Warsaw Uprising

The Warsaw Uprising was the largest armed action by an underground movement in occupied Europe. At 5 p.m. on 1 August 1944 units of the Home Army attacked German positions in the capital, counting on taking the city within a few days, before the Red Army arrived. The fighting lasted sixty-three days. It ended in capitulation, the expulsion of the entire population and the destruction of left-bank Warsaw, and its political aim – the assumption of power in the capital by representatives of the Polish government-in-exile – was not achieved.

Name and dates

Polish historiography has settled on the name “Warsaw Uprising” (powstanie warszawskie, also written with capitals) to distinguish it from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April and May 1943. In Home Army documents the fighting in the capital formed part of Operation Tempest (Akcja „Burza”), although Warsaw had originally been excluded from it.

The uprising is taken to have begun at “W-hour” (Godzina W) – 5 p.m. on 1 August 1944. In some places the first clashes broke out earlier – in Żoliborz at around 2 p.m. – when the Germans came across groups of insurgents moving weapons. It is taken to have ended on 2 October: on that day, at Erich von dem Bach’s headquarters in Ożarów, the “Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Warsaw” was signed, under which the fighting stopped at 8 p.m. German time. Some historians (among them Adam Borkiewicz and Norman Davies) state that it was not signed until around 2 a.m. on 3 October, but a note by Colonel Franciszek Herman, who took part in the talks, points to the evening of 2 October. The usual count is therefore 63 days of fighting; 66 days are sometimes cited, because organised insurgent units were still marching out of the city into captivity until 5 October.

Background

From the autumn of 1943 the Home Army High Command had been preparing Operation Tempest: as the front approached, Home Army units were to attack the retreating Germans and present themselves to the incoming Red Army as hosts of the territory, representing the lawful authorities of the Polish Republic. After Moscow broke off relations with the Polish government-in-exile in April 1943, and after the Red Army entered pre-war Polish territory in January 1944, the experience of Tempest was bitter. In July 1944 Home Army units fought alongside the Soviets for Wilno (Vilnius) in Operation Ostra Brama, and after the capture of the city the NKVD arrested their officers and disarmed the soldiers. The Lwów uprising ended the same way.

Warsaw was initially excluded from Tempest in order to spare the capital’s population and historic buildings. These plans were overturned by the speed of Operation Bagration. Within a few weeks the Red Army shattered the German Army Group Centre and by the end of July stood on the Vistula. On 21 July the Polish Committee of National Liberation, dominated by communists and dependent on Joseph Stalin, was set up in Moscow. Prime Minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk left on 26 July for talks with Stalin. The Home Army command concluded that taking the capital with its own forces and having the lawful Polish authorities receive the Red Army there would strengthen his hand. The Commander-in-Chief, General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, opposed an uprising without an understanding with the Soviet Union, but his instructions were ambiguous. On 25–26 July the Polish government authorised its Delegate for the Homeland, Jan Stanisław Jankowski, to proclaim the uprising at a moment of his choosing.

On 27 July the governor of the Warsaw District, Ludwig Fischer, called on 100,000 inhabitants to report for digging fortifications. Varsovians boycotted the order, and the commander of the Home Army’s Warsaw District, Colonel Antoni Chruściel (“Monter”), declared a short-lived state of readiness. On 29 and 30 July Moscow radio and the communist Tadeusz Kościuszko radio station called on the people of Warsaw to fight the Germans. The Soviet 2nd Tank Army was approaching Praga, but on 31 July the panzer divisions of Field Marshal Walter Model launched a counter-attack near Radzymin and Wołomin. By 3–4 August it had smashed the Soviet 3rd Tank Corps.

The Home Army Commander, General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, hesitated over the decision throughout 31 July. At around 5.30 p.m. “Monter” reported that Soviet tanks were on the outskirts of Praga. Bór-Komorowski summoned the Delegate, Jankowski, and after a brief consultation, also attended by General Tadeusz Pełczyński and General Leopold Okulicki, at around 6 p.m. he gave the order to begin fighting at 5 p.m. the following day. “Monter” sent it out at 7 p.m., but because of the curfew many units did not receive it until the morning. Shortly afterwards intelligence officers brought news of the German counter-attack, but the commander judged that the order could no longer be rescinded without chaos. The circumstances of this decision remain disputed to this day.

