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| Grupa Konrad of Juliusz Szawdyn in the bombed-out ruins of Warszawa |
The Polish government in exile was beating the drum for Soviet recognition of their legitimacy, and their demands grew louder the closer the Soviets got to Warszawa. The Warsaw Uprising began on Aug. 1 1944. The Poles feared that if they failed to take the city the Soviet conquerors would forcibly set up a pro-Soviet communist regime in Poland. The Soviets had reached a point a few kilometers from the Polish positions, but made no further headway. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had ordered the Red Army to stop on the eastern shore of the Vistula. Because the Polish Armia Krajowa (Home Army) was loyal to the Polish Government-in-Exile and not to the communists from the Soviet-backed Polish Committee of National Liberation, the Soviet Union saw the uprising as an obstacle to a Soviet takeover of Poland. Stalin wanted the insurrection to fail so that the Soviet occupation of Poland would be uncontested. It is estimated that some 150,000-200,000 Polish civilians died during the Warsaw Uprising. The failure of the uprising of 1944 resulted in the Poles being subjected to the Soviet communist yoke for four decades. During the Soviet occupation of Poland thousands of former Armia Krajowa operatives were deported to Gulags and Soviet prisons, while others - including senior commanders like Leopold Okulicki and Emil August Fieldorf - were executed. Credit: James Bjorkman. Top image: SS- und Polizeiführer in Reichsgau Wartheland Heinz Reinefarth in a Don Cossack Papakha among Cossacks of esaul Jakub Bondarenko around ulica Wolska. The former Red Army officer Oberst Bondarenko was the commander of the Kosaken-Regiment 3 composed of both Don and Kuban Cossacks. Cossack units constituted the largest ethnic group among foreigners fighting against the insurgents. During the uprising, units of Reinefarth took part in mass murders in the Wola suburb of Warszawa were tens of thousands civilians and fighters were slaughtered alike without distinction. The main perpetrators of the many atrocities during the uprising were the notorious war criminal SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger and the Belarus Waffen-Brigadeführer der SS Bronislav Kaminski. Among the volunteer units who participated in the Wola massacre were also the east Muslim Ostmuselmanisches SS-Regiment 1, the Azeri Aserbeidschanisches Feld-Bataillon 111 and the Caucasian Sonderverband Bergmann. After the war, Reinefarth was elected mayor of Westerland and elected to the parliament of Schleswig-Holstein. He died aged 75 on May 7 1979 in his mansion on the island of Sylt. FU. Second image: this photo is supposed to show the Georgian officer Major Yuri Frolov of the Russian Waffen-Sturm-Brigade der SS RONA and Siberian officers of the auxiliary police unit Kosaken-Schutzmannschaft-Bataillon 209. Frolov was killed just north of the Ochota suburb on Aug. 21 1944. The RONA brigade was made up of Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Azerbaijani collaborators. It became involved in committing numerous atrocities and were infamous and disliked even within the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA). PD. Third image: volunteers and conscripts of the SS-Regiment Dirlewanger seen in a townhouse at ulica Focha 9 on Aug. 8 1944. The Dirlewanger consisted of Russian and Ukrainian volunteers and of convicted German criminals who were not expected by Nazi Germany to survive their service with the unit. It participated in the mass murder of civilians and in other war crimes in German-occupied Eastern Europe and gained a reputation for its brutality. Several Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht commanders attempted to dissolve the unit. According to various scholars the victims of this penal unit numbered about 70,000. Photo by SS-KB Hans Schremmer. c. Bundesarchiv. Fourth image: Polish Captain Cyprian Odorkiewicz and Lieutenant Wacław Jastrzębowski of the Krybar combat group of the AK inspect war trophies including a Wiking cuff title in Okólnik gardens on Aug. 14 1944. Photo by AK photographer Sylwester Braun. After the uprising, Braun was sent to a German displaced persons’ camp but managed to escape near the Dutch border and returned to Warszawa in Jan. 1945 (now under Soviet occupation) to retrieve his hidden negatives. He evaded capture by the Soviets and soon fled to Sweden. Braun died in 1996 in Warszawa. PD. Fifth Image: insurgents of the Krybar with a captured German half-track at ulica Tamka on Aug. 14 1944. The vehicle was later nicknamed Szary Wilk after its commander Cadet Sergeant Adam Dewicz seen here holding a German MP40. Dewicz was KIA on Aug. 23 1944. Photo by Sylwester Braun. Bottom image: insurgents of the Konrad group at ulica Szpitalna in Sept. 1944. Note the ruins of the Prudential skyscraper in the background. Photo by AK documentary filmmaker Antoni Bohdziewicz who died in 1970 in Warszawa. Credit: Mikołaj Kaczmarek. Biuro Informacji i Propagandy (BIP). PD.
