🇬🇧 Unseen Soundwalks: Warsaw Rising ’44

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out in August 1944, Aleje Jerozolimskie was under constant German fire, and crossing the street was a deadly undertaking…

It was here that a barricade was built in the first days of the Uprising to provide an essential communications corridor between the north and south parts of the city centre held by the Home Army.

In the opening days of the Uprising, insurgents got to work, digging out a trench between number 22 on the north side to number 17 on the south side.

Once completed, the barricade was used by messengers and runners, as well as the civilian population. From a logistical standpoint, the barricade on Jerusalem Avenue was used as a corridor to transport weapons, ammunition, food supplies, as well as for transporting the wounded and providing a safe passage for field post.

The PAST building was one of the most important buildings in Warsaw for the German Nazi occupiers.

The telephone exchange housed inside the building was a communications nerve centre for the Nazi war effort on the Eastern Front, which by late 1944 was moving ever closer to Poland’s capital.

The storming of the PAST was one of the most spectacular events during the 63 days of the Warsaw Uprising: almost 40 Germans were killed, while 120 were taken prisoner. On the Polish side, only around a dozen or so combatants died.

Among the seized loot was a large ammunitions stash, which provided a strong morale booster following the successful siege. The strategic building and its surroundings remained in Polish hands until the end of the Uprising.

Napoleon Square, now called Warsaw Uprising Square, was one of the most central points downtown during the 63 days of fighting.

In the first few hours of the struggle against the Nazi occupiers, insurgents stormed the Prudential building and hung the Polish white-and-red flag from its roof, making it visible from all parts of the city.

The main post office, which stood where the National Bank of Poland is now, was also a key target for the combatants.

In the last days of August and into September, the Germans started to intensify their air raids and artillery fire throughout the city.

The Prudential building was an easy target, and on the 28th of August it was hit by a 600 mm heavy calibre 2-tonne shell fired from a Karl-Gerät mortar. Despite the immense damage, the building did not collapse, and still stands to this day.

This monolithic building, which used to stretch all the way to Marszałkowska Street, housed a number of important organisations before being destroyed by German bombing in early September 1944.

Apart from housing the Polish Home Army headquarters, the PKO building also had a sanitary point which was later converted into a field hospital, providing beds and sanitation for up to 400 wounded combatants at a time.

The building was so large it also accommodated a POW holding centre for Germans taken captive following the storming of the PAST building on Zielna Street. Meanwhile, the building’s third floor played host to the “Błyskawica” – or “Lightning” – insurgent radio station.

The Bank of Poland building was a temporary fortification for the insurgents during the first month of the Uprising, but the Polish underground had already been at work here long before…

During the Nazi occupation, the building’s function didn’t change, and became a Bank of Issue for the Nazi Germans’ General Government. A number of the bank’s Polish employees also worked with the underground, secretly passing on information about transports of money, leading to one of World War II’s largest heists against the occupiers.

During the Uprising, insurgents managed to storm the bank on the 3rd of August. However, due to its tactical position in between the Old Town and Warsaw’s centre, the Germans fought intensely to try and regain the building.

Bloody fighting went on for four weeks straight, with the occupiers even managing to get inside the building a number of times before being fought off again by the Polish Home Army.

It wasn’t until 1 September that the last remaining insurgents evacuated the building and escaped to Warsaw’s downtown through the city’s sewer system.

It’s 1730 hours on 26 March 1943. Operation “Meksyk II”, commonly known as Operation Arsenal, has just got under way…

Commander Stanisław Broniewski, codename “Orsza”, has given the order to attack a Nazi prisoner transport vehicle. It’s carrying Jan Bytnar, codename “Rudy,” from Gestapo heaquarters to nearby Pawiak prison.

However, with the original plan going up in smoke, the Polish contingent has to think fast. They end up storming the van, led by “Rudy”’s comrade in arms, Tadeusz Zawadzki, codename “Zośka”, managing to release around 20 prisoners, including “Rudy”.

