the various Warsaw neighbourhoods where they rose up on August 1, 1944.
After the city’s defeat, the Germans imprisoned fighters and expelled civilians, many of them to concentration camps.
Relations with neighbouring Germany have vastly improved since the collapse of communism in 1989 ended Europe’s division. On May 1, Poland joined Germany in the European Union.
But tensions flared ahead of Schroeder’s visit over claims by Germans for ancestral property lost when their forebears were expelled or fled from Poland after the Nazi defeat in the Second World War in May 1945.
Schroeder, the first German chancellor to attend a Warsaw Uprising anniversary, has clearly stated in recent days that his government does not support German property claims in Poland.
The Polish government says the issue is closed. But Germany’s main expellee lobby group has pointed out that no one can forbid individuals from trying to regain property through the courts.
“The Polish and German governments should jointly come forward with a plan that would solve the issue in a definite way,” Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka told reporters on Saturday.
“I will certainly raise the issue during my meeting with Chancellor Schroeder and I will make proposals on the issue,” he said, without elaborating.
Earlier on Saturday, Belka inaugurated the first museum devoted exclusively to the uprising – a site of remembrance that was unthinkable under communist rulers who in their history books criticised the revolt as anti-communist and ill-advised.
Hundreds of former fighters were later received outside the presidential palace’s courtyard, where a large screen showed scenes of fighting and Warsaw burning during the uprising.
“You spilled a sea of blood for every single stone of this city,” President Aleksander Kwasniewski said before bestowing medals on 38 of the veterans.
Poland’s poorly armed and out-manned Home Army – made up of many teenagers - rose up nearly five years after the Nazis invaded Poland, starting the Second World War.
By summer 1944, the Soviet Army was positioned just outside of Warsaw and two months after D-Day victories had propelled the Allied forces eastward.
But the Home Army was forced to capitulate two months later, after the Soviet troops failed to intervene to stop the slaughter. Stalin also made it difficult for British and U.S. planes to airlift supplies to the insurgents by refusing them permission to refuel at Red Army air fields.
Stalin maintained the uprising was an irresponsible act that would set back the war effort. But it is widely believed his real motive was fear that the rebels would become Poland’s future leadership and resist his scheme of bringing eastern Europe under communist domination.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to strike a conciliatory note on Saturday, honouring “the heroes of Poland’s resistance movement” and saying both countries should look to the future.
The Warsaw fighters made “a significant contribution to our joint victory” over Nazism that “will remain in the memory of Russians forever,” Putin said in a statement distributed to media by the Russian Embassy.
