Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
My translation of a fragment of a recent interview with a surviving veteran of the Warsaw Uprising, member of the resistance movement since 1940, Stanisław Likiernik (interviewed by journalist Adam Domagała):
An uprising-era photo of Stanisław Likiernik:
Likiernik:
(...) I joined ZWZ with my friend Olek Tyrawski in 1940 (...) But in fact our task was merely tracing the movements of German supply trucks, that is writing down their registration numbers, etc. (...) I could not wait for some "real job".
Domagała: When did this happen?
L: I became a member of Kedyw thanks to my friend Jan Barszczewski. In 1943 on my request he reported my candidature. I waited for the reply for long time. But finally, in September 1943, I received a response which said, that we were going for an action. In the night on 27 September on one of Żoliborz district streets a truck awaited for us and together with over a dozen boys we drove to Zalesie Górne, a village near Warsaw, where together with the rest our unit we were supposed to blow up German transport trains with supplies heading towards the Eastern Front.
D: You finally got your chance to actively fight against occupants. Were emotions great?
L: This is beyond description. Please imagine this. After four years of humiliation, seeing how my friends die, as well as unknown to me, other innocent people, I was finally going to a forest with my friends, and there it turns out, that not only we are going to carry out a real action, but also a unit of regular, uniformed Polish army greeted us in that forest! The action of course succeeded. It was also my success, because it turned out, that it was my test. On that day I became a member of Kedyw.
D: Less than a year later, the Warsaw Uprising broke out. How did it start for you?
L: We had a task of capturing German military warehouses at Stawki. At 15:00 we occupied a school located on that street, and exactly at 17:00 we penetrated into the warehouses and quickly seized them. We captured a lot of supplies, including food, thanks to which for 3 weeks inhabitants of the Old Town had enough to eat during the uprising. We also captured uniforms used by German paratroopers - so called leopard-prints, which later became one of characteristic elements of the uprising. Finally, we liberated a group of 50 Jews who were being kept in those warehouses, they joined our forces and fought in the uprising.
D: A good start. Do you have any other joyful memoirs from the uprising?
L: Soon after that action we received an order to move to the Wola district. We were marching there proudly, in a perfect array, evenly uniformed in leopard-prints. During our way we passed next to the Pfeiffers' factory, where I had worked for some time during the occupation. All friends from the factory stood near the road and were sending loud greetings to me. But not only them, during our march many civilians of Warsaw were greeting us. That was one of my few good memoirs from the uprising.
D: How do you judge the decision about the start of the uprising, after so many years have passed?
L: I do not need a time perspective of years, to judge this decision. Already at the beginning of the uprising I had my own opinion about it. A good example to illustrate my point is our first task during the uprising, that is capturing the warehouses at Stawka. During that combat we were supposed to receive help of a "cavalry unit". It was clear to me that those "cavalrymen" were going to arrive without horses, but the fact, that they arrived too late - one day later than they should - and that there was not even one man in their unit armed with a firearm - not even one pistol - astonished me. Unfortunately, most of insurgents were equipped like that unit - they had neither weapons, nor experience.
D: Some insurgents had both good weaponry and a lot of experience, for example Kedyw.
L: What can several hundred well-trained and so so equipped soldiers do? Before the uprising, each of our tasks was well-planned and perfectly carried through. Neither of our actions would be carried out, if there was no probablity for its success. If it was necessary for that uprising to break out, then it should have been carried through in the same way, but on a much larger scale. I had not a single moment of hesitation, whether to stand in defence of the Republic or not. However, in my opinion, a task of each responsible commander is taking care of his actions, so that his soldiers should be engaged in armed combat only when there exists a chance for the successful accomplishment of definite tasks. Unfortunately, in this case someone forgot about this, and started a great patriotic insurgency according to the rule "it will work out somehow".
D: Nowadays we know, that it ended in a tragic way.
