[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 104 (Tuesday, August 2, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 2, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
              THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE WARSAW UPRISING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to pay tribute to the 
courageous people of Poland on their upcoming 50th anniversary of the 
Warsaw Uprising. This is the fifth in a series of special orders I will 
give this week 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.

       The turning point of the uprising was the Polish defeat in 
     Old Town, which began in earnest on August 19 and went on 
     until September 2.
       One source estimated that during the two-week battle 3,500 
     to 4,500 tons of shells fell on an area three quarters of a 
     square mile, perhaps the largest amount of steel to be 
     expended in so small an area during the war. The buildings of 
     the sector soon became the collective graves of thousands of 
     men and women who were buried alive. By the third day of the 
     struggle, out of the 1,100 buildings in Polish hands, 400 had 
     been completely destroyed and 300 had been burned.
       There was only one way left for the 1,500 defenders of Old 
     Town to get out. That was the sewer. There never had been 
     anything but a small detachment which made the trek through 
     the sewers before. And to evacuate the entire detachment 
     would mean leaving Old Town totally undefended while the men 
     retreated underground. To make matters worse, if the Germans 
     discovered what was afoot, a few well-placed bombs would 
     decimate the group. And how could the 1,500 men be concealed 
     from the enemy when the manhold they had to use was only a 
     few hundreds yards from German positions? For Bor, it was one 
     of the most difficult decisions he had to make during the 
     uprising. On the night of September 1, 1,500 soldiers, 500 
     civilians and 100 German prisoners began the 1,700 yard trek 
     through the slime. Old Town was defenseless. If the Germans 
     had attacked, there would have been no opposition. 
     Fortunately, the Germans did not enter the sector until the 
     next day.
       The level of violence increased so much during the first 
     two weeks of September that the Germans suffered 5,000 
     causalities.
       The atrocities returned. German soldiers used women as a 
     screen for their advance into Powisle. There were reports 
     that German soldiers ordered patients from the hospitals into 
     bomb craters and then machine gunned them.
       ``All other wards, as well as the staircase, were on fire; 
     the smell of burning corpses, indescribable thirst; the 
     wounded seized medicine bottles for lack of water, one of my 
     neighbors mad from the heat and thirst; seized a bottle of 
     iodine and drank the contents, poisoning himself to death; 
     for myself, together with some others, I moistened my lips 
     with peroxide solution. So we lay until the morning of the 
     following day when, with a superhuman effort, we managed to 
     creep out from the burning rains.''
       They hoped that recent British and American diplomatic 
     pressures on Moscow might force the Soviet Army to roll 
     again, or at least give the AAF permission to use Russian 
     bases for relief of Warsaw.
       Ever since September 9, Bach-Zelewski substantially 
     increased artillery barrages to convince the Poles to 
     capitulate. Seeing Soviet military activity increase 
     steadily, the Poles allowed General Reinhardt's deadline to 
     pass and opted to continue the struggle, lasting political 
     and military victory, the Poles--incredibly--put their faith 
     in the Soviet Union for the second time in two months, and 
     the bloodbath continued. It was to be August all over again.
       Russian planes flew several times over the area but dropped 
     their loads frequently without parachutes. The consequence 
     was that the supplies were so damaged as to make much of them 
     useless. The Soviet drops, however, came in time.
       The Red Army had the Germans on the run.
       The series of attempts to cross the river in mid-September 
     ring of Stalinist cynicism: He used Polish troops who were 
     expendable in an operation that he probably never intended to 
     support strongly enough by Soviet artillery and aircraft and 
     by effective liaison with the AK. To Stalin, the crossings 
     were a gesture only, not a genuine effort to take Warsaw from 
     the Germans.
       After repeated pleas from the Poles to the United States to 
     aid them and Soviet refusals to allow the AAF to use their 
     bases, which were essential for B-17s to drop supplies over 
     Poland, Washington waited helplessly as the Germans 
     relentlessly pounded the Varsovians. After Stalin's belated 
     effort to aid the Polies early in September, he finally 
     dropped his opposition to AAF use of Soviet bases, knowing by 
     then that Polish surrender to the armada, consisting of 110 
     B-17s and three groups of P-51s, took off from English 
     airfields. The big planes, flying between 14,000 and 17,000 
     feet, dropped 1,284 containers with multicolored parachutes. 
     Approximately, 288 of them reached Polish hands.
       The people had been on starvation rations for days. People 
     searched vainly for the few remaining dogs to eat.
       Bor told London, ``Warsaw has no longer any chance of 
     defence. I have decided to enter into negotiations for 
     surrender with full combatants rights, which the Germans 
     fully recognize.''
       On October 2, 1994, Polish representatives worked out the 
     final surrender terms: AK soldiers were to be treated as 
     prisoners of war. On October 5, Bor inspected his security 
     platoon for the last time. There had been 128 of them on 
     August 1. Now there were 36. By 9:15 AM the Home Army was 
     ready to march out with their arms and surrender to the 
     waiting Germans, just a few hundred yards away. A woman 
     darted from the crowd and gave Bor a medal from the Polish 
     insurrection of 1863. It was an emotional moment, heightened 
     by the fact that Bor began to sing the Polish national 
     anthem. Jeszcze Polska Nie Zginela (``Poland is Not Yet 
     Lost''). The crowd was in tears.
       No one knows for certain how many people perished in Warsaw 
     during the two-month inferno that began on August 1. Various 
     estimates abound. The official history of the Polish armed 
     forces estimates that there were 21,600 military casualties 
     in Warsaw--10,000 killed, 6,600 wounded and 5,000 missing in 
     action. The same source places German casualties at 26,000--
     10,000 killed, 9,000 wounded and 7,000 missing in action. 
     Bach-Zelewski himself estimated German casualties at 20,000. 
     On the other hand, a respected German scholar estimated that 
     the Germans suffered 11,000 casualties--2,000 killed and 
     9,000 wounded. Total losses, military and civilian, in Warsaw 
     appear to have amounted to approximately 200,000.
       The Warsaw Uprising doomed the Poles in the capital to 
     defeat and destroyed the heart of the political and military 
     institutions of the Polish underground, a goal that Stalin 
     needed to accomplish before his armies occupied Warsaw and 
     installed his own political proteges as the rulers of Poland.

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