Pictures: Mass Rallies as Poland Remembers 1944 Warsaw Uprising

Poland has paid its annual homage to the bloody 1944 Warsaw uprising agains the Nazi German occupiers, an event well known for thousands gathering to light flares, military parades, and church services.

Monday marked 79 years since ‘W’ hour, the synchronized 5.p.m. start of the Warsaw uprising, an attempt to overthrow the Germans in 1944 which over the course of 63 days saw tens of thousands dead and wounded. The Nazi occupiers punished the Poles with devastating repercussions, including mass executions and the systematic destruction of the city’s buildings to deny them to the enemy.

In just one neighborhood, German soldiers ordered to take revenge on civilians killed over 40,000 Poles in two days. Others were deported for forced labour and to camps including Auschwitz. In all, there were some 180,000 victims.

While Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Army was outside the city, they did not intervene or provide aid to the uprising, effectively condemning it to fail: this and the Katyn massacre of Poles by the Russians are major contributing factors to the longstanding Polish distrust of Russia.

The memory of the uprising is a matter of pride for now fiercely independent Poland. Sirens are sounded in Warsaw to commemorate the start of the battle, which was the single largest act of resistance against German occupation anywhere in Europe in the Second World War, and mass rallies and parades take place in several cities.

Television Poland reports government and city officials joined surviving Uprising veterans in Warsaw on Monday for a minutes’ silence and wreath laying. As the report notes:

A minute of silence was observed while those in attendance stood at attention as the city was filled with the blaring of air raid sirens, which traditionally mark the somber occasion. Many people in the streets stopped in their tracks, as did many drivers, who got out of their cars and sounded the horns of their vehicles.

The German embassy and other German diplomatic missions in Warsaw lowered their flags in a sign of “mourning and shame” on Monday.