Opposing forces

According to General Jerzy Kirchmayer, the Home Army’s Warsaw District under “Monter” numbered some 45,000 sworn soldiers, and around 50,000 together with the units at the disposal of the High Command – the Kedyw (sabotage and diversion directorate) of Lieutenant Colonel Jan Mazurkiewicz (“Radosław”) and the “Baszta” regiment. Because of the hurried mobilisation, the curfew and poor communications, however, only part of them turned out on 1 August: the authors of the study Polskie Siły Zbrojne w drugiej wojnie światowej (The Polish Armed Forces in the Second World War) put the number mobilised at about 36,500, while Kirchmayer put the number actually fighting at about 23,000. Smaller organisations also joined the fighting, among them the National Armed Forces (NSZ) and the communist People’s Army (AL) – together, by various estimates, from just under 2,000 to over 5,000 men.

Weapons were the insurgents’ greatest weakness. According to the District’s inventory, on 1 August the Home Army in Warsaw had about 3,800 pistols, 2,600 rifles, 657 sub-machine guns and 192 machine guns, with ammunition for two or three days of fighting. Only part of these stocks reached the units in time, so in the first assault, by various calculations, between 1,500 and 3,500 men had firearms. The rest was made up from captured equipment, the output of clandestine workshops and airdrops.

The German garrison under General Rainer Stahel, whom Adolf Hitler had appointed commandant of “Fortress Warsaw”, declared on 27 July, numbered, according to German sources cited by Tadeusz Sawicki, over 13,000 men (about 16,000 including the anti-aircraft artillery): Wehrmacht, SS and police, as well as the ground personnel of the Okęcie and Bielany airfields.

After the fighting broke out, Heinrich Himmler sent relief forces to Warsaw. They included the police group from the Warthegau under SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth; Oskar Dirlewanger’s SS special regiment (Sonderregiment), largely made up of criminals, from which the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS later grew; the collaborationist SS assault brigade RONA of Bronislav Kaminski, composed mainly of Russians and Belarusians; Azerbaijani battalions (of the Azerbaijani Legion: “Bergmann” and I/111); and Wehrmacht security units. On 5 August command over them was taken by SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, head of the German anti-partisan formations. On 14 August Hitler placed all forces in the city under him. Von dem Bach’s corps soon numbered about 25,000 men and had heavy artillery, including 600 mm “Karl” mortars, as well as tanks, assault guns, rocket launchers and Luftwaffe support.

Course: W-hour and the first days (1–4 August)

The last-minute mobilisation was chaotic. The Germans, warned by informers, raised the alarm at around 4.30 p.m., so the element of surprise was lost. The attack of 1 August, dispersed over dozens of objectives, brought more failures than successes. The insurgents took the Prudential building on Napoleon Square, the power station in Powiśle, the warehouses at Stawki, the courts on Leszno, the town hall on Theatre Square and the Military Geographical Institute. They failed, however, to take Okęcie airfield, any of the bridges over the Vistula or any railway station. They were also repulsed from the Gestapo headquarters on Szucha Avenue, the Brühl Palace, the Saxon Palace, the Citadel, the University and the PAST telephone exchange on Zielna Street. On the first day the Home Army lost nearly 2,000 killed and wounded, the Germans about 500 killed, wounded and captured. Some units withdrew to the forests around Warsaw, and in Praga the uprising had already died out by 3 August.

Nevertheless, during the night of 1/2 August the streets were covered with barricades. In the following days Home Army units captured the State Securities Printing Works, the Main Post Office, the Post Office railway station on Jerusalem Avenue, the Polytechnic and the school on Woronicza Street in Mokotów, and on 3 August the units of Lieutenant Colonel Mieczysław Niedzielski (“Żywiciel”) returned to Żoliborz. On 5 August the “Zośka” battalion captured the concentration camp on Gęsia Street (KL Warschau) and freed 348 Jewish prisoners. Within four days the insurgents controlled most of Śródmieście, the Old Town, eastern Wola and Żoliborz, as well as enclaves in Ochota and Mokotów. These districts were, however, cut off from one another: the Germans held the main thoroughfares, including Jerusalem Avenue and Ujazdów Avenue, and the bridges. On 4 August, for lack of ammunition, “Monter” ordered offensive operations to be halted – historians regard this date as the end of the insurgent offensive.

