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Warsaw remembers WWII uprising

PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk 01.08.2017 13:00
Officials and veterans of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising on Tuesday marked the 73rd anniversary of the bloody WWII insurgency against the city's German occupiers.
Prime Minister Beata Szydło lays flowers at the Warsaw Uprising museum. Photo: PAP/Tomasz GzellPrime Minister Beata Szydło lays flowers at the Warsaw Uprising museum. Photo: PAP/Tomasz Gzell

Sirens wailed across the Polish capital as people observed a minute of silence at precisely 5pm, the time when resistance operations against the Germans started on 1 August 1944.

Ceremonies commemorating the insurgency and its leaders were held across the city throughout the day.

The uprising resulted in the death of some 18,000 fighters and up to 200,000 civilians.

The insurgency lasted 63 days before being put down by better equipped and more numerous German forces.

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

During a changing of the guard ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in central Warsaw, Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz praised the soldiers of the Warsaw Uprising for “their struggle, their indefatigable perseverance and determination”.

He said they had “promoted Poles to the status of an independent nation.”

(pk)

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