Read Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw Online
Authors: Norman Davies
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #War, #History
Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (72 page)
The destruction of churches, which in the early days of the Rising had provided good cover for snipers from both sides, did not deter crowds of the faithful from congregating for Mass in the ruins. To receive the holy sacrament in such circumstances held heightened significance. Priests noted increased attendance at prayer meetings and devotional classes. Members of the religious orders, especially nuns, took the lead in the growing practice of devoting one’s time to assisting the Rising exclusively through prayer.
Warsaw’s Roman Catholic clergy were drawn into the affairs of the Rising at many levels. Some of them had been appointed chaplains to particular military units, whose pastoral care became their full-time concern. Many more tended the increased needs of non-combatants, especially in the crowded cellars and underground hospitals. The catechizing of children, for example, never stopped. Nuns of various orders, whether
accustomed to working ‘in the world’ or not, acted as universal sisters of mercy and won widespread praise. Mortality among them was higher than among most categories of civilians. When captured by the SS, they aroused a special fury, which frequently ended in rape or butchery.
Father ‘Stefan’ was one of the hundreds of Home Army chaplains who gained his position by virtue of where he was at a particular moment. Aged thirty-three, he had only been ordained a short time earlier, and had been transferred just before the war to the woodland parish of Laski on Warsaw’s northern perimeter. Laski was (and is) a very special place. It is the seat of a religious community that arose from the vision of a more modern and more open brand of Catholicism, which on the one hand is devoted to a practical, compassionate Christianity and on the other to rigorous theological and philosophical debate. It patronized a pioneering institute for the education and social integration of the blind; and it quickly became the resort of artists, intellectuals, and radical Catholics. But in 1944, by chance, it happened to find itself in the area of operations of the Home Army’s Kampinos Group. So Father Stefan became a Kampinos chaplain. If he weren’t so tall and slim, one might have described him as a latter-day Friar Tuck, ministering to Robin Hood’s band ‘under the greenwood tree’. As God willed, Father Stefan came through the ordeal unscathed.
The religious orders made a very special contribution to the Rising. Male and female, closed and secular, they had formed an essential part of the community for centuries, and with very few exceptions they stayed. They were joined in their prayers by crowds of lay people and insurgents. The deep cellars and crypts of their ancient cloisters served as hospitals and bomb-shelters. The monks and nuns threw themselves into social work as never before.
The Convent of the Benedictine Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration of the Holy Sacrament, for example, found itself in the front line from the first week of the Rising, when a delegation from the Home Army begged the prioress to admit them and to let them man the walls. Situated on the edge of the New Town, the convent occupied a strategic location, and the prioress lifted the ban on male visitors, which had stood since the foundation of the convent in 1678. On 6 August, the doors were opened to accommodate a mass of refugees from Vola. Under the bombs and the crumbling masonry, the sisters cooked, and served, and tended, and nursed, and prayed. In an act of collective sacrifice, they offered their lives to God, with the plea that their gift be joined with compassion for the homeland. One of them formulated the prayer, ‘That Poland, when it
resurrects, may be neither white, nor red, but Christlike.’ Then the day came when the Germans set an ultimatum: either the sisters evacuate the convent by 3 p.m. or see it destroyed. The prioress turned to the Home Army command, which was lodged in the nearby Church of St Mary the Virgin, and asked for their advice. The response stated that ‘the sight of nuns and clergy leaving their posts would be a terrible blow for the soldiers’. So the sisters did not leave. [
VANDALS
, p. 407]
Evening prayers began, as always, with the words: ‘In the shadow of Thy wings, O Lord, protect us.’ ‘Bless this House,’ the prayer continued, ‘may Thy blessing be with us forever.’ ‘Greetings, Queen of Heaven,’ the antiphon started, ‘turn thy gracious eyes towards us, and help us to see God.’ The whine of aircraft engines overhead stopped. The sisters huddled around the tabernacle. A long, lingering moment of peace and silence followed. A thousand people did not dare to breathe.
The vault of the church collapsed in one thunderous explosion. Hundreds of tons of massive stones, bricks, tiles, and cement rained down. A whirlwind of flying glass – of beautiful coloured death-dealing glass. A cloud of dense smothering dust. Blinding light above from the open roof. Darkness below, as the church floor caved in. Shrieks. Moans. Shouts. The first coherent voice, that of an officer: ‘Easy goes, ladies and gentlemen, that was only a pillar falling.’ All evening and all night, rescue teams dug to save the living. Dantean scenes like the worst of earthquakes. A much-diminished convent choir was singing to encourage them. At dawn, a handful of nuns, including the convent’s chronicler, filed out. Lines of insurgents saluted. And the German guns reopened fire.
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For obvious reasons, every part of the German war machine was pleased by the prospect of capitulation in Warsaw. But different Germans had different motives.
SS-Ogruf.
von dem Bach and his men, for example, undoubtedly looked forward to the end with feelings of utter relief. They were still losing about 150 dead every day and, until recently, had been making painfully slow progress. Their combat effectiveness was assessed by the Ninth Army Command in late September as ‘declining’. The Wehrmacht, in contrast, was longing for the day when it could finally consolidate the defences along the whole western bank of the Vistula and build fortifications to oppose all Soviet attempts to storm across the river. It was for this reason that the Ninth Army had lent von dem Bach the services of the crack 19th Panzer Division.
