Read Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw Online
Authors: Norman Davies
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #War, #History
Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (71 page)
The Nazis, fanatically following the
Führer’s
order to wipe the rebel city from the map, were not going to give up when they had success in view. So the only amelioration could come from Moscow. It was well within Stalin’s power to send Rokossovsky in and call Serov off. And it was well within the competence of Western diplomacy to press Stalin harder. But time was running out; and the true situation in Warsaw was still surrounded by a fog of uncertainties. None of the Allied leaders seemed to have a realistic perception of what was happening. Moscow, in whose so-called ‘sphere of influence’ Warsaw was judged to lie, was particularly poorly informed.
One
thing alone was clear: if Stalin did not intervene very soon, the Rising was doomed.
Already the poets were practising their dirges. One of them, watching in America, observed the universal implications of the tragedy:
If Warsaw falls, it’s not one city that falls,
Not just the Polish capital in its cellars laid to rest.
It will be the freedom of all peoples,
And the truth of all times, betrayed by everyone.
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In Warsaw, another poet imagined the last communiqué of Radio Lightning:
The station of the Home Army in Warsaw
Sends soldierly greetings for the last time
To all its brothers in the world
Who fight for victory – your victory.We announce the last item of news.
A fraternal army is one step away.
A Russian helmet has been sighted.
We close the broadcast with victory acclaimed.The Home Army’s station reports
That this last programme has been transmitted.
‘Lightning’: Warsaw: Victory:
Fraternal Trumpets, and bloody Curses.
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SEWER II
A leader of the Polish Socialist Movement and of the Underground parliament escapes to the City Centre
We entered the sewer from Krashinski Square, on the corner of Long Street, on the side of the Palace of Justice. We immediately fell into deep water up to my chest. The water rushed by so strongly that we had to hold on to each other. Our group had a rope to hang on to. Even so people often fell and with difficulty were helped up by others. It was extremely difficult for short persons to use this particular route. They had to be hauled along. The darkness was periodically illuminated by the leader’s lantern. The water roared and emitted a frightful stench. People who fainted were carried away . . .
We walked under Honey Street. Thanks to the bombardment, the latrine water could not flow properly through the openings, and it was oozing from the roof, threatening to collapse it. There were strong currents which were carrying not just excrement, but thick gravel and hard stones that flayed the skin from one’s legs. Things improved somewhat . . . when we reached the crossroads and we could descend to a lower sewer with calmer water.
But then we found ourselves under the Cracow Faubourg, which was patrolled by the Germans, who from time to time were throwing in hand grenades. We had to progress with great care, neither speaking nor splashing. We heard the rumble of German vehicles and artillery immediately above us. Somewhere close to the Holy Cross Church we entered an even lower sewer, about 120cm in height, but full of latrine sludge, which made every step difficult . . . We had to move hunched up, protecting our heads from the ceiling. At last we reached the manhole by Varka Street . . . and we breathed fresh air.
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K. Pu
ak
A Home Army telephonist is tricked into surrender
The Bashta Battalion had long been separated from the rest of the Rising. But just before the collapse it was ordered to evacuate Mokotov and move to the City Centre via the sewers.
Signal Company K, in which I was leader of a section of telephonists, started to pull out on the evening of 26 September using a manhole on Shuster Street. Being wounded, I entered the sewer at the end of the company and was looked after by a
nurse. After overcoming many obstacles, including barricades erected by the Germans . . . I became separated from my unit and was forced to go back. Altogether I spent twenty hours in that black, foul-smelling labyrinth, constantly stepping on dead bodies. I met three young men, who were also lost. So we walked together.
After a while we began to see a faint light, and we heard somebody calling, ‘Come on, come on, come on.’ We climbed out of the sewer only to find that it was not a Pole who was calling, but a German who could speak Polish.
I saw that the soldiers who caught us were from the unit against whom we had been fighting and that the place around the manhole was covered with corpses. I realized what was awaiting me. I was searched, all my jewellery was taken together with the miniature pistol which my friends had called a ‘Panzerfaust’. I and my three comrades were ordered to climb onto some raised ground in preparation for execution. At the time, completely drained, I could not have cared less . . .
