Ceremonies are underway here in remembrance of the Warsaw Uprising, which began today in 1944. The uprising against the Nazi Occupiers was initially intended to last two to three weeks, as Russian and West European forces were believed to be joining the struggle. However, the Russians - who were just a couple of miles away - pulled out and Churchill was frustrated in his attempts to airlift aid to the Polish capital. The doomed struggle ground on for 63 days and over 200,000 Polish civilians perished.
The Uprising became a taboo subject after the Russians installed their Communist government, and full-blown ceremonies of remembrance were delayed until after 1989. In 2004, in tandem with the 60th anniversary of the rising, a major museum was opened, which has taken it's place as the outstanding museum in the capital.
The Uprising remains a highly emotive subject here in Poland. 'For Poles, it is the subject of a never-ending conundrum,' writes historian Adam Zamoyski. ' Was the rising an act of heroic if doomed self-defence, a historical imperative, or was launching it an act of criminal recklessness, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands and the destruction of the capital?' Zamoyski concludes that 'the arguments on both sides are such that no intelligent and honest person can embrace either view wholeheartedly to the absolute exclusion of the other.'
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