Documentary charts 1944 Warsaw massacre by German troops
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
03.08.2017 11:52
Horrific accounts of a 1944 massacre of Poles by German Nazi troops in Warsaw’s Wola district were broadcast in a documentary by public television station TVP1 on Wednesday.
Photo: Martin Foskett/pexels.com/CC0 License
As well as witness accounts, the film, “The Wola Massacre. Indictment” directed by Rafał Geremek, included commentary by Piotr Gursztyn, a historian and the author of a book about the WWII killings.
The documentary uses computer graphics and animation to depict the horrors of the massacre.
Some 40,000 to 50,000 people in the western Warsaw district of Wola were killed by German Nazi troops during the early phase of the Warsaw Uprising, an insurgency launched by Poles against the capital’s German occupiers in World War II.
Between 5 and 12 August 1944, tens of thousands of Polish civilians along with captured Home Army resistance fighters were systematically murdered in organised mass executions.
It is estimated that up to 10,000 civilians were killed in the Wola district on 5 August alone, the first day of the operation.
Most of the victims were the elderly, women and children.
Top Polish officials and veterans of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising on Tuesday marked the 73rd anniversary of the bloody insurgency against the city's German occupiers.
The uprising resulted in the death of some 18,000 Polish fighters and up to 200,000 civilians.
(pk)