When a German jeep arrived and an officer stopped the execution, I did not react. I was in a ‘trance’. Half dead, I was taken by the same officer in his jeep to a German hospital [in the Rakoviets district]. As I later discovered, all members of the Warsaw Rising had been given combatant status as from 26 September. Hence the German soldier who caught us by calling ‘come on’ either did not know of the ruling or he simply wanted to take revenge for the two months of shameful fighting.
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Danuta W.
The true irony of the poem lies in the fact that it was written not in late September, but in August.
Finale
The talk of capitulation which had been rife in early September now returned. The stalled negotiations were restarted on the 28th. The Home Army side was eager to determine the precise terms and guarantees which might still be on offer. But they were equally determined to call talks off if a Soviet offensive materialized.
Negotiations took place for three hours. Col. ‘Zyndram’ stubbornly stood his ground against the blandishments of
SS-Ogruf.
von dem Bach. The latter wrote in his diary: ‘May the Good Lord give me the same powers of persuasion which worked so well in Mokotov’.
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Monter reported that the morale of the soldiers was excellent, but that serious hunger had set in among the civilians. A second round of negotiations took place on the morning of the 29th, to the background of a decisive Panzer assault on Jolibord. Von dem Bach was pressurizing its opponents with a show of son et lumière. Gen. Boor penned a virtual ultimatum to Rokossovsky, giving him a maximum of three days in which to launch an offensive. On the 30th, a third round of negotiations began to address some of the technical problems of a general capitulation. But nothing was signed.
Meanwhile, fighting continued unabated, day after day. In the last week of September, German forces had assaulted all three remaining insurgent islands with renewed vigour. In Mokotov, the storm group of Gen. Rohr broke up the relative calm which had reigned for some time. It was assisted by a hurricane of artillery shelling, mortar fire, and aerial bombardment. The defenders were driven into a small block of barricaded streets, and on the 26th, in the course of a two-hour truce, some 9,000 civilians left the district. On the 27th, the local commander, Lt.Col. ‘Charles’, decided to take his main force out to the City Centre via the sewers, leaving only a small rearguard behind to cover the retreat. It was a repeat performance of the brilliantly executed withdrawal from the Old Town three weeks earlier.
The northern district of Jolibord was relentlessly attacked during these same days by the German 46th Panzer Corps. The insurgents’ refuge shrank to a handful of small streets near the river which guarded the dangerous escape route to the Soviets on the opposite bank. The AK commander applied for permission to surrender, which was reluctantly given. Only the City Centre was holding out in reasonable order. It sheltered the Home Army HQ on Pius XI Street, but even there, isolated but well-fortified German positions constrained freedom of movement. Neither the Domestic Economic Bank on Jerusalem Avenue nor the Parliament Building on the Vistula scarp were ever cleared of their dogged German defenders. What is more, every time that columns of civilian refugees headed for the City Centre to avoid fighting elsewhere, the SS entrenched in the area around Schuch Avenue would seek to mow them down. Yet again, massacres of innocents in the streets accompanied the
growing throng of sick, starving, and wounded in the cellars. The Rising was tottering on the brink.
Human endurance has mental as well as physical dimensions. People can withstand stress and injury more effectively if they are mentally resilient, if they can believe in something larger than themselves. For this reason, religion is particularly relevant to the history of the Rising. It was of the greatest importance to many people living in extremis, and facing daily death. Any description of the Rising which does not include the role of religion in the experiences both of soldiers and civilians is not worth reading. As death in all its forms grew ever more prevalent, the Roman Catholic religion, with its emphasis on redemption and its belief in the afterlife, grew ever more relevant. [
CRUCIFIX
, p. 403]
Religious observance stood at an unusually high level throughout the Rising, among both insurgents and civilians. Priests held regular masses in all parts of the city, often in abbreviated open-air services among the ruins. They were on constant call to administer the last rites, and to conduct improvised funerals. The demand for consecrated weddings rose sharply:
One should not imagine the Rising simply as an endless chain of combats . . . Obviously, fighting went on all the time. But people are people. They had to take a rest from time to time and think of other things. They thought more about Love, and about the survival of Love, about the desire for Love to be sealed by the sacrament, to have the sign of permanence . . .
Lt. ‘Hawk’ and a [woman] courier had been ‘going out together’, as we say, before the Rising. They saw each other a little during breaks from the barricades. But now they insisted on a marriage – in the cathedral, of course. The vicar agreed, and the ceremony took place in the evening when the shelling died down. [One of the witnesses] had been wounded in the leg and couldn’t walk. But the other witness . . . carried him into the undamaged sacristy on his back. There we joyously celebrated the union of ‘Hawk’ and ‘Halina’. We embraced them both. [Shortly after,] the twenty-three-year-old couple were buried alive during a Stuka attack.
