The City That Chose to Fight

Every year on August 1st, at exactly five o'clock in the afternoon, Warsaw stops.

At the “W Hour,” cars pull to the side of the road. Pedestrians freeze on the sidewalk. Trams come to a halt in the middle of their routes. And then the air raid sirens and church bells begin. A harrow, rising wail that rolls across the city from every direction at once, filling the air for sixty seconds that feel like much longer.

The moment is for: The Uprising.

On August 1, 1944, eighty-two years ago today, the Polish Home Army rose against the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. They had around 47,000, most of them young, many of them teenagers. They were armed with pistols, rifles smuggled piece by piece, and homemade explosives. 1 in 4 had access to weapons. They faced 25,000 soldiers equipped with artillery, tanks and air power.

Against the odds, they were armed with the conviction that they needed to rise up.

With the small resources the underground fighters had, they estimated they could hold the city for about a week. Some thought that was long enough for the Soviet forces that had reached the Vistula River to cross and finish the liberation. However, the Soviets did not cross. They stopped on the eastern bank and waited, as the Germans poured reinforcements into Warsaw and the Home Army fighters died street by street, building by building, room by room. Stalin, it is now clear, understood that allowing the Polish resistance to liberate their own capital would make it harder to install a Communist government afterward. He ordered the uprising be crushed.

The battle lasted not seven, but sixty-three days. When the Home Army finally collapsed on October 2, approximately 200,000 Polish civilians were dead. Some in combat, many executed, and others killed in indiscriminate reprisals and bombings by the Nazi occupiers. Hitler was so offended that they would rise against him, that he ordered the city razed to the ground. German engineers went block by block, burning and dynamiting what remained. By the time the Soviets finally crossed the Vistula in January 1945, no two stones were left in Warsaw.

Warsaw's Rising Museum, which opened in 2004 on the sixtieth anniversary of the battle, is one of the most powerful places I have ever been. I went during our years in Poland, and I left unsettled. Pete and I were there for almost 3 hours.

The photographs of the fighters are full of children. Boys with rifles too large for them. Girls in nurses' uniforms carrying ammunition through sewer tunnels because of the occupied streets. Children served as underground couriers, carrying messages across the city. Poland's scouting organization went underground during the occupation, called the “Gray Ranks.” They fought alongside adult Poles resisting their enemies. Some of the Army's commanders were a mere twenty-two years old.

The internal documents of the Home Army leadership are preserved in the museum. The debate about whether to rise was fierce and was not resolved by optimism. They knew the odds, and the consequences. Commanders believed the uprising was militarily unwinnable. And the incredible thing I took away from it was that they rose up anyway.

Living in a time in history where it may feel hard to fight against great odds, it's inspiring to be reminded that there are things worth fighting for. And fighting for them doesn't mean that you have to be certain to win.

The Warsaw Rising is that witness. Those fighters did not win. They changed everything anyway.

Every year at five o'clock on August 1st, a city of two million people stops to remember: remember what was given and remember what it cost.

While it is easy to look at this from the outside as an incredible story of heroic bravery, some Poles recognize that, but more deeply articulated to us that this is not a happy story with a happy ending. Poles see the sadness of this sacrifice, the loss of the men and women and children in the life of their nation.

Today, I stop and remember.

Erin Van de Voorde lived in Poland for nearly three years with her husband Peter. She is the co-founder of Peregrine House & Co., a formation-based travel company.

← Back to the Journal