The Warsaw uprising
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2019
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On 1 August 1944, resistance fighters in the Polish capital rose up against German occupying forces. The uprising lasted for 63 days and some 200,000 people were killed, Warsaw itself was largely destroyed. Zbigniew Pelczynski was one of the young Poles fighting to free Warsaw from the Nazis, in 2014 he spoke to Louise Hidalgo about the battle.
(Photo: Zbigniew Pelczynski in 1946)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. |
| 0:29.2 | Now here on the BBC World Service witness history with me Louis Adaggo. |
| 0:38.4 | Today I'm taking you back to Poland during the Second World War. And on the 1st of August, 1944, the people of Warsaw |
| 0:46.3 | rose up against their German occupiers. |
| 0:48.6 | The Warsaw uprising would last 63 days |
| 0:51.8 | and cost 200,000 lives. In 2014 I spoke to someone who was a |
| 0:57.0 | fighter in the Polish resistance and took part in the battle. |
| 1:02.4 | It's the summer of |
| 1:03.6 | of 1944 and the largest single military operation undertaken by a |
| 1:08.0 | resistance movement during the Second World War is about to begin. The invasion by Nazi Germany of Poland five years earlier |
| 1:17.4 | had been the spark that had begun the war, but by 1944 the tide was turning. The Soviet Red Army was advancing from the east |
| 1:26.6 | and the German armies were in retreat. As a young boy's Bignier Pelsinski |
| 1:32.2 | had watched a triumphant German army enter Warsaw. |
| 1:36.0 | Now he watched them begin to leave. |
| 1:38.0 | When they arrived in 1939 as heroes, tanks, all sorts of lorries and so on. |
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