Wednesday, August 01, 2012

"Go, Passer-By, And Tell The World That We Perished In The Cause, Faithful To Our Orders."



Today is the day set aside in Poland to remember the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

For those of you not familiar with it, the Warsaw uprising was a two-month plus underground resistance movement against the Nazis during WWII. With Soviet troops advancing on the Eastern front and American troops far away on the Western front, Poles formed an underground government with it's own armed forces, the Home Army.

With few resources and having already endured 5 years of Fascist occupation, thousands of Poles attempted to liberate the city against a vastly superior (in terms of armaments and supplies) German army. While it was ultimately unsuccessful, leaving over 15,000 dead and another roughly 15,000 imprisoned, it is a stirring example of the power of the human spirit and the desire for freedom. And probably some other cliches that fail to capture the magnitude of what happened.

It's traditionally marked by a minute of silence, so think about taking a minute of your day to remember the uprising or to ponder the many similar uprisings against corrupt dictatorships currently going on throughout the world right now.

1 comment:

Brenda said...

That was really beautiful.