WARSAW, Poland (AP) — 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.
Comment: Steinmeier is only the second German president to be invited to speak at a commemoration of the Warsaw Uprising. All has not been forgiven, but the process continues. It’s good that the Swifties experienced the air raid sirens and moment of silence along with all other Poles. I hope all those who live outside of Poland will take the experience back to their homes.
Steinmeier also drew attention to the war in Ukraine. “Today, nobody in Europe is fighting as courageously, as heroically as the Ukrainian people. They are fighting for their freedom and their autonomy. They are fighting against a brutal and contemptible aggressor. We, Poles and Germans, stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and will continue to do so,” Steinmeier said.
Eighty years ago, the Soviet Army halted just outside of Warsaw and refused to provide air or artillery support on orders of Stalin. Stalin’s goal was to allow the Nazis to destroy the Polish Home Army, especially its leadership, and aid his political desires of turning Poland into a Soviet-aligned state. That fact, revealed in declassified documents, is not forgotten by the Poles.
TTG
Who is fighting for freedom in Ukraine? The military under martial law for two and a half years or, the Ukrainians getting arrested for wanting their Constitution back along with free speech and elections. If Poland isn’t careful they will be the next country to experience this paradox.
babelthuap,
Why can’t it be both?
Many believe God is all knowing. There is however one thing God can’t know if God knows everything; what it feels like not to know everything. Only people know this feeling.
If you present this paradox to a devout Christian they answer with , “well, God knows that as well.” At that point it’s an unfalsifiable claim. It can’t be proven or disproven.
The only determination that can be made is one either believes both are possible or does not.
I personally believe people under martial law are not fighting for democracy and freedom. The end doesn’t justify the means for me. Obviously NATO believes otherwise. Nothing more can really be said. One believes what they want in the end.
Babelthuap –
Putin has also declared martial law both within the occupied territories and within the Russian Federation itself.
Jefferson Davis declared martial law in 1862. So in your view does that mean Confedrate soldiers were not fighting for freedom from the Union?
General Jackson declared martial law in New Orleans during the War of 1812. He had no authority to do so at the time as only state governors, the US Congress and POTUS have that power.
Leith,
The Confederate States seceded from the union. A point no one wanted to bring up in court after the federal forces destroyed the confederacy.
FDR issued Executive Order 9066 “”This order authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security …”
The Supreme Court ruled otherwise.
Fred –
West Virginia seceded from the Confederacy and from Virginia. A point no one in Richmond wanted to bring up in court after the confederate forces burned and looted part of WV.
Did the Confederacy ever pay back the non-confederate slave-states of Maryland, Kentucky & Missouri for the damage they caused there? No. Did Confederate General Jubal Early ever pay back the $200,000 ($4M in 2024 dollars) he extorted from the townspeople of Frederick MD under threat of burning their city to the ground? No.
When the mountain people of 26 counties in Eastern Tennessee seceded from the Confederacy they were invaded and harshly occupied by Confederate troops. When subsistence farmers in Northern Alabama refused to secede from the Union their leader, along with other dissident Southerners, was thrown into the Salisbury NC POW prison, where 4,000 prisoners died due to overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions and poor diet. Did loyal Unionists in Arkansas, Mississippi and the Texas Hill Country, who refused to vote for secession, get a day in court?
All Confederates including Jeff Davis, AKA the Soul of Dixie, were either pardoned or granted amnesty.
Leith
Martial Law has been declared 68 times within the United States.Lincoln twice: once for the whole country and once for Kentucky.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/guide-declarations-martial-law-united-states
I served under martial law in New Orleans during Katrina. I firmly opposed it. I opposed it so much I refused to enforce the martial law rules on citizens.
To answer your question; No. I firmly oppose all forms of martial law. It is against the grain of the US Constitution. I’m not taking your guns or your free speech under any circumstance. If you disagree then under martial law you would get a say so in it. If you do not understand it all I can say is you will understand it when you get all your freedoms taken away.
leith,
The Federal government created West Virginia to punish Virginia. Whether that was beneficial to West Virginians is another thing entirely. NYC draft riots? What riots….