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ReplyDeleteAfter the Germans had evacuated all the civilians outside the uprising zone, SS Polizeiführer Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski brought in not just the punishment troops of SS Dirlewanger, but also the notorious Russian SS Kaminski brigades to fight the uprising Poles. These were not ordinary Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS troops, but barbaric Russian turncoats. Together with the Dirlewanger they murdered tens of thousands residents of Warsaw. Warsaw died during World War II. First, the Germans bombed it in September 1939, then they removed the Jews in 1943, then they intentionally razed vast portions of it in 1944 and deported the remaining civilians. Finally, in 1945, the Soviets damaged it further while taking it from the Germans.
ReplyDeleteOskar Dirlewanger, the commander of 36th Waffen-Grenadier Division, was so hated even among the Germans that Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht units outright refused to co-operate with him and there was an unofficial reward on killing him.
DeleteThere are still heated debates in Poland between those who see the uprising as justified and those who find it unreasonable. Simply put, the Soviets had no interest in assisting the Home Army to liberate Warsaw. The Soviets were planning to annex the eastern half of Poland, first occupied in 1939, and to exercise control over the rest. The Western Allies had secretly agreed to these points at the conference in Teheran in 1943 and did virtually nothing to help. The civilian population suffered the most. The mass killing was the work of SS police battalions, penal battalions and units of the Russian People’s Liberation Army and several other Eastern volunteer formations. Nazi General Erich von dem Bach gave the order for the execution of civilians to stop. The Cossacks and the criminals in the Kaminsky and Dirlewanger brigades did not pay any attention to von dem Bach Zelewski's order. The slaughter continued without anyone bothering to find out whether they were insurrectionists or not. Thanks for keeping the history alive. Maciej S.
ReplyDeleteBritain abandoned the resistance fighters, after promising them resupply. USSR watched, like a vultures, waiting... Western betrayal is historical.
DeleteArmia Krajowa to zbrodniarze a powstanie warszawskie to wielki zart.
DeleteMost soldiers of the Home Army who survived the massacres by the Russian and Ukrainian collaborators were persecuted after the war; captured by the Soviet NKVD or Polish UB. Many of them were sent to Gulags or executed. Poland will not forget!
ReplyDeleteP.S. the man with the glasses in the bottom pic is Janusz Paszynski. He was later captured by the Germans and sent to the POW camps at Fallingbostel and Altengrabow. Professor Paszynski was 95 years old when he passed away last year. He died in Warsaw on March 6, 2020.
Rest in peace. Your sacrifice will not be forgotten. God bless you all.
ReplyDeleteOby nigdy o ich cierpieniach nie zapomniano,dla nich pamięć wiecznie żywa.
ReplyDeleteYou deleted my whole comment about the treatment of the German minority in pre-war Poland. I don't believe my comment violated any guidelines.
ReplyDeleteThe Polish resistance in Warsaw was hung out to dry by Stalin for the ultimate benefit of Moscow and the communists. Until today, Russia's attitude to Eastern Europe and Ukraine has not changed much from that of the Soviet Union.
ReplyDeleteWarsaw people were slaughtered after the Uprising, there were not many of them left, many Polish Resistant soldiers were arrested, tortured and executed by the Soviets in communist Poland (Poland was not a free country after WWII, we were sold out to Moscow for 50 long years).
ReplyDelete