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The Home Army Command was conscious of the link between religious practice and military morale. Monter issued detailed instructions on how frontline soldiers could continue to say their prayers, to recite the rosary, and to confess themselves. On 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption, he reminded his subordinates that ways must be found to celebrate all the major religious festivals.
CRUCIFIX
A priest rescues a figure of Christ from the burning cathedral
On 17 September a few missiles land simultaneously on the roof of the presbytery and the chapel of the Literary Archconfraternity. The unpleasant smell of benzene permeates the air. Flames swiftly take hold of the wooden trusses of the roof and reach the interior of the chapel. Someone informs Father Ka., at the insurgents’ hospital at 7 Long Street, that both the cathedral and his apartment are on fire.
The priest bursts into the cathedral. The flames are raging in the presbytery. Here the most valuable exhibits of the Archdiocese Museum had been assembled. The priest had been carrying them into the cathedral for a few days, in the hope of saving them. Both sides of the presbytery are on fire: the beautiful stalls of Yan Sobieski’s chantry, a masterpiece of Polish wood-carving, are splintered. Figures of the Kings of Poland carved from wood and marble crumble into glowing embers, the bloody flames climb the columns of the altar. Wooden sculptures burn like torches. The heat is so great that the iron doors of the sacristy, themselves works of art, become red and melt, as if made from wax. The air is stifling and hot as a baker’s oven. It is harder and harder to breathe. The smoke invades the lungs and stings the eyes. The dome over the Barichka chapel is on fire. Clouds of thick black smoke fill the Gothic naves of the cathedral and the window openings explode.
Father Ka. comes in through the back entrance to the Barichka chapel. There is silence here and not even much smoke. The priest faces a decision: should he take the figure of Christ from the chapel or leave it there? If it stays, it will burn with the whole cathedral. But to take Christ from the altar and remove Him from the cathedral where He has been all these centuries? What should he do? Soon the fire will come through the presbytery window. The dome is collapsing. The sacristan is coming. They confer. Father Ka. goes onto the altar and tries in vain to remove the great cross. He only manages at last to remove the figure of Christ and at the moment when he gives it to the Sacristan a huge part of a burning chandelier falls next to him.
Under fire, the priest carries Christ past the ruins of the Royal Castle through Canon Street to the gates of the Jesuit Fathers’ monastery, where many inhabitants of the Old Town are gathering. At the sight of the miraculous figure of Christ they fall to their knees and sobs burst forth from all their hearts.
‘Christ, Christ . . . Save us!’
They dismantle the figures. They take off the arms. People fall upon them with their lips, then they take Christ onto their shoulders and carry him through the
courtyard, a cellar, a passage, and openings knocked through the walls. The small group grows with every step. At the head, a hunched Father Ka. walks on. Someone intones the hymn, ‘Whoever places himself under the care of his Lord’. In the Market Square of the Old Town unexploded shells, splinters, and unburied bodies lie scattered far and wide. The enemy is constantly firing on the Square from the Royal Castle. People flit by momentarily by the walls of the tenement houses on the Barss side of the Market Square. They come out onto ‘Crooked Circle’ and then onto New Town Street. The crowd of people carrying Christ reaches Old Street, and the chapel of the Sisters of Charity. They place the miraculous Christ on the altar. Maybe it will be safe here?
The cathedral is burning like a torch. Any action to save it is futile . . . [But the fighting goes on.] In the evening the Germans approach, nearing the small tenement house on Canon Street. Helmets can be seen through the smoke. Lieutenant ‘Roman’ from the Vigry Group puts a ladder up to the grated windows of the cathedral. His arm marks out an arc. Then there is the awful explosion of a petrol bomb. The echo spreads around the naves. The Gothic vaulting which has been under strain since the siege of Warsaw, in September 1939, collapses into the middle of the main nave. Bricks, stones, plaster, and sculptures fall to the ground, spattering monuments and altars and destroying the pulpit . . . Lieutenant Roman is injured. Second Lieutenant ‘Crow’, the commander of the 1st Platoon of the Bomber Company, a journalist by occupation, takes over . . .
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