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UPDATE: Warsaw marks WWII uprising

PR dla Zagranicy
Alicja Baczyńska 01.08.2016 17:05
Traffic in the Polish capital came to a standstill on Monday to mark the 72nd anniversary of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, while veterans and officials paid tribute to the bloody WWII insurgency against the city's German occupiers.
Changing of the Guard ceremony at Warsaw's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier marks the 72nd anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. Photo: PAP/Tomasz GzellChanging of the Guard ceremony at Warsaw's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier marks the 72nd anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. Photo: PAP/Tomasz Gzell

Sirens wailed across the city as people stopped in their tracks to observe a minute of silence at precisely 5pm CET, the time when resistance operations against the Germans started in locations across the capital on 1 August 1944.

Former insurgents, city and state officials and residents commemorated the bold but ultimately ill-fated uprising at the Gloria Victis Monument at Warsaw’s Powązki Cemetery.

A number of ceremonies at cemeteries and monuments commemorating the insurgency and its leaders were held across the city throughout the day.

“The Warsaw Uprising should be a source of pride and inspiration to work for the benefit of a sovereign Poland,” President Andrzej Duda wrote in a special letter.

The letter was read out by National Security Bureau chief Paweł Soloch at commemorations held on Sunday in front of the Warsaw Uprising Monument at the capital’s Krasińskich Square.

The 1944 Warsaw Uprising was the largest military operation by any resistance movement in Europe against the continent's Nazi German occupiers during World War II.

Some 18,000 insurgents and 180,000 civilians died in the uprising, which lasted over two months before being put down by better equipped and more numerous German forces. (aba/pk)

Source: PAP, IAR

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