THE Polish capital came to a standstill recently, as it marked the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, an ill-fated revolt against Nazi German forces during World War II.
Polish President Andrzej Duda and his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier stood together to remember those days of August in 1944. They paid tribute to the Wola Massacre, a mass-murder of civilians in Warsaw’s Wola district carried out by German troops from August 5 to August 12 1944.
As the Morning Star newspaper reported; Mr Duda said: “They were led out of their homes, tenement houses, their homes were set on fire and they themselves were shot in the streets and their bodies were burned.”
The previous Polish government, in power from 2015 until last year, demanded $1.3 trillion (around £1 trn) from Germany in war reparations. Berlin has refused to pay, claiming that the matter was settled through compensation paid to eastern bloc nations in the years after the war and territory surrendered to Poland.
The Nazis killed 200,000 Polish fighters and civilians and razed the city in revenge for the revolt.
Amid the commemorations, news broke that the oldest surviving insurgent of the uprising, 106-year-old Barbara Sowa, had died in the morning.