L: But it was clear since the start! We know, who Stalin was. We know, that he murdered 20 million of his own countrymen. Due to this fact, how could anyone expect, that Stalin would help us, "Polish fascists". It was clear, that with use of German hands Soviets were going to solve the Home Army problem. How it ended, we all know. Thousands of people died, including many of my friends, excellent, unique people, all totally in vain. (...)
=========================================
Stanisław Likiernik was wounded several times during the uprising, barely surviving it.
He recovered from his wounds not before the Spring of 1945.
Then he left Communist Poland in 1946, emigrating to France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Armed_Struggle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kedyw
==========================================
Not "after".
Liquidation of the Ghetto by Germans was the reason why the Ghetto Uprising beginned, it was not its effect.
Ghetto people were going to die anyway (final extermination started already before the uprising) - no matter with or without the Uprising.
It seems that the Ghetto Uprising had some inspiring influence on the people of Warsaw - an example of heroic resistance to follow.
The degree of destruction of buildings was already far more than "minor" after September 1939 siege of Warsaw.
However, the 1944 Warsaw Uprising - contrary to popular myths - did not lead to "complete destruction" of Warsaw.
Almost all buildings were significantly damaged, but not all were destroyed.
Remains of more than 50% of buildings in western bank Warsaw survived in good enough condition (despite the fact that the Germans were deliberately blowing up / trying to destroy many buildings already after the end of combats), that they could be reconstructed.
Such reconstruction would require time and efforts, but it could be done - accurate reconstruction of more than 50% was possible.
However, Communist authorities did not decide to reconstruct all of them. Practically only the Old Town (and even this only thanks to great efforts of Polish architects) and most important buildings from other districts were reconstructed in their pre-war shape.
The argument used by cunning architects to convince Communists to reconstruct the Old Town was: "workers have a right to live in as luxury buildings as burghers lived in". Thanks to such cunning tricks, they preserved a large piece of "bourgeois and capitalistic history".
But many other buildings that could have been reconstructed, were demolished, and replaced by "beautiful" Soviet-style blocks of flats.
So it was a combined Nazi-Communist effort to destroy Warsaw, not just Nazi effort.
An uprising-era photo of Stanisław Likiernik:
Likiernik:
(...) I joined ZWZ with my friend Olek Tyrawski in 1940 (...) But in fact our task was merely tracing the movements of German supply trucks, that is writing down their registration numbers, etc. (...) I could not wait for some "real job".
Domagała: When did this happen?
L: I became a member of Kedyw thanks to my friend Jan Barszczewski. In 1943 on my request he reported my candidature. I waited for the reply for long time. But finally, in September 1943, I received a response which said, that we were going for an action. In the night on 27 September on one of Żoliborz district streets a truck awaited for us and together with over a dozen boys we drove to Zalesie Górne, a village near Warsaw, where together with the rest our unit we were supposed to blow up German transport trains with supplies heading towards the Eastern Front.
D: You finally got your chance to actively fight against occupants. Were emotions great?
L: This is beyond description. Please imagine this. After four years of humiliation, seeing how my friends die, as well as unknown to me, other innocent people, I was finally going to a forest with my friends, and there it turns out, that not only we are going to carry out a real action, but also a unit of regular, uniformed Polish army greeted us in that forest! The action of course succeeded. It was also my success, because it turned out, that it was my test. On that day I became a member of Kedyw.
D: Less than a year later, the Warsaw Uprising broke out. How did it start for you?
L: We had a task of capturing German military warehouses at Stawki. At 15:00 we occupied a school located on that street, and exactly at 17:00 we penetrated into the warehouses and quickly seized them. We captured a lot of supplies, including food, thanks to which for 3 weeks inhabitants of the Old Town had enough to eat during the uprising. We also captured uniforms used by German paratroopers - so called leopard-prints, which later became one of characteristic elements of the uprising. Finally, we liberated a group of 50 Jews who were being kept in those warehouses, they joined our forces and fought in the uprising.
D: A good start. Do you have any other joyful memoirs from the uprising?
