Read Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw Online
Authors: Norman Davies
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #War, #History
Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (63 page)
Moscow was also required to react to unexpected events in Slovakia, which for the previous five years had been a satellite of Nazi Germany. At the end of August, a revolt took place among the professional Slovakian military, who resented German domination and who appealed to the advancing Soviets for support. As in Warsaw, the insurgency proved premature. Spontaneous partisan outbreaks gave warning of the danger, and pushed the chief conspirators into challenging the influx of German reinforcements in disadvantageous conditions. At the time, the 4th Ukrainian Front, 480km (300 miles) to the south of Warsaw, was separated from Slovakia by the high and heavily defended passes of the Carpathian Mountains. Nonetheless, Moscow gave the order to attack at all costs. Throughout September and into October, the Soviet Army battled ferociously to break into Slovakia. In that one sector, particularly at the Dukla Pass, they were prepared to lose four times as many men as they did on the approaches to Warsaw. One may assume that helping Slovakia was judged to be in the Soviet interest.
Early in September, Polish Communist circles somewhat changed their tune. They were still bellowing about the ‘traitors’ and ‘criminal leaders’ of the Rising. But as from 1 September, they again released several messages to the effect that the First Polish Army was marching to Warsaw’s rescue. Such was the sense of Order Nr. 13 from the Commander of the LWP. It was repeated by Radio Lublin. A speech of the Committee’s Chairman sought to gain effect by talking of ‘our 200,000 brethren’ murdered in Warsaw. The number stuck. [
BRIEFE
, p. 352]
Realists might have been more impressed by some of the practical measures which the Lublin Committee took at this time. On 31 August, for example, it passed a decree ‘for the punishment of fascist-Hitlerite criminals . . . and of Traitors of the Polish Nation.’
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Published some weeks later but put into immediate effect, this draconian decree made provision for special penal courts and for the punishment not just of offenders, but equally of their aiders and abettors. It listed a huge range of punishments, from the death sentence to imprisonment, hard labour, confiscation, and loss of civil rights. Most shamefully, since it made no attempt to define treason, it placed all the Committee’s political opponents in the category of potential traitors. Other organs were leaving no margin of doubt over who was to be targeted. On 4 September, the Committee’s main newspaper issued an article entitled ‘We warn you’, which contained the chilling sentences: ‘He who opposes the Polish Camp (i.e. the Lublin Committee) is the same as a member of the Nazi Camp. No third camp exists.’ In other words, since an earlier decree had declared all conspiratorial organizations to be illegal, all members of the Home Army, including those fighting the Nazis, were deemed to be Nazi supporters. Here was a fine example of Applied Dialectics. (See Appendix 24.) Nonetheless, one can observe a certain divergence within the Communist ranks. Whilst the Moscow media was busy arguing that sending aid to Warsaw was pointless, the Lublin press was again saying ‘Warsaw is going to be liberated’, appealing for ‘all able people’ to join the rescue. In the course of a polemic directed at Gen. Boor, the same Lublin paper admitted that the Rising had broken out on 1 August after all,
i.e.
in the period when Lublin had pretended that nothing was happening. The head of the People’s Army was told to send patrols into the outskirts of right-bank Warsaw ‘to save what is worth saving’. These statements may be interpreted in the light of the prospect, which would have been known in Lublin, that Gen. Boor was really preparing to capitulate.
The Lublin Committee’s apparent change of heart towards the Rising caused waves in the Home Army ranks. On 7 September, one group of AK officers formally asked Gen. Boor to contact the leaders of the Committee’s Army. On the 9th, Monter himself expressed the view that joining up the Lubliners was preferable to capitulation. Boor judged these requests completely unacceptable.
BRIEFE
A nineteen-year-old German lieutenant, who had fought on both the Eastern Front and in Normandy, writes home
From a letter to his parents, 7 September ’44
. . . They’ve bandaged my other eye now; I have shrapnel wounds on the left side of my head, but only shallow ones. Everything’s returning to normal. The previous wound has healed now . . .
There was a strange repetition, which everyone considers a bad omen: our own soldiers were killed (first time six of them, second time two) and a few wounded by our own weapons. The enemy fired at us, detonating a thousand kilos of explosives just three metres from my vehicle. I don’t consider myself at fault. But it makes no difference. If you bring bad luck you’ll be stigmatized, as if you really were guilty. It’s a curse. You can see it in everyone’s faces. After the explosion, I was lying for hours, blinded, among the groaning wounded. Now I’m safe and calm. I believe that ill fortune and responsibility educate a man . . .
From a letter to his parents, 16 September ’44
. . . After I was wounded for the second time I stopped fighting. A colleague of mine, who was very keen, replaced me. I’m quite pleased about the arrangement because I’d had enough. But I seem to have been too pleased with myself . . . I’m the commander of a base and deal with everyday company matters. Fifty per cent of my work involves furnishing flats for our officers. My boss is an interior decorator and he’s very demanding. I really enjoy changing things round. I’m on my fourth flat now. From half-ruined houses we take the best stuff: sculptures, sofas, rugs,
etc.
