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Polish capital remembers Warsaw Uprising

PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk 01.08.2016 15:37
  • Polish capital remembers Warsaw Uprising
Seventy-two years ago on 1 August 1944, on the orders of the commander of Poland’s national armed forces, General Tadeusz Bor Komorowski, the Warsaw Uprising against the city’s Nazi occupiers began.
Former insurgents at a ceremony marking the Warsaw Uprising. Photo: PAP/Tomasz GzellFormer insurgents at a ceremony marking the Warsaw Uprising. Photo: PAP/Tomasz Gzell

At 5pm -- widely referred to as “W hour” in Poland -- the massively outnumbered insurgents began an uneven battle with German forces.

The uprising lasted 63 days and ended with the capitulation of the insurgent army. It was one of the most heroic and longest battles in Nazi-occupied Poland and to this day is considered a symbol of a determined struggle for freedom.

Halina Jędrzejewska, a nurse during the Warsaw Uprising, says insurgents were determined to fight for their freedom.

“The time of the Nazi occupation was dramatic, there was so much cruelty, we all had someone in our families who was killed or murdered by the Gestapo,” she recalls.

“And we so wanted to emerge from underground, to fight in the open, armed like soldiers. We were trained for that, for that purpose the underground organized military training, first-aid courses, so that we all knew how to behave in battle.

“I will never change my mind - it was necessary- we had to fight for the city, quite simply..."

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