When did Robert E. Lee get pardoned? But the left did manage to remove those statues. Great victory that.
Legacy guilt is forever, as we see every time the left needs votes or street muscle. Here or abroad.
Fred –
Lee was given Full Pardon and Amnesty on 25 December 1868.
Jeff Davis’s attempt at a universal draft turned out to be unenforcable. Probably due to his 20 Negro Law that excluded rich plantation owners. Anti-draft southerners didn’t riot, they joined the Union. General Sherman selected the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment (white Unionists) to be his personal escort during his March to the Sea.
I have no beef with Confederate statues, especially of greats like Lee and Jackson. But why anybody in his right mind would want to memorialize jackasses like Davis, Bragg, Forrest or Pickett is beyond my ken. But if that’s your thing then it’s OK with me.
Leith,
That is not correct.
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2005/spring/piece-lee#:~:text
Optimax –
You forgot to include the words “at least” before 68 as the Brennan Center says. It is definitely an undercount IMHO. Especially if you consider within the territory of the United States and all the times it was declared by the Confederacy or by Confederate State governors. But in just your 68 it seems the majority of times it was declared was by state governors who used it against working men.
Babelthuap –
I applaud your actions during your stint in New Orleans. But as I recollect it may have been tantamount to martial law – it was never declared there, neither by the federal government nor by the governor. By the way nobody is coming after my guns or my freedom of speech, and not yours either.
babelthuap,
Why would Poland experience what Ukraine has experienced? That makes no sense to me.
If Ukraine does fight to the last man (God forbid) who would be the next country to block Russian further advancements?
I don’t live in Poland but if I did, the closer Ukraine got to the last man I would be getting my visa and getting out of dodge that’s for damn sure.
It will make perfect sense if Poland starts full conscription. It will make so much sense the many Polish will be doing the same thing just like they did in Ukraine.
There was one hotel that was left standing when the Germans raised the entire city to the ground – because that’s where the German officers were billeted. I stayed there when I visited Warsaw in 1997. It was a cool old hotel – like staying in a hotel in the 1930s. I am pretty sure they have knocked it down as part of modernizing Warsaw. It’s a pity.
Jeszcze Polska nie zginela
Kiedy my zyjemy
PS
To James:
The Hotel Bristol still stands and is more beautiful than ever.
Gotta keep the German politicians in line. Otherwise they might look at what their policies are doing to German industry and German society and decide to change course. Globalists can’t let that happen.
It wasn’t just Germans that participated in the massacres in Warsaw. The Kaminski Brigade, AKA SS-RONA, was a collaborationist formation composed of Russians from Bryansk, Oryol and Kursk Oblasts. Their atrocities reportedly “shocked even hardened SS veterans”.
WW2 would have lasted a lot longer without the Polish Underground Resistance. They conducted sabotage, subversion, propaganda and diversionary activity against the German occupiers keeping hundreds of thousands of German troops busy trying to track them down. They took out Wehrmacht supply trains and bridges. They provided RAF Bomber Command with critical intel on Peenemunde. They inserted an intel officer into Auschwitz concentration camp and provided the Allies with the first report about the Holocaust. Poles in North Africa collected intel for the Allied amphibious landings there. There was a Polish resistance group in France working with the Free French. It was the Polish Cypher Bureau that provided the Brits with Enigma-decryption techniques that gave them an unprecedented advantage with Ultra. They saved tens of thousands of Polish Jews by providing them with false documents or hiding them from the SS. They were the largest resistance unit in Nazi-occupied Europe, despite the hype given to French and Yugoslav partisans. And my favorite: Polish forced laborers in Nazi factories inserted faults into parts for aircraft engines, cannon muzzles, missiles and radios, etc.
IMHO Ukrainians will do the same if English Outsider’s prediction rump-state-Ukraine ever comes to happen. They are already doing it in Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk & other Putin-occupied territories.