VANDALS
The University Librarian, who did not quit his post, watches German vandals
It was terrible watching the vandals at work. The beautiful furniture of the Chetvertinski Palace was prised apart with crowbars and thrown out of the windows onto the street below, where it was used as barricade material. Paintings torn from the walls met a similar fate, as did magnificent sets of glass and porcelain. An antique Chinese gilded screen was cut up and used as curtains.
OLt
. Schmidt oversaw this operation. The librarians made continual protests against the vandalism – to no avail. From the first moment the pictures came under threat, it was made very clear to us that there was no point trying to take anything to the university library.
‘If these bandits’, they went on, ‘persist in attacking us, we will defend ourselves from these barricades. Then we’ll set fire to these buildings and move to the library, then we’ll burn down the library . . . The whole of Warsaw will be destroyed whether or not they attack . . .’
This happened at the end of the first week of September. The gang of criminals who had carried out the hospital massacre in Vola was sent in to the university for a few days. The officer in charge of the on-site garrison that day, despite the availability of other empty buildings, placed them in the library. Two hours later the offices and reading-rooms, and even parts of the storerooms, were unrecognizable. Tables had been smashed up, papers from drawers and cupboards were strewn about the floor. In the offices, stacks of books awaiting cataloguing had been taken to make window barricades for the defence of the whole building. The criminals tore up other books and defecated on the pages. Engravings and atlases taken from display cases on the ground floor received the same treatment. It began to look like some thieves’ magic ritual . . . Within a few days the administrative and reading-room section of the library had been turned into a giant cesspit . . .
On 10 September an SS man turned up and declared that the next day he would be coming ‘on the Führer’s instructions’ to take away the best items from the collections.
The books were loaded into crates lined at the librarians’ request with waxed paper. The crates, labelled ‘W-1’, were nailed shut. This is how all the old publications from room 28, together with most of the Tolochanov collection housed there, were packed and taken away. In all, four lorries took away about 200 crates, in other words about 5,000 volumes.
1
Only the Nazis, however, took real delight at the thought of Warsaw’s fall. In late 1944, they already suspected that the war could not be won even by the
Führer’s
‘wonder weapons’. Equally, they had no reason to suppose that a compromise peace could be arranged, or, if it did, that they would escape retribution. In effect, they were doomed. But, before they went down in flames, they could still complete several of the plans that were closest to their hearts. They could still kill off the remaining ‘subhumans’ who were within their reach; and they could kill off this accursed capital on the Vistula that had repeatedly defied them. Warsaw was the central city of the
Lebensraum
which they had set out to Germanize. Germanization had not gone too well. But wiping out the Varsovians would represent a lasting achievement, the subject of savage joy.
Certainly, the top authorities of the Reich were assuming that the Rising was virtually over. On 30 September, Hitler awarded high decorations to three leading commanders in Warsaw. Von dem Bach and Oskar Dirlewanger received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.
SS-Gruf.
Reinefarth was singled out, as the 608th German soldier so rewarded, to receive the superior Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. In one of its rare communiqués from Warsaw, Radio Berlin made a report that sounded like the Rising’s obituary as well as an unintended tribute to the insurgents. ‘It is a grim and merciless struggle,’ the correspondent said, ‘which surpasses the imagination of even the most hardened German stormtroopers. The soldiers of the Underground movement are blinded by fanaticism and fight like madmen. If German sappers had not brought in every single weapon in their arsenal, the contest would be hopeless.’
166
For Radio Berlin to talk publicly of ‘soldiers of the underground movement’ was a distinct novelty.
It is significant that von dem Bach drew up detailed plans for the general evacuation of Warsaw on 30 September, without waiting for an agreement with the Home Army to be signed.
167
The German Command was confident not just that the end was nigh, but that the end could be accelerated.
Von dem Bach, newly decorated, sent a special report to Himmler:
Reichsführer! Today the 19th Panzer Division, strengthened by two regiments from von dem Bach’s corps, captured four-fifths of Jolibord. As a result of my talks with General [Boor], the Polish commander of Jolibord surrendered at 19.40. Prisoners 800, killed 1,000, evacuated civilians 15,000.
Von dem Bach, at last, was pleased with himself.
The Polish Government in London stood to lose most. If Warsaw fell, it was their capital which would be lost; it was their Underground army which would be decimated; it was their political enemies who would steal their inheritance; and it would be their reputation that would be ruined. It would be they, ‘the reckless, foolish authors of the fiasco’, who would be blamed. [
WITNESS
, p. 410]
The fate of the Commanderin-Chief had hung in the balance throughout September. On the 30th, after days of dithering, the President curtly informed the Commanderin-Chief of his dismissal. Simultaneously, and without warning, he appointed Gen. Boor as the replacement. In a radio telegram to Boor, he apologized for the lack of consultation. ‘I believe that the time will come’, he wrote, ‘when Providence will permit you to execute your duties.’
