[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 99 (Tuesday, July 26, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF WARSAW UPRISING

                                 ______


                           HON. MARCY KAPTUR

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 26, 1994

  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to again pay tribute to the 
courageous people of Poland on their upcoming 50th anniversary of the 
Warsaw uprising. Every night this week I will take out a special order 
to bring attention to this event. I will continue this evening by 
reading to the Membership, excerpts from the book, ``Forgotten 
Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944'' by Richard 
Lucas.

       August 1, 1944, began cloudy and raining. It was unlike any 
     other day in Warsaw. There was an electricity, a feeling of 
     expectancy, that gripped the Poles. People streamed into the 
     churches to hear mass, Irene Orsak, a nurse in the 
     underground who suffered from heart trouble went to hear them 
     think. A small bird fluttered into the church. It was not a 
     good omen.
       There was a great deal of activity on the streets before 
     the upheaval. Young boys crowded the trams and brashly 
     occupied the front platforms reserved for Germans. On the 
     sidewalks women with bundles hurried along, obviously 
     carrying arms and ammunition to various assembly points.
       It was an enormous job to mobilize an army of approximately 
     25,000 to 28,000 men, to get personnel to their posts, to 
     equip them with arms and ammunition, and still try to 
     maintain secrecy. Bor had selected 5 p.m. as the precise time 
     of the uprising, believing it was the best hours to surprise 
     the Germans. At that time people would be returning from 
     work, and heavy traffic would make it easier to conceal the 
     units moving to their places.
       The AK looked like a motley bunch, dressed in all sorts of 
     clothes, . . .
       The international flavor of the apparel reflected a 
     plethora of nationalities and religions in the Home Army. In 
     one battalion alone, after the uprising broke out, there were 
     Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Hebrews of 
     Polish Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Great Russian, Georgian, 
     Armenian, Azerbaidjani, and Spanish origin. There was even a 
     Frenchman with a tricolor in his cap. But they all wore the 
     red and white Polish armband, the only item of dress common 
     to all Home Army soldiers.
       The time had come.
       From all sides a hail of bullets struck passing Germans, 
     riddling their buildings and their marching formations. In 
     the twinkling of an eye, the remaining civilians disappeared 
     from the streets. From the entrances of houses, our men 
     streamed out and rushed to attack. In fifteen minutes an 
     entire city of a million inhabitants was engulfed in the 
     fight. Every kind of traffic ceased. As a big communications 
     center where roads from north, south, east and west converged 
     in the immediate rear of he German front, Warsaw ceased to 
     exist. The battle for the city was on.
       The Home Army launching the uprising with three divisions, 
     and to take over six municipal districts of the city . . .
       But only about 2,500 soldiers were properly armed on August 
     1.
       The Germans, on the other hand, had 15,000 to 16,000 well-
     armed troops who were supplemented and strengthened as the 
     uprising progressed.
       The results of the first day's fighting revealed that the 
     Poles had seized most of the city, but it proved a Pyrrhic 
     and ephemeral victory. Not only did the Poles lose more than 
     the Germans--2,000 against 500 casualties--but also they 
     failed to take the kind of installations needed to prolong 
     their ability to fight effectively . . . such as the four 
     Vistula bridges, remained in German hands. The Poles, 
     ignoring the principle of mass concentration, tried to take 
     all of them at once instead of concentrating on one or 
     two . . .
       The same problem of timing occurred in attacks against the 
     airports . . .
       The consequence was that the Luftwaffe could with ease 
     attack the Polish capital by air, which they did at 2:00 PM 
     on August 4--the first German air attack since 1939.
       About 5,000 Home Army fighters, repulsed by the German 
     defenders, followed their time-tested underground tactic of 
     withdrawing into the adjoining forests--``do lasu''--not from 
     cowardice but to regroup. Unfortunately, this was not a very 
     wise tactic in trying to seize and hold a city since it 
     further weakened the strength of an already seriously weak 
     insurgent force in the citadel. Our authority estimated that 
     these withdrawals, combined with losses by death and wounds, 
     reduced the strength of the AK by half.
       It would be easy to label the operations during these first 
     days a tactical nightmare played out by military amateurs, 
     but that would be misleading. Although the Poles failed to 
     take the bridges, airports and key communication centers, 
     they did acquire several important buildings, many of them 
     housing military and police officers, that had a symbolic 
     significance. This was not a small factor to a people 
     oppressed for five years by Nazi occupation.
       Moreover, by the second day, several vital installations--
     gas, electric and water works--were in Polish hands. The 
     battle for the electric plant was especially fierce, but the 
     building fell to the AK after a nineteen-hour fight, despite 
     German shelling with 88mm guns, the plant operated until 
     September 4, when air and artillery fire completely destroyed 
     it.
       This, plus Bor's faulty information (mentioned earlier) 
     about the strength of Soviet forces near Warsaw, led him to 
     underestimate the Germans' capabilities against both the 
     Soviets and the Polish uprising.
       . . . the Soviet government continued to claim . . . that 
     it was unable to give any military aid to the Poles and even 
     refused to allow the United States to use Soviet airfields to 
     aid the beleaguered Poles.
       The history of the Poles in the Warsaw Uprising is in a 
     sense a collection of individual biographies of men and 
     women, young and old, many of whom did some incredibly brave, 
     humane and determined things.
       One of the most impressive and determined evidences of 
     Polish determination to wrest their capital from the enemy 
     was the postal service which flourished during the uprising. 
     It was operated by young boys and girls, none of whom was 
     older than fifteen, who were members of the scouting 
     movement. These Boy and Girl Scouts, wearing the red and 
     white armbands the soldiers wore, executed their 
     responsibilities with dedication and promptness. Since the 
     Soviets had murdered many Polish physicians during the Chitin 
     Massacre, there was a shortage of medical doctors.
       Working in intolerable situations--frequently without 
     water, toilet facilities and even adequate nourishment--these 
     dedicated people did an outstanding job to bring succor to 
     the wounded soldiers and civilians of the city.
       ``Warsaw will be wiped out,'' was Hitler's laconic reaction 
     when he heard of the outbreak.
       ``After this uprising and its suppression Warsaw will meet 
     its deserved fate; it will be completely destroyed.'' This 
     kind of message was in character for the man who we will 
     recall said in 1940, ``If I were to have one poster hung up 
     for every seven Poles who have been liquidated, all the 
     forests in Poland could not supply enough paper.''
       ``My Fuhrer,'' Himmler declared, ``Warsaw . . . will be 
     erased--this nation that has blocked our way to the East for 
     the past 700 years and which has been a constant obstruction 
     in our way since the first battle of Tarnnenberg . . . Then 
     historically, the Polish problem will be no great problem at 
     all, neither to our children nor to all those who will come 
     after us and not even to us.''
       Then Himmler went to Posen, where he dispatched for Warsaw 
     most of the police force of the city--some with artillery--
     together with the SS Brigade Dirlewanger and the SS Brigade 
     Kaminski.
       Himmler gave his units carte blance--they were told to 
     shoot everyone, including women and children, and they were 
     permitted to loot.
       The order was to set fire to every block of houses and blow 
     them up.
       The Germans discovered to their dismay that it was not 
     going to be so easy to stop the upheaval.
       The German troops, already suffering from low morale before 
     August 1, frequently shot wildly and fought in isolated 
     groups. No one knew always who was friend and who was foe. 
     The reinforcements sent by Himmler contributed further to the 
     chaos by their looting and indiscriminate killing. Warsaw had 
     no battle lines during these days; the city was a shifting 
     maze of people in a boiling cauldron.
       German fighting strength in Warsaw doubled.

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