Course: the Wola and Ochota massacres (5–12 August)

According to von dem Bach’s testimony, Hitler gave Himmler and the Chief of the Army General Staff, Heinz Guderian, a verbal order to raze Warsaw to the ground and kill all its inhabitants, taking no prisoners. On 5 August Reinefarth’s group, Dirlewanger’s regiment and the Azerbaijani battalions advanced along Wolska and Górczewska Streets to break through to the cut-off government district by Piłsudski Square. Behind the fighting line these units murdered the occupants of entire tenement blocks, factories and hospitals: in the Ursus factory on Wolska Street, in the Franaszek works, in Sowiński Park, in the Wola and St Lazarus hospitals, and on 6 August in the Karol and Maria Hospital. Most victims died between 5 and 7 August. The exact number cannot be established: Hanns von Krannhals estimated it at 10,000–15,000, Alexandra Richie and Joanna Hanson at 30,000–40,000, Adam Borkiewicz and Władysław Bartoszewski at 38,000, and Antoni Przygoński at over 65,000. The bodies were burned by prisoners of the Verbrennungskommando, formed on 6 August. The fighting in Wola ceased on 11 August.

In Ochota, from 4–5 August, Kaminski’s RONA brigade committed murder, rape and looting – the death toll of the pacification of Ochota is estimated at around 10,000 – especially in the transit camp at the “Zieleniak” market, in the Radium Institute and in the Staszic Colony. Ochota’s insurgent redoubts, “Wawelska” and “Kaliska”, fell by 11–12 August. On the evening of 5 August von dem Bach forbade the killing of women and children, and on 12 August of civilian men as well. Smaller-scale murders nevertheless continued until the end of the uprising: people suspected of taking part in the fighting, Jews, the elderly and the sick were shot at the Pfeiffer factory, and in the GISZ building and the Jordan Garden on Bagatela Street the Gestapo killed, by various estimates, between 5,000 and 10,000 people. Surviving inhabitants were driven to St Adalbert’s Church and to the camp at Pruszków. Kaminski himself was shot by the SS at the end of August, officially for looting.

After breaking through Wola on 6–7 August, the German units split the insurgent area in two: from then on the Old Town and Śródmieście were linked only by cellars, passages through the rubble and the sewers. Radosław’s Kedyw units, which had been defending the Wola cemeteries, fell back to the Old Town.

Course: the battle for the Old Town (7 August – 2 September)

After the fall of Wola and Ochota the insurgents held several areas isolated from one another: the Old Town, Śródmieście with Powiśle, Żoliborz and Mokotów. On 5 August “Monter” divided his forces into Groups “North”, “Śródmieście” and “South”. Group “North” under Colonel Karol Ziemski (“Wachnowski”) numbered about 9,000 men, over 7,000 of them in the Old Town. The Germans directed their main thrust here, because taking the Old Town would open the way to the Kierbedź and cross-city railway bridges. From 7 August Dirlewanger’s regiment attacked from Bank Square and Castle Square, and later Reinefarth’s battle group assaulted the district from Muranów, Stawki and the Vistula. On 13 August a German explosives carrier captured by the insurgents blew up on Kilińskiego Street, killing some 300 soldiers and civilians.

The fighting was for every house, and the district was being destroyed by dive-bombers, heavy mortars and rocket launchers. Von dem Bach put his units’ losses at about 150 men a day. Even so, the defenders were pushed deeper into the Old Town: they lost the Mostowski Palace on 20 August, the Arsenal on 22 August, and the State Securities Printing Works building and the ruins of St John’s Cathedral on 28 August. Two assaults on Gdańsk Station, which was meant to link the Old Town with Żoliborz, broke down with heavy losses (21–22 August). During the night of 30/31 August an attempt to break through to Śródmieście via Bank Square and the Saxon Garden also failed.