168
This was asking much of Providence. One can only assume that the President preferred to have no active Commanderin-Chief other than a nominee of the faction who had forced out his friend. For Boor had no chance in the foreseeable future of assuming his post. If the Rising collapsed, he was going to be taken prisoner by the Germans. If the Rising didn’t collapse, it could only be saved by the Soviets, who were hardly going to give him a free hand: that is, if they chose not to throw him to the Polish Communists, who were demanding to put him on trial.
In a farewell letter to his soldiers, the departing Commanderin-Chief praised his successor. ‘The heroic Gen. Boor,’ he wrote, ‘the long-term Commander of the Home Army, has won the deepest respect in every soldier’s heart, through his superhuman actions. May Warsaw’s bloody ordeal move the conscience of the world, and inspire the triumph of law and justice.’
169
The British press on Sunday, 1 October, expressed the widespread view and pious hope that the Commanderin-Chief’s removal would facilitate an improvement in Polish–Soviet relations.
Also on 30 September, the Premier addressed a final appeal to Moscow:
To Marshal Stalin – Moscow
Your Excellency,
After sixty days of relentless fighting against the common enemy, the defenders of Warsaw have reached the limits of human endurance . . . At this extreme hour of need, I appeal to you, Marshal, to issue orders for immediate operations that would relieve the garrison of Warsaw and result in the liberation of the capital. Gen. [Boor] has addressed the same appeal to Marshal Rokossovsky.
170
WITNESS
Three witnesses provide conflicting accounts of the fate of Jews in the Warsaw Rising
I know that Jews played a large role in the Warsaw Rising. In our company in the Old Town there were a dozen or so people (Jews) of semitic appearance, but no one paid this any attention. There was not one incident when someone was victimized or badly treated. As for me and my friend Adam R., our commander knew of our origins.
The following episode is typical. On 7 August 1944, at the start of the Rising, Captain K. chose Adam R. and me as the most reliable and trustworthy people to escort the delegation from the London government on an important mission from the Old Town to the centre.
Another incident illustrates the relationship between the Home Army command and Jews in our unit. One day, it was decreed that document checks and personal searches would be carried out on anyone moving between the Old Town and other neighbourhoods. During one of these checks, a Walther revolver was found on a Jewish man, the type used before the Rising exclusively by members of the Gestapo and Kripo. He had a pass book from the Jewish Fighting Organization (
OB). This organization, with a strength of a dozen or so people (the rest were survivors from the Warsaw Ghetto), fought at the side of a larger insurgent group. In the beginning, the [Underground] gendarmerie did not believe him. When our commander found out, he summoned me to him and after verifyingOB’s existence, he intervened to release the man. After that his weapon was returned and he was issued with a pass entitling him to move freely within the Old Town.
1
Efraim K.
Ignatius B., a director of Phillips in Lodz, his wife Esther, eleven-year-old daughter Noemi, his sister, and her daughter hid with others in the few weeks before the [Rising] in a bunker at 4 Straight Street. In the third or fourth week of the Uprising a few insurgents came into the bunker and ordered the six men there to accompany them to Headquarters. They led them only as far as the gateway and the insurgents’ lieutenant told them, ‘Gentlemen, you are Jews, waiting for the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks will come but you will not see them,’ and he gave his people the order to shoot all six of them. The bodies were thrown into a shallow grave, hollowed out by a missile close to the house. Then they went into the bunker and shot the remaining women on the spot.
Abram, brother of the murdered Ignatius, usually stayed with the family in the
bunker, but by chance had gone out. When he went down into the cellar and heard murmuring, he retreated and hid. He reported a blow-by-blow account of the events, but then discovered that insurgents from the Valiant Group had carried out the murders.
In liberated Warsaw, Abram B. recovered the remains of his family and buried them in the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw on Trench Street.
2
[2 September]
The Germans were telling people to surrender, and encouraged by fear we raised the white flag. Women and children were immediately segregated, and of the rest, six of us were sent to Krashinski Square. On the way, I noticed a group of six priests and twenty Jews talking in Yiddish and Hungarian. The insurgents expressed pride and admiration for the Jews’ activities during the Rising. Those Jews freed from the Ghetto (probably from Goose Farm) were completely indifferent as to whether they lived or died.
After working on Krashinski Square, from where I had seen the Germans shoot their way into the insurgents’ hospital at 7 Long Street, we were marched up to Leshno Street. In the exit of the former gateway of the Ghetto, a Gestapo officer stopped us. Nineteen Jewish insurgents were led in ranks into the courtyard of 89 Iron Street, where the Gestapo officer put a bullet in each of their heads. After this shooting, another group of twenty-two Jews was led in, including an old woman of nearly seventy. The Nazi thug shot her. I noticed no signs of resistance either among the unarmed Jews, or the unarmed Poles. In the afternoon, we were marched towards Vola. As I passed 89 Iron Street, I saw clouds of smoke where the bodies of the forty-one murdered Jewish insurgents were burning.
3
Stefan S.