– soon it will all go up in flames. Everything is being smashed to pieces. We pick our way through utensils, rubbish, broken china, and dirt. Horrifying and unimaginable desolation. That’s the propagators of European culture for you. Let them steal! . . .
We live near a power station. I often get to see beautiful well-built flats with elegant furniture. In Hungary too I was most impressed. It seems that small, mainly Slavonic countries are in the lead when it comes to aesthetic taste. Could it be a sign of great times to come for them? The Germans can’t compete, and neither can dusty old France – I’m leaving Russia out of the picture. How long will it last? . . .
From a letter to his fiancée, 28/29 September ’44:
. . . I have the strongest and most passionate desire that the war should not carry on in its present direction, leaving aside the prospect of the unpredictable ‘wonder
weapons’ or whatever. In Warsaw you can see the real face of this war – more terrible than in our own country. I’ve got used to the sight of male corpses – they’re a part of everyday life; but not to the remains of women’s bodies, where a life of love and innocence once grew, or when I see the bodies of children, all of whom I consider innocent whatever their mother tongue and all of whom I love in these horrendous times . . . – I know you will say I must not write about it . . .
In a long letter to my father I mentioned a girl who was much talked about in our unit. I never saw her, but I heard a lot about her, and because I held some vivid memory of certain scenes and their background, I could easily call it the most beautiful experience (‘beautiful’ is dubious, I should say ‘deep experience’): it was during the seizure of a bank. Bombers, anti-aircraft cannon, mortars, and explosive gases had been used to capture this particular building. When the line of machine guns drew close to the basement, most of the civilians surrendered. They came out, faces covered in dust, mute from fear. They crawled out whimpering, with cannons firing over them. Yet this girl stood there erect, with a calm and serious expression, shaking her head slightly in disbelief at this mad activity . . . She stood there proudly amidst the flames, insane but in one piece . . .
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P. Stolten
At this juncture, with capitulation still in the air, Boor was tormented by reports that the Soviet Army was edging ever closer to the eastern suburbs. So he prepared the necessary instructions for his subordinates. The Soviets were to be treated with caution. The commanders of the Berling Army were to be treated likewise, but the rank and file were to be warmly greeted as compatriots. No concessions were to be made to the Lublin Committee. As from the 11th, capitulation talks were to be suspended.
On 12 September, a communiqué from the front announced that German defences had indeed been penetrated, and the satellite town of Rembertov captured. The next night, two female couriers from the Communist People’s Army successfully swam the Vistula, and personally pleaded with Marshal Rokossovsky for help. The Lublin press repeated the story, and promised that ‘Help will be provided’. Soviet aircraft reappeared in the skies over the city. That same day, the Soviet 143rd Infantry Division
reached the right bank of the Vistula. Soviet soldiers and Varsovian insurgents caught sight of each other for the very first time.
British readers who take pride in the ‘Retreat from Mons’ or the ‘Miracle of Dunkirk’ should have no difficulty in grasping the significance of the Home Army’s Evacuation of Warsaw’s Old Town or the fighting withdrawal from the Riverside. They were operations that wrenched survival from impending annihilation.
The decision to evacuate the Old Town had been taken during the night of 25/26 August after seven days of constant bombardments and massed attacks. The armed defenders had been reduced from 8,000 to 1,500. The first stage was to bring out the AK Command and Government authorities through a previously unused sewer, which started only 200 metres (650 feet) from the German positions and passed directly underneath them. The second stage was to mount a flurry of local counterattacks to divert the Germans and to cover the exodus of the Home Army’s main detachments. The third stage was to extract the rearguard Parasol Battalion. Each stage was executed on successive nights from 31 August to 2 September.
The departure of Underground officialdom was achieved without serious loss. Their entry, one by one, into the manhole at the corner of Long Street was not discovered. Their passage was led by
kanalarki
or specialist girl ‘sewer guides’. It consisted of crouching and wading for two hours through a chest-high stream of heavy noxious sludge. Their orders were to grip the person in front, and to keep on moving, even if someone sank. Their arrival in the City Centre was greeted like a victory.
Before leaving, Gen. Boor took one last look at the shattered and shadowy outlines of the Old Town which he would never see again. ‘Six hundred years of history lay in those ruins’,
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he remarked. He then turned to the officer commanding the rearguard, Col. ‘Vachnov’:
Calm as usual, [the officer] spoke in clipped, whispered tones. He understood perfectly what his task entailed – to fight to the last for the remnants of the Old Town, and thereby to enable other districts to hold on until relief arrived. I knew that . . . he would observe his duty to the end. At 1 o’clock in the morning, he took us to the manhole.
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The next night, some 300 soldiers of the AL left the Old Town without warning and in the opposite direction. Their HQ had received a direct hit, which killed all their senior officers. Their departure caused lasting controversy.
