Survivors recall Warsaw Uprising

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Survivors in Northeast Ohio recall Warsaw Uprising of 1944 against Nazis

Brian Allbrecht
Plain Dealer Reporter

Forlorn hope drifted from each page that Halina Junak turned in a book pulled from the piles of World War II history stacked on tables, chairs and shelves in her Cleveland home.

Junak, 83, is the aging embodiment of those books, photos, magazines and documents and the medals she wears for special occasions as a participant in the Warsaw Uprising of August-October 1944.

For 63 days she and some 40,000 members of the Polish Home Army and other resistance groups - armed with a meager arsenal of pistols, rifles and homemade weaponry - battled German forces equipped with tanks, artillery and dive bombers.

Buoyed by news that Russian troops had advanced to the outskirts of Warsaw, the Poles saw a chance to seize their freedom.

Their dream died with them in the rubble.

"Look, they have the bottles with the gasoline they threw at tanks," Junak said, pointing to a photo of Polish Armia Krajowa (AK) fighters armed with Molotov cocktails.

"Dead people," she simply said with the turn of another page showing a gruesome photo of fire-blackened bodies. "They burned people out with liquid phosphorus . . . running all down the buildings, running all over people."

There were photos of barricaded passageways and underground sewers the Polish combatants used to traverse the city under nearly constant bombardment.

The scenes were eerily reminiscent of the earlier Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 when nearly 1,000 Jewish resistance fighters - joined by many of the 55,000 civilians who had been jammed into the ghetto, awaiting deportation and extermination at concentration camps - staged the first and ultimately futile armed resistance to the Holocaust.

Despite that failure, the Poles saw an opportunity, as Germany retreated from Allied offensives in 1944, to throw off five years of repressive occupation.

During those years an active Polish underground resistance movement had flourished, sabotaging war-related factories and transportation, gathering intelligence for the Allies, punishing collaborators and assassinating particularly brutal Nazi agents or officials.

"We had a little terror from our side," said Andrew Zajdler, 83, of Westlake, who joined the underground after the Germans shut down all the Polish high schools and universities.

When liberation of Poland's capital by the Russians seemed imminent, the Aug. 1 uprising was launched as thousands of Home Army soldiers moved from planned assembly points to attack 180 German military installations in the city.

The Poles had roughly one weapon for every 16 fighters. Some of those arms were provided by corruptible Germans before the uprising. "They needed money for girls and vodka," Zajdler said.

Other guns were captured as the fighting progressed, along with German helmets and uniforms. The Polish fighters wore red and white armbands, their national colors, over the purloined gear.

Former resistance fighter George Grabowski, 85, of Independence, recalled that if they were captured wearing those uniforms, "we would not have a prayer to survive. Our Polish saying was 'Ras Kozie smierc,' which means 'Goats die once.' "

But those uniforms once saved Grabowski when he was sent with a patrol behind enemy lines to cut German phone lines. "To fool the enemy, we removed the white and red armbands and we looked like their patrol, repairing telephone lines," he said. (The ruse almost got them shot by their own side when they returned from the mission.)

Grabowski was issued one of the new Russian anti-tank rifles and rudimentary instructions: Bullets go in here, come out here, and a tank explodes there.

Initially, spirits and hopes soared among the Poles. "That first day there was great elation that we are finally free," recalled Halina Zajdler, 85, who married a fellow Warsaw resistance fighter, Andrew, after the war.

She and Junak were among about 4,000 women in the resistance force and served as couriers for messages and supplies to Home Army outposts.

Junak recalled dodging bullets and bombs as she darted between buildings and barricades. She chuckled at one ruse in which the resistance fighters sent a mannequin on wires sailing across a street, drawing the fire of German snipers while the Polish couriers safely crossed.

Zajdler harbored one particular fear. "I was very afraid to be burned alive," she said. "Of course, I was also worried about being wounded because we had no medication, no anesthesia, and it was not safe in the hospitals."

Conditions worsened as the days wore on. Polish casualties mounted as supplies diminished. The Russians stopped their advance on Warsaw and provided little support for the resistance fighters.

German troops - following the directive of Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo, to raze Warsaw and take no prisoners - executed civilians or used them as human shields in attacking resistance positions.

Junak recalled surviving on brewery wheat and horse meat as the enemy slowly tightened a noose around the Poles, battling street by street, building by building. "We fought for every brick and stone," Junak recalled.

By Oct. 2, they had reached their limit of resistance and surrendered.

Because the United States and England had warned Germany that members of the Polish Home Army should be regarded as regular armed forces, some 20,000 Warsaw combatants were treated as prisoners of war, instead of being executed or shipped to forced labor or concentration camps.

The uprising had cost the Poles 15,000 killed and 5,000 wounded, plus an estimated 200,000 dead civilians. German losses were 16,000 dead and 9,000 wounded.

Germany spent the following weeks leveling most of the city, as if to erase any reminder of the Polish resistance.

They could not erase the memories of those, like Junak, who fought in the Uprising and remember it not as a defeat but as a step toward eventual freedom.

As she said, "We lost, but we never gave up."

A Solemn Mass and program celebrating the memory of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 will be held at 10:30 a.m today at St. Casmir Church, 8223 Sowinski Ave.

A short commemoration will follow the Mass in Parish Hall, featuring refreshments and a film about the uprising, "Honor of the City," attended by survivors of that conflict and Polish veterans.