Warsaw. At the start of World War II, a thriving city of 1.3 million. By the end of World War II six years later, it had about one or two thousand scavengers as its inhabitants. 200,000 of it’s citizens were dead, mostly murdered in mass executions by the Nazis. Today, it’s the largest city in Poland and 9th largest in Europe, a city of 1.7 million.
69 Years ago today, the city rebelled against it’s Nazi rulers and the Warsaw Uprising began, at 5 PM local time. Today at that time, as it does each and every year, the city will stop for one minute of silence, to remember. And more importantly, to not forget.
You can read more about this in my blog post from last year, and there is an excellent article written this year here: http://mosaicprwarsaw.blogspot.com/2013/07/warsaw-lives-on-they-didnt-suceed-we.html. It is well worth your time.
And if you have but one–only one–extra minute, check out this You Tube video: http://youtu.be/Ejd2rsXoQSI.
You may, as I once did, wonder if it’s really true, that the whole city stops for a minute of silence every year at 17:00 CET on August 1st. I wondered. And I asked my Polish friend, Jurek, about that. In astonishment, he said “but of course!” Poles do not forget. We should not either!
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