Leith,as long as we keep funneling them money, they are guaranteed to play “freedom fighter” for our “entertainment”; particularly the neo nazi Azov types.
walrus,
I find it hard to believe you can’t comprehend how a people would be willing to fight and even die to gain or retain their freedom. Or is it just the Ukrainians you deny this capability?
@TTG
The true name of the game is DOMINANCE.
Those willing to fight and die are the hoi-polloi NOT the “real” players (in Ukraine or anywhere else).
Do you recall Henry Kissinger opinion of the military?
(Which I won’t mention to avoid being insulting)
And there is now the Big Prize nuclear war, or Armageddon if you are religiously inclined.
TTG, yes, of course I can comprehend how and why people fight and are prepared to die for an ideal. Lithuanians are a case in point. My problem is that it is often difficult to distinguish exactly who has the moral high ground. That problem is complicated by external parties meddling in such contests as well as the identity of the contestants themselves – by that I mean the conflicts where fighters get to self identify.
Examples, the entire vietnam war – where both sides believed they were fighting for their rights. then there are leiths vietnamese tribesmen and palestinians where ethnicity automatically defines membership and no self identification is necessary or possible. Are the british skinheads, currently rioting, “freedom fighters?”” – they seem to think so. What about the Confederacy? it is too easy to manufacture conflicts and we are very, very good at it. The Asov battalions – fighting for the right to punish Ukrainians of Russian extraction? not so much.
walrus,
I see your point about one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. I do remember Oliver North’s insistence on referring to the Contras as the “Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance” during the Iran-Contra investigations.
The Azov Battalion and similar units are long gone. Those types (Svoboda and Pravy Sektor) were in power in Kyiv back in 2014. They were long gone in 2019. The current Ukrainian military and government are fighting Russian invaders, not Ukrainians of Russian extraction.
Walrus –
Even without a dime some will fight back. No people on earth wish to be slaves.
If Putin takes over I’m sure that some will be collaborators. And some others will try to ‘go along to get along’. Many will get sent to Siberia in order for Russian colonists to take over their land. But others will band together and resist. It will take decades for the Kremlin to wipe them out. Polish resistance lasted until the mid sixties. TTG mentioned the Lithuanian Forest Brothers fought against the Kremlin for decades. The Irish had rebellions against England for six centuries. History has a thousand more examples. The only way for Moscow to stamp out resistance in Ukraine is to kill them all and repopulate it with ethnic Russians.
Just a note – I don’t predict a rump state. No idea how the Russians will neutralise remnant Ukraine. Rump state is only one of several possibilities.
On the Poles, please don’t compare the Polish fighters of those times with the Ukrainian ultra-nationalists. We had some of them over here and they were recognised as first class. The Polish pilots played a crucial and outstanding role.
Those men are still remembered over here. Could we have saved their country from Stalin? I don’t know, but I wish we had.
leith,
I expect, should the predictions of a land-swap for peace deal come to pass, there might be another way things could shake out well in the end.
All those old Soviet Bloc states, mostly sooner than later, began to seek a way to separate themselves from the awful Russian mess. Unless Russia fundamentally changes their ways the same process should happen in the new break away republics. Guerrilla war doesn’t have to be a critical ingredient in the stew.
Funny how this was not a big deal in the US media this year. It’s almost like someone decided that extoling the bravery of people herded in to an open air prison, fighting the full weight of a modern military with stolen weapons and courage, might not play well juxtaposed against pictures of the survivor’s descendants turning the full weight of a modern army against the inmates of the open air prison they set up for their “untermenschen”. Gaza is the parallel you are looking for, not Ukraine.
rick,
You make a good point. But I think it’s just a matter of us not being able to focus on more than what’s in front of our noses. And remembering history is just not our strengths.
Today’s parallel of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising is the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.
kodlu,
I’m surprised that comparison wasn’t made in any media I’ve seen.
Meanwhile in Germany:
“Nothing threatens German democracy more than our rights to free expression and assembly.”
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/police-in-baden-wurttemburg-break