On 1 September the Germans captured most of the New Town, but the insurgents held on to the entrances to the sewers. From the evening of 1 September to the morning of 2 September some 4,500 soldiers passed through the sewers to Śródmieście and about 800 to Żoliborz. Left behind in the Old Town were about 2,500 seriously wounded and some 35,000 civilians. After taking the district, Reinefarth’s soldiers murdered at least 3,000 people in insurgent hospitals and shelters, including, according to historians’ estimates, nearly a thousand wounded insurgents, and drove the remaining population out to Pruszków.

Course: Śródmieście, Mokotów and Żoliborz in August

Śródmieście, where “Monter”’s main forces stood (about 17,000 men at the beginning of August), was not heavily attacked during the first two weeks. An attack on the Mirów Halls on 13 August, intended to punch a corridor through to the Old Town, failed; nor did attempts to link Śródmieście with Mokotów and with the units from the Chojnów Forests succeed (18–19 August). The insurgents did, however, capture the PAST building on Zielna Street on 20 August, and the Police Headquarters and the Church of the Holy Cross on 23 August. Between 10 and 25 August they held a trench across Jerusalem Avenue between Nowy Świat and Marszałkowska Street, the only link between northern and southern Śródmieście.

In Mokotów, from the beginning of August, the “Baszta” regiment defended the quadrangle formed by Odyńca, Puławska and Woronicza Streets and Niepodległości Avenue. The strong German garrisons on Rakowiecka and Puławska Streets, however, remained passive. “Żywiciel”’s Żoliborz was cut off from the rest of the city by the railway lines, the Citadel and Gdańsk Station. It was supported by Home Army units from the Kampinos Forest, organised from the second half of August into Group “Kampinos”, which also took in thousands of refugees from the city in the forest.

Course: Powiśle, Czerniaków and the landing from across the Vistula (3–23 September)

After the fall of the Old Town the Germans’ priority was to regain the Vistula bank and Jerusalem Avenue, as they feared a renewed Soviet offensive. On 3 September Reinefarth’s group struck at Powiśle. On 6 September the defenders of Powiśle withdrew to the line of Nowy Świat. Attacks on the trench across Jerusalem Avenue (5–10 September) were repulsed. On 9 September Bór-Komorowski’s envoys made contact with the Germans through the Red Cross about a capitulation. The talks were broken off on 11 September, when news arrived from London of a planned large-scale American air operation and the sound of a Soviet offensive could be heard from across the Vistula.

At the beginning of September Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky’s 1st Belorussian Front attacked the German bridgehead east of Warsaw. On 13 September the Germans blew up the bridges, and on 14 September Soviet units and General Zygmunt Berling’s Polish 1st Army took Praga. During the night of 13/14 September Soviet aircraft began dropping weapons, ammunition and food over the city, at first without parachutes, so that many containers were destroyed. Between 15/16 and 19 September sub-units of the Polish 1st Army, mainly from the 3rd Infantry Division, crossed to the left bank at Czerniaków, Powiśle and Żoliborz – some 4,000 soldiers in all, with weak artillery support and a shortage of crossing equipment. Only sub-units of the 9th Infantry Regiment managed to link up with the Home Army, at Czerniaków, where a bridgehead on the Vistula had been holding out since 11 September with the participation of the “Radosław” Group. The Germans eliminated the bridgeheads in Żoliborz and Powiśle by 20 September. According to Polish figures, the Polish 1st Army lost 2,297 killed and 1,467 wounded in these battles.

Some historians (among them Alexandra Richie and Mikołaj Iwanow) consider that the landing was mainly a propaganda exercise; others point to the limited capabilities of the 1st Army. At Czerniaków the defenders were pushed back into a few houses on the Vistula. On the evening of 19 September about 260 of Radosław’s soldiers passed through the sewers to Mokotów. The rest – remnants of Home Army units and some 200 of Berling’s soldiers under Major Stanisław Łatyszonek – by 22 September held only the houses at 1 Wilanowska Street and 53 Solec Street. Few managed to cross the Vistula or break through to Śródmieście. On the morning of 23 September the Germans took the last positions in Czerniaków and murdered most of the Home Army soldiers they captured.