While the event did not happen during the Warsaw Uprising itself, Operation Arsenal remains one of the most well-known events undertaken by the Polish underground during World War II and is a testament to the Polish determination to set themselves free from Nazi German domination.

In mid-August 1944, over 300 people died in one of the most tragic episodes of the Uprising when a radio-controlled vehicle carrying half a tonne of explosives blew up after Poles thought they had seized it.

On the morning of the 13th of August 1944, the Germans launched an assault on the Old Town from their positions at the nearby Castle Square.

At 0900 hours, a tracked vehicle, what seemed to be a tank, started crawling up Podwale Street towards the maze of streets which make up Warsaw’s oldest district, an insurgent stronghold at the time. Combatants threw molotov cocktails at the tank, forcing its driver to escape from the resulting fire.

Insurgents found no weapons in the vehicle but they did notice a radio device of sorts. Nobody was allowed near the tank until a sapper had checked it out, although before a technician managed to inspect the vehicle, at around 1600 hours two soldiers claiming to be under direct orders from the Polish command climbed into the tank and started to drive it into the insurgents’ territory, towards the Old Town.

A huge crowd gathered to celebrate the capturing of the German tank, and a makeshift victory parade assembled along the street. The resulting blast ripped into nearby buildings and tore its way through the jubilant spectators…

Slated to close in the summer of 1944, by mid-July the Germans started to evacuate the camp, although by the time the Uprising started there were still around 400 inmates, mostly non-Polish Jews from across occupied Europe.

Storming the Gęsiówka camp was no easy task. The whole prison was surrounded by guard towers and bunkers, all armed to the hilt. The insurgents used a captured Panther tank – dubbed “Magda” – to initiate the attack by firing at the towers.

This was followed by the assault. After the tank had forced through the barricade and broken through the entry gates, insurgents then used the cover of heavy fire to storm the camp.

Some 348 prisoners were freed, including 24 women. 89 prisoners had Polish citizenship, the rest were Jews from Hungary, Greece, Holland, Belgium, France and Czechoslovakia. A vast number of the freed prisoners joined the continuing fight against the Nazi occupiers during the Uprising, assisting the Home Army insurgents in the Old Town.

The Church of St. Stanisław serves as just one reminder of the brutal massacre of the civilian population of the Wola district, in line with Hitler’s orders to raze Warsaw to the ground and destroy the city completely…

Following the outbreak of the Uprising, Germans stationed in Warsaw started to indiscriminately kill Poles living in the city, both insurgents as well as civilians.

However, it is in the western district of Wola where the most brutal atrocities occurred. In an effort to use terror tactics against the Poles, around 50,000 civilians were killed within a week.

The church was one of the first transit camps. Civilian prisoners were rounded up here as early as the 2nd of August, but it wasn’t until the 5th, after the storming of the Home Army of the Gęsiówka prison, that the local population was rounded up inside the church for initial selection by the Nazis.

Conditions in the church were dire – there was no water or food, and illness spread like wildfire. Around 400 prisoners, including three priests, were shot outside the church and burned.

It was in this vicinity that one of the most daring operations of the Home Army resistance took place – the assassination of the SS commander and head of police for the Warsaw district, Franz Kutschera.

In the autumn of 1943, SS-Brigadeführer Franz Kutschera was transferred to Warsaw with the aim of pacifying Polish resistance to the Nazi occupation.

As soon as he took up his post, the number of street arrests and public executions grew rapidly, and Kutschera was soon nicknamed the “Butcher of Warsaw”. As a result, he also became a wanted target by the Polish underground, which started to track him with the intention of gunning him down.

After a failed attempt on Kutschera’s life in the final days of January 1944, another attempt was made in the early hours of the 1st of February. This time, the plan worked… Kutschera’s limousine was ambushed and he was shot by a gunshot to the head.

The next day, in retaliation for the killing, the Nazis rounded up and shot 100 Poles near the site, while a further 200 were killed in what was left of the Jewish Ghetto. The people of Warsaw were also told they would have to pay a fine… to the tune of 100 million złoty.