Warsaw marks 65 years since revolt against Nazis

WARSAW, Poland — To the sounds of the national anthem, Poland’s leaders and World War II veterans paid silent honor Saturday to the fighters of Warsaw’s 1944 uprising against the city’s Nazi occupiers.

President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk, flanked by veterans,laid wreaths at the monument to the fallen insurgents — most of them young people — at their mass grave in Warsaw’s historic Powazki cemetery.

There were no speeches by politicians, to stress the solemn and historic character of the open-air ceremony. A military band played the national anthem and guards of honor fired three rounds into the air.

The doomed struggle to liberate Warsaw from the Germans remains a source of national pride.

The city was decorated with white-and-red national flags and sirens sounded at 5 p.m. That was when the underground Home Army started street-to-street fighting on Aug. 1, 1944 in a futile attempt to free the capital from the Germans, ahead of the advancing Red Army.

Earlier Saturday, state delegations and veterans laid wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in a solemn ceremony watched by crowds of Warsaw residents.

Kaczynski said in a radio interview that the anniversary honors “courage and heroism.”

“Although it was lost, the uprising gives us a reason to be proud,” he said on state radio.

Some 250,000 civilians were killed in the revolt, which was crushed by the Nazis after 63 days, as the insurgents were cut off from weapons, food, water and medical supplies.

The Nazis razed the city and expelled all survivors.

Kaczynski has proposed a law to make Aug. 1 a working national holiday. That has support from more than 70 percent of Poles, a recent poll by Gfk Polonia said. Its survey of 500 adults had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.