Course: the fall of Mokotów and Żoliborz, and the capitulation (24 September – 2 October)

After taking Czerniaków, von dem Bach decided first to eliminate the weaker centres of resistance. On 24 September German units, supported by tanks of the 19th Panzer Division and by aircraft, struck at Upper Mokotów. On 26 September the commander of its defence, Lieutenant Colonel Józef Rokicki (“Karol”), began withdrawing his soldiers through the sewers to Śródmieście. “Monter”’s order to return and defend the district caused chaos in the sewers; about 140 insurgents who mistakenly emerged from a manhole on Dworkowa Street were shot by the Germans. Mokotów capitulated on 27 September. On 29 September the 19th Panzer Division attacked Żoliborz. The following day Lieutenant Colonel “Żywiciel” laid down his arms on the orders of the High Command. Group “Kampinos”, leaving the forest, was destroyed near Jaktorów on 29 September.

Only starving Śródmieście remained in insurgent hands. Bór-Komorowski concluded that further fighting made neither military nor political sense and, despite “Monter”’s opposition, opened talks with the Germans on 28 September. On 30 September President Władysław Raczkiewicz, under British pressure following Sosnkowski’s order of 1 September, which sharply criticised the lack of help for Warsaw, dismissed the general and appointed Bór-Komorowski Commander-in-Chief. On 2 October, at von dem Bach’s headquarters in Ożarów, the Home Army delegates – Colonel Kazimierz Iranek-Osmecki and Lieutenant Colonel Zygmunt Dobrowolski – signed the “Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Warsaw”.

The agreement granted Home Army soldiers prisoner-of-war rights under the Geneva Convention, and the Germans undertook not to prosecute them for military or political activity during the fighting or in the underground period before the uprising. The Germans also undertook not to apply collective responsibility to the civilian population and to spare historic monuments and property, while the inhabitants were to leave the city. On 4 and 5 October some 15,000 soldiers went into captivity, among them Bór-Komorowski, “Monter” and other generals, together with about 2,000 women. Bór-Komorowski eventually ended up as a special prisoner in Colditz Castle. Some 3,500 insurgents slipped into the crowds of civilians, among them General Okulicki, whom Bór-Komorowski had designated as his successor as Home Army Commander.

Help from outside: airdrops

From the first day the Home Army command asked London for airdrops of weapons. The British considered flights from Italy – some 1,500 kilometres each way – extremely risky and agreed to them under pressure from the Polish government and Winston Churchill. From the night of 4/5 August crews of the Polish No. 1586 Special Duties Flight, of British Nos. 148 and 178 Squadrons and of South African Nos. 31 and 34 Squadrons SAAF flew over the city from Brindisi and Foggia in Liberators and Halifaxes. A considerable part of the night drops fell on German-held ground. During the night of 14/15 August 8 of the 26 aircraft on the operation were shot down. According to estimates cited in the literature, losses reached in all between ten and twenty per cent of the aircraft taking part; Air Marshal John Slessor judged the cost of the supplies delivered to be out of all proportion – according to some studies one aircraft was lost for every ten tons of supplies, according to others for every ton.

For several weeks Allied aircraft were not allowed to land at Soviet airfields. Stalin, who had earlier promised Mikołajczyk help, called the leaders of the uprising “a handful of criminals” in a letter of 22 August and rejected a joint appeal from Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt of 20 August. He gave permission for Western aircraft to land only on 10 September. On 18 September 107 American B-17s of the Eighth Air Force, flying from Britain and landing at the Soviet airfields used in Operation Frantic, dropped 1,284 containers over Warsaw. By Polish calculations about a quarter of them reached the insurgents; the rest fell in areas already in German hands. According to Jerzy Kirchmayer’s tally, the insurgents received from all Western and Soviet drops a total of about 104 tons of supplies, including some 82 tons of weapons and ammunition. Drops by the Soviets and by the Polish 2nd Night Bomber Regiment “Kraków” from the night of 13/14 September were often made without parachutes, and their scale is hard to verify.

The Soviet stance

The Red Army, which had stood before Praga in the last days of July, did not resume its advance on Warsaw for six weeks. The reasons are one of the main controversies surrounding the uprising. Soviet historiography and some Western historians, among them David Glantz, point to the exhaustion of troops after Bagration’s advance of several hundred kilometres, overstretched supply lines and the German counter-attack near Wołomin, which at the beginning of August destroyed a Soviet tank corps. Others, among them Mikołaj Iwanow and Piotr Śliwowski, stress the political dimension of Stalin’s decision: the refusal to let Allied aircraft land, his hostile remarks about the Home Army leaders, and the fact that the defeat of the uprising removed from his path forces loyal to the government in London. Soviet help – airdrops and the landing across the Vistula – came only in September, in the uprising’s final phase.