L: Soon after that action we received an order to move to the Wola district. We were marching there proudly, in a perfect array, evenly uniformed in leopard-prints. During our way we passed next to the Pfeiffers' factory, where I had worked for some time during the occupation. All friends from the factory stood near the road and were sending loud greetings to me. But not only them, during our march many civilians of Warsaw were greeting us. That was one of my few good memoirs from the uprising.
D: How do you judge the decision about the start of the uprising, after so many years have passed?
L: I do not need a time perspective of years, to judge this decision. Already at the beginning of the uprising I had my own opinion about it. A good example to illustrate my point is our first task during the uprising, that is capturing the warehouses at Stawka. During that combat we were supposed to receive help of a "cavalry unit". It was clear to me that those "cavalrymen" were going to arrive without horses, but the fact, that they arrived too late - one day later than they should - and that there was not even one man in their unit armed with a firearm - not even one pistol - astonished me. Unfortunately, most of insurgents were equipped like that unit - they had neither weapons, nor experience.
D: Some insurgents had both good weaponry and a lot of experience, for example Kedyw.
L: What can several hundred well-trained and so so equipped soldiers do? Before the uprising, each of our tasks was well-planned and perfectly carried through. Neither of our actions would be carried out, if there was no probablity for its success. If it was necessary for that uprising to break out, then it should have been carried through in the same way, but on a much larger scale. I had not a single moment of hesitation, whether to stand in defence of the Republic or not. However, in my opinion, a task of each responsible commander is taking care of his actions, so that his soldiers should be engaged in armed combat only when there exists a chance for the successful accomplishment of definite tasks. Unfortunately, in this case someone forgot about this, and started a great patriotic insurgency according to the rule "it will work out somehow".
D: Nowadays we know, that it ended in a tragic way.
L: But it was clear since the start! We know, who Stalin was. We know, that he murdered 20 million of his own countrymen. Due to this fact, how could anyone expect, that Stalin would help us, "Polish fascists". It was clear, that with use of German hands Soviets were going to solve the Home Army problem. How it ended, we all know. Thousands of people died, including many of my friends, excellent, unique people, all totally in vain. (...)
=========================================
Stanisław Likiernik was wounded several times during the uprising, barely surviving it.
He recovered from his wounds not before the Spring of 1945.
Then he left Communist Poland in 1946, emigrating to France.
ZWZ:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Armed_Struggle
Kedyw:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kedyw
==========================================
Not "after".
Liquidation of the Ghetto by Germans was the reason why the Ghetto Uprising beginned, it was not its effect.
Ghetto people were going to die anyway (final extermination started already before the uprising) - no matter with or without the Uprising.
It seems that the Ghetto Uprising had some inspiring influence on the people of Warsaw - an example of heroic resistance to follow.
The degree of destruction of buildings was already far more than "minor" after September 1939 siege of Warsaw.
However, the 1944 Warsaw Uprising - contrary to popular myths - did not lead to "complete destruction" of Warsaw.
Almost all buildings were significantly damaged, but not all were destroyed.
Remains of more than 50% of buildings in western bank Warsaw survived in good enough condition (despite the fact that the Germans were deliberately blowing up / trying to destroy many buildings already after the end of combats), that they could be reconstructed.
Such reconstruction would require time and efforts, but it could be done - accurate reconstruction of more than 50% was possible.
However, Communist authorities did not decide to reconstruct all of them. Practically only the Old Town (and even this only thanks to great efforts of Polish architects) and most important buildings from other districts were reconstructed in their pre-war shape.
The argument used by cunning architects to convince Communists to reconstruct the Old Town was: "workers have a right to live in as luxury buildings as burghers lived in". Thanks to such cunning tricks, they preserved a large piece of "bourgeois and capitalistic history".
But many other buildings that could have been reconstructed, were demolished, and replaced by "beautiful" Soviet-style blocks of flats.
So it was a combined Nazi-Communist effort to destroy Warsaw, not just Nazi effort.
