Remembering the Warsaw Uprising

The Struggle For Memory Erased from Polish history by the Communist authorities, join us for a look at the 45-year battle to remember the Warsaw Uprising…

As has become customary, at 5 p.m. on August 1st sirens will blaze out across the capital as the city joins as one to momentarily pause to reflect on the human sacrifice brought about as a consequence of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

The premise of the insurgency had been simple – with Soviet forces but a door knock away, Poland’s underground army, the AK, had planned to liberate the city from Nazi occupation ahead of the Red Army’s imminent arrival. However, hopes for a swift campaign proved ill-founded and the battle descended into a 63-day bloodbath that ultimately claimed 250,000 lives and left the city in ruins. Seen as the city’s defining moment, Warsaw would never be the same again – both physically and psychologically.

Despite the enormous impact it would have on Poland, it would take decades for the Uprising to be commemorated in the manner it deserved. Considered a bourgeois insurgency by Poland’s post-war Communist leadership, government policy saw the battle airbrushed from history and many veterans persecuted on ideological grounds.

In the absence of any defined memorial, the closest residents had to pay tribute to the fallen came in the form of the so-called ‘Tchorek Plaques’. Designed by artist Karol Tchorek, and selected as part of a competitive process held in 1949, these stone tablets were spread across the city to mark the sites of Nazi street executions. Though these covered the breadth of the city’s occupation, it was no coincidence that the dates given on so many of these corresponded with those of the Uprising. Regardless, overt mention of the insurgency was strictly avoided.

And so it continued. Although competitions for a monument were held in the thaw that followed Stalin’s death (most notably in 1956 when plans for a Monument of the Heroes of Warsaw were unveiled), the politics of the PRL continued to thwart their implementation.

Cracks in this repression of memory began to finally appear during the Solidarity protests. Galvanized by the 1979 visit of Pope John Paul II, the Solidarity movement became a juggernaut and the ‘correction’ of memory an increasingly hot topic. Although an official monument to the Uprising itself remained a long way off, authorities relented by allowing the raising of a small memorial to ‘the Little Insurgent’.

Based on a figure first created by Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz in 1946, and depicting a gun-carrying boy in an oversized helmet, the 1.5-meter statue was funded by scout collections and erected just outside the Old Town on October 1st, 1983. Though now deemed controversial by those who interpret it as a glorification of child-soldiers, its debut represented a huge victory for those seeking to redress the balance of memory.

Another significant step came when a Solidarity priest, Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, was murdered by security agents in 1984. Such was the outpouring of public feeling that Poland’s leader, General Jaruzelski, ceded to the prosecution of those involved. Rather than placating the population, this served only to motivate them further in their push for change – in this atmosphere an independent committee was formed to construct an Uprising monument. Perhaps aware that apprehending those involved would only sow further unrest, the state instead resorted to attempts to infiltrate the group so as to manipulate their decisions.

Co-authored by sculptor Wincenty Kućma and architect Jacek Budyn, what was born was a ten-meter high edifice of two distinct parts – in one section, a group of combatants charge into battle, in the other, a nurse, a priest and a wounded soldier descend down a manhole to escape the carnage. Positioned on Pl. Krasińskich, a short distance from where insurgents had fled the Nazis through the sewers, the monument was finally inaugurated on August 1st, 1989, a long-overdue recognition of the Uprising. In the words of the eminent historian Norman Davies, “there could have been no better signal to announce that the Communist regime was on its last legs and was losing the will to defend the fictions on which it had been built.”

True, not everyone was happy. Some criticized its defeatism, others its references to the bumptious, colossal forms associated with Socialist Realism. Regardless, its construction signaled the end of a 45-year conflict to remember this epic moment in Polish history. Now, as always, expect it to be swallowed in a haunting candle-lit glow on the August 1st anniversary of the Uprising – in this phoenix-like city, few sights can be more moving than this monument at night.