The diversionary attacks, which persisted for five days, served their purpose well. Von dem Bach again called on the Ninth Army for reinforcements. Intense fighting flowed back and forth in Stalingrad-style through the ruins of the State Paper Factory. At the time, thousands of unseen men and women were edging their way out in the sewers. They even managed to evacuate all the staff and patients out of a major insurgent hospital, who would not otherwise have survived. When the hospital roof had been marked by a red cross, it had been immediately dive-bombed. [
KATYN
, p. 356]
The concluding exodus of the rearguard was less deadly than expected. One group, dressed from head to toe in SS uniforms, walked out on the surface through the Saxon Square, mimicking the actions of a German night patrol. The very last party, under Col. ‘Aurochs’, ran to the manhole at 8 a.m. on the 2nd, seen off by a burst of machine-gun fire. They duly emerged in the City Centre to pose for a photograph.
The worst of all tragedies was encountered by the 35,000 civilians and 7,000 unmovable wounded who were left behind. As soon as the SS arrived, a selection was ordered, as on the ramp at Birkenau. Those judged incapable of work – the old, sick, and wounded – were promptly shot. The healthy were formed up for immediate transportation to concentration camps, mainly to Mauthausen or to Sachsenhausen. A German tank drove over the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and pulverized it. The Sigismund Column was felled by a single vandal shot, and left where it lay.
The fall of the Old Town was followed almost immediately by a sustained German assault on the Riverside district. The aim was to deprive the insurgents of the prospect of a junction with the Soviet Army, of whose imminent approach the Germans were all too well aware. The house-to-house battles moved inexorably southwards over two weeks, until all that remained for the Home Army was one small patch of land. The civilian population had fled to the City Centre, causing intense overcrowding. The group of Col. Aurochs, who was wounded, were again in the thick of it. German artillery was firing heavy shells from elevated positions on the Vistula scarp. But the defenders could still not be dislodged. They could now hear the guns that were disputing nearby Praga. The time eventually came when they again saw soldiers in Soviet-style uniforms on the opposite bank. Late in the evening of 14 September, three Home Army swimmers crossed the river under cover of darkness. They discovered that the newcomers were Poles.
KATYN
A family from Volhynia whose father had disappeared in Russia in 1939 move to Warsaw for safety
In March 1944, seeing the atrocities inflicted on the Poles by Ukrainians, my mother decided to leave [Hrubieshov] Volhynia and to take her whole family to her uncle’s in Warsaw. Stanislas R. was an optician, and had a practice on New World Street. That’s where we stayed before the Rising.
[In August], we survived a bombardment which brought down a seven-storey building opposite ours, trapping us in the cellar. We escaped by knocking down the wall to the neighbouring cellar.
When the Germans took the Old Town, our whole family was rounded up as civilians who had aided the insurgents. This was on 6 September 1944. We were herded into the small park by Vauxhall Street, and lined up against the fence to be shot . . . At the last minute a messenger came with fresh orders. They took us to the building that is now the Army Museum. We walked down the street, and the drunken SS men on the pavements stuck out their legs and laughed, shouting obscenities . . . We watched the bombardment of insurgent positions by low-flying aircraft.
A few hours later they marched us off [by way of the Ko
ciuszko Embankment along Cooper Street, where they looted the jewellers’ shops. In front of our very eyes they shot a group of Jewish insurgents discovered in the rubble near the Cracow Faubourg. We walked [along Elector, Cool, and Vola Streets] until we reached the big church in Vola, where they made the first segregation. They separated the women and the elderly from the men and children above fourteen years old. My brother and I managed to stay with Mother, Grandma, and Aunt Marysha. [Cheslav L.], the husband of my mother’s sister, took his life in his hands by coming back to our side. Then they took us to the Western Station. We walked in the middle of the road to avoid the heat of the burning buildings, though even the tarmac was hot . . . Many fainted with the effort. A slow electric train was waiting to take us to the camp which had been set up in the railway repair yards at Prushkov.
After three days sitting amidst filth and starvation in hall number 7 we were told that anyone who wanted could board a train. We decided to risk it, knowing very well that the destination might be either Auschwitz or slave labour in the Reich. After a twenty-four-hour journey, however, it turned out that they were setting the passengers at liberty in the town of Opochno. There we were warmly greeted by the roadside as heroes from Warsaw. We were offered bread and fruit, which created a tremendous impression after the hunger we had experienced. We then headed for the village of
[Vola Opochynska], imagining that it would be easier to survive in the countryside. In return for digging potatoes we found a place on an estate, we were fed and cared for. My brother and I, already weakened by hunger, caught dysentery. Grandma, who looked after us, caught it herself . . .
We finally made it to Cracow on 6 October 1944. We arrived there just before curfew, and got into a tram designated ‘for Germans only’, because at that hour Poles were not allowed to move around freely. At the entrance to Smolensk Street we ran into a German police patrol. The chief turned out to be Austrian, and on checking our documents he too treated us as heroes from Warsaw and personally escorted us safely home. A few days later my mother went off to fetch Grandma and Auntie. Sadly Grandma was so ill with dysentery that she died on reaching Cracow on 10 November 1944.
My mother spent years awaiting my father’s return. Searches carried out during and after the war were to no avail. She always believed that Daddy would come back and she lived in hope. But she never discovered what became of him. She died on 7 August 1978, not knowing of the murder and burial of the Starobielsko camp prisoners.
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Roman Sulimir