Warsaw Uprising vet recalls 1944 insurgency
PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek
01.08.2018 14:02
The Warsaw Uprising had to break out because Poles had had enough of German terror in their capital, Zbigniew Galperyn, a veteran of Poland’s underground Home Army, has told reporters as the country marked the anniversary of the 1944 insurgency.
People paying tribute to the people who fought in the Warsaw Uprising. Photo: PAP/Paweł Supernak
Galperyn said he had lied about his age in 1944 to Home Army senior officers so he could fight in the Warsaw Uprising. He was injured during the insurgency.
He said that “life is the most valuable thing, but we all wanted to fight and give it up in the name of freedom”.
Galperyn and other Home Army fighters, both living and those that died in and since the Warsaw Uprising, were honoured throughout Poland and especially in the capital on Wednesday.
President Andrzej Duda, who took part in official celebrations and placed a wreath under a plaque commemorating the murdered civilian population, said the people who died in the Warsaw Uprising were killed for being Poles.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said: “We would not be here today if it were not for the heroes of World War II, for the Warsaw insurgents”.
Official events were expected to continue all day to commemorate the start at 5pm on August 1, 1944 of what would be a 63-day rebellion that was eventually quashed by the better-armed Germans.
At 5pm on Wednesday, Varsovians will mark the moment with a minute-long silence. Cars will come to a halt, people will stand to attention and sirens will wail across the city.
In the evening, wreaths were to be laid at a monument to Polish fighters. A sing-a-long of patriotic songs which were popular among insurgents in 1944 was to be held in central Warsaw.
The last official event was to be the lighting of a bonfire which was to burn for 63 days, to mark the duration of the Warsaw Uprising.
Some 20,000 fighters of the Polish Home Army resistance movement took up arms in 1944. Around 18,000 insurgents and some 150,000-180,000 Polish civilians were killed, according to Poland's Institute of National Remembrance.
(vb/pk)