The president was speaking at a commemoration for the victims of the German transit camp in Zieleniak in the Ochota district of Warsaw.
Rafał Guz/PAP
Andrzej Duda, the Polish president, has praised the courage of the citizens of Warsaw who either fought against the Germans in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, or supported the insurgents and suffered for it.
On Tuesday Duda marked the 79th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, a popular revolt against Nazi Germans that started on August 1, 1944.
The president was speaking at a commemoration for the victims of the German transit camp in Zieleniak in the Ochota district of Warsaw.
Duda said that a specific time was beginning in the capital.
“Throughout the whole of August, throughout September, the places of suffering of the people of Warsaw will be commemorated, the places of fighting where the insurgents defended themselves against the Nazi, against the German onslaught, the heroic resistance of Warsaw against the Nazi invader,” he said.
He appealed for a worthy commemoration of the heroes of the Warsaw Uprising, who “were not only those who fought in the uprising with weapons in their hands.”
“There was the entire population of Warsaw who was here in Warsaw with the insurgents, who supported them, among whom they found support and who suffered innocently, defenceless, murdered, here in Ochota, Wola, and in other parts of Warsaw, where the execution of inhabitants took place,” said the president.
He stressed that “we must never forget that over 180,000 inhabitants of the capital were killed and murdered during the Warsaw Uprising”.
“It was a terrible price that Warsaw, that Poles, that Varsovians paid for their desire for freedom, for their steadfastness, for their toughness and their stubbornness towards the occupier, which they paid for a free Poland,” said the president.
The Warsaw Uprising was the largest underground military operation in German-occupied Europe. On August 1, 1944, around 40,000-50,000 insurgents took part in the fighting. Planned to last several days, the uprising eventually lasted over two months.
During the fighting in Warsaw, about 18,000 insurgents lost their lives and 25,000 were wounded. Losses among the civilian population were huge and amounted to approx. 180,000. After the Warsaw Uprising was crushed, about 500,000 surviving residents were forced to evacuate and Warsaw was almost completely razed to the ground.