The Foreigners in the Warsaw Uprising 1944

Summary

          The presented material points out the complexity of the political situation and fate of the people involved in a tragedy of the Warsaw Uprising 1944 lasting 63 days. Commonly two opponents are engaged in a fight. In this case it should be Germans and Poles. In reality over a dozen of nations were involved in combat. On the German side more soldiers were coming from collaborationist military formations then purely German ones. On the insurrectionist side the percentage of the foreigners in units was admittedly small but they were representing over a dozen nations and they were all volunteers, similarly to the rest of the insurrectionists, which is of great importance.
          During the Warsaw Uprising many exceptionally cruel, denying any sense of humanity with elements of animal-like violence and genocide events took place. On the other hand many acts of incredible heroism and humanism were noted.
          One of the reasons of such dynamism of events was supposedly a fact that apart from a normal reasons resulting from geopolitical and historical determinants accompanying military operations among opposite sides essentially the first confrontation between two totalitarian systems, brown fascist and red communist, took place. In this clash all hell broke loose, including hatred, contempt for humans, and accomplishing goals despite any moral and societal norms.
          We can only hope that the lesson from those events will be an example strong enough to allow avoiding similar situations in the future.

Maciej Janaszek-Seydlitz


translated by: Maciej Liszewski