Expulsion of the population and destruction of the city

The expulsion of the inhabitants had begun as early as August: the people of Wola, Ochota, the Old Town and Powiśle were driven through assembly points to the transit camp Dulag 121, set up in the railway workshops at Pruszków. After the capitulation all who remained had to leave the city. Between 390,000 and 410,000 people passed through Dulag 121 alone, and at least 520,000 through all the transit camps around Warsaw; between 500,000 and 550,000 Varsovians and about 100,000 inhabitants of nearby towns lost their homes. About 150,000 of those expelled were deported for forced labour in the Reich or to concentration camps (among them Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück and Stutthof). The rest were dispersed across the General Government.

In line with Hitler’s and Himmler’s earlier announcements, the Germans set about the systematic destruction of the deserted city. Special units, having first carried off property and raw materials, burned and blew up block after block, historic buildings, libraries and archives. Among the buildings destroyed was the Saxon Palace (the Germans had already blown up the ruins of the Royal Castle in mid-September). To the destruction of September 1939, when Warsaw was defending itself against the Germans and was bombed, and the annihilation of the ghetto after the 1943 uprising, were added the damage done during the fighting (about 25 per cent of the buildings on the left bank) and after the capitulation (over 30 per cent). In all, the war destroyed about 84 per cent of the buildings of left-bank Warsaw, and about 65 per cent of the city as a whole, including Praga.

Losses

The exact losses are not known and vary from source to source. According to the calculations of Polish historians most often cited, the insurgents lost about 16,000 soldiers killed and missing and about 20,000 wounded, 5,000 of them seriously. The Polish 1st Army lost about 5,500 killed and wounded in the fighting for Praga and the bridgeheads on the left bank of the Vistula. Historians usually estimate the number of civilians killed at 150,000–200,000. According to the register compiled by Maja Motyl and Stanisław Rutkowski, at least 63,000 inhabitants were murdered outside combat operations.

German losses are disputed. In his report to Himmler of 5 October 1944, von dem Bach-Zelewski gave 1,570 killed and 7,474 wounded for the period from 1 August to 5 October. In an account given in a Polish prison in 1947, however, he spoke of 10,000 killed, 7,000 missing and 9,000 wounded. Historians’ estimates of the killed and missing therefore fall within a wide range, from about 2,000 to about 17,000.

Significance

The Warsaw Uprising was the largest battle fought by the Polish underground and one of the longest urban battles of the Second World War. Militarily it ended in defeat. Nor did it achieve its political aim: the Polish government-in-exile did not take power in the capital, and its position vis-à-vis Stalin and the Western Allies was weakened. The Home Army lost its best units and much of its command cadre in Warsaw.

The front on the Vistula held until January 1945. On 17 January units of the Polish 1st Army and the Red Army entered the ruins of Warsaw. Two days later General Okulicki disbanded the Home Army. In March 1945 the NKVD arrested sixteen leaders of the Polish Underground State, among them Okulicki and Jankowski, and tried them in Moscow. Power in Poland was seized by the communists, who for years portrayed the uprising as a reckless “adventure” of the Home Army command and persecuted its participants. The memory of the uprising regained its full place in public life only after 1989.

Most of the perpetrators of the crimes went unpunished. Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski testified at Nuremberg as a witness and was never tried for Warsaw; he was convicted in West Germany in the 1960s for killings committed in the 1930s. After the war Heinz Reinefarth became mayor of Westerland on Sylt and a member of the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament, and the proceedings against him were discontinued.

The decision to launch the uprising has divided historians and participants from the start. Its defenders stress that fighting in the city was almost inevitable in July 1944 and that Home Army passivity would have handed the initiative to the communists. Its critics – among them some commanders and émigré politicians, including General Sosnkowski and General Władysław Anders, and after the war, among others, the historian Jan Ciechanowski – accuse the Home Army command of misjudging the situation and of counting on help that no one had guaranteed. Whatever the verdict, the uprising has become one of the central reference points of Polish historical memory of the Second World War.