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About

CONCEPT, SCRIPTING, RESEARCH AND AQUISITION OF AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS

Zespół specjalnych serwisów internetowych Polskiego Radia – Izabella Mazurek, Bartłomiej Makowski, Jacek Puciato

SUPERVISION AND CONTENT CONSULTATION

Prof. Zbigniew Wawer, Joanna Borowska, Maria Wardzyńska, Zasław Adamaszek

CONCEPT AND GRAPHIC DESIGN

Grzegorz Lipiński , Paweł Woźniak, Anna Szmida, Aleksandra Zając

ILLUSTRATIONS AND ANIMATION OF THE INTRO/OUTRO

Scenariusz: Bartłomiej Makowski Animacja: Bartosz Tytus Trojanowski Montaż i udźwiękowienie: Grzegorz Lipiński Lektorzy: Mateusz Drozd, Mathew Farell

DEVELOPMENT TEAM, TESTING AND TECHNICAL SUPPORT

Damian Luje Ponce, Alan Krawczyk, Marcin Kieruzel, Łukasz Kowalski, Paula Karolak, Mateusz Orłowski, Rozalia Przeworska, Michał Romańczuk, Marcin Żabicki

TECHNICAL COORDINATION

Grzegorz Kowalski

PROJECT COORDINATION

Krzysztof Kossowski, Katarzyna Milanowska, Marcin Rembacz, Dominik Szewczyk

AUDIO DESCRIPTION MONTAGE

Dział produkcji multimedialnych Polskiego Radia

TRANSLATION

Barry Keane, Mariya Shahuri, Piotr Siemiński, Irina Zawisza

AUDIO MATERIALS SOURCES

Archiwum Polskiego Radia, Archiwum Radia Wolna Europa

PHOTO MATERIALS SOURCES

Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (NAC), Polska Agencja Prasowa (PAP), Forum, East News, Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego (Ryszard Witkowski „Romuald”, „Orliński”; Józef Jerzy Karpiński „Jerzy”), Muzeum Warszawy, Biblioteka Narodowa w Warszawie, Biblioteka Narodowa w Krakowie, Biblioteka Naukowa Polskiej Akademii Nauk Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności (PAN PAU), Biblioteka Politechniki Warszawskiej, Mazowiecka Biblioteka Cyfrowa, Biblioteka Kongresu USA, Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie, Muzeum Narodowe we Wrocławiu, Urząd Miasta Warszawy, Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, Sächsisches Staatsarchiv, Wikimedia Commons (domena publiczna; CC BY-SA 4.0 – Kgbo), Muzeum Fryderyka Chopina w Narodowym Instytucie Fryderyka Chopina (fot. Waldemar Kielichowski)

VIDEO MATERIALS SOURCES

Filmoteka Narodowa Instytut Audiowizualny (Jan Ordyński, „Sztandar Wolności”), Biblioteka Kongresu USA („On the Firing Line with the Germans”), United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (filmy Juliena Bryena)

Subsidised by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage

Rebuilding of the Saxon Palace, Brühl Palace and the tenement houses on Królewska Street - preparatory work

Część II

The destruction of the palaces

After the capitulation of the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans began the systematic demolition of the city. 30 percent of the buildings were obliterated – many more than the number of buildings destroyed during the fighting itself.
On December 18, 1944, Brühl Palace was blown up, and on December 27 and 29, Saski Palace was blown up twice, from which only a fragment of the arcades covered with rubble, which had housed the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, survived.

This city is to disappear completely from the face of the earth and only serve as a transhipment point for the Wehrmacht, no stone on stone should remain. Demolish all buildings down to their foundations.

Heinrich Himmler, one of the leaders of the Third Reich

2

October 1944 

capitulation of the Warsaw Uprising

11

December

 The Germans begin the plunder and removal of movable property from Saski and Brühl palaces. The pillaging includes equipment, furniture, and stucco.

18

December

Brühl Palace is blown up

27

December

the first attempt at blowing up Saski Palace

29

December

the rest of Saski Palace is blown up

17

January 1945

The 1st Polish Army takes Warsaw, followed by Soviet units and the NKVD (the Soviet security service).

A landscape of destruction

At the end of the war, Warsaw was a city of ruins. Indeed, the scale of the destruction was so great that the transfer of the capital to Łódź was considered to be a plausible option.

~14,3%

Destruction during the siege of the city in 1939 and during the Soviet air raids following the German attack on the USSR

~12%

After the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

~25%

Losses in the Warsaw Uprising

~30%

German razing of city (2 X 1944 — 16 I 1945)

Destroyed buildings on the left bank of Warsaw

Bridges
Railway stations
Cultural objects and facilities
Historic buildings
Healthcare facilities
Residential buildings

Poland's losses in World War II

6 mil
lion citizens

 (including 3 million Polish Jews)

17,1%
citizens
797,398 bn PLN

Value of material losses (Report on the war losses of Poland of 1 September 2022)

This is the history of Poland: we build and collect, they demolish and rob us, we rebuild and collect again, they storm and steal again – and it is our national duty to always rebuild and accumulate, otherwise we will cease to exist.

Prof. Stanisław Lorentz, art historian, director of the National Museum in Warsaw, initiator of the reconstruction of the Royal Castle in Warsaw

Like a phoenix from the ashes

The reconstruction of the capital represented an undertaking on an unprecedented scale. There was 180 million m3 of debris to be cleared. From the debris of Saski Palace and Brühl Palace, 35,000 m3 were taken away. This material would be used to build the crown of the 10th Anniversary Stadium.

The destruction was so great that after the war consideration was given to the idea of moving the capital to Łódź. However, thanks to the gigantic efforts of the whole of Polish society, the city was reborn. Financing came from the Social Fund for the Reconstruction of the Capital, whereas the reconstruction was overseen by the Warsaw Reconstruction Office. Two approaches would prove to be at odds with one another: the reconstruction of the pre-war state and the creation of a new type of socialist city with modernist architecture. The latter was related to the current political situation; after World War II, Poland found itself ruled over by a communist regime that had been imposed by the USSR.

Unable to agree to cultural monuments being taken away from us, we will reconstruct them, we will rebuild them from scratch so as to be able to pass them on to the next generations; if not authentic, then at least the exact form of these monuments, living in our memory and available in the materials themselves. (…) The cataclysm of the last war made the matter even more severe. Entire pages of our history, written in the stone letters of our architecture, were deliberately ripped out.

Jan Zachwatowicz of the Capital Reconstruction Office

The ruined monument

Despite the appeals of architects, scholars and scientists, the communist authorities decided not to rebuild either Saski Palace or Brühl Palace. This decision was sealed by the inter-war past of these two edifices. A past which the communists wanted to obliterate from people’s memory.

The only remnant of Saski Palace would be the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, preserved in the form of a ruined monument. The building of the symbol of the Polish struggle for independence was entrusted to architect Zygmunt Stępiński. The restored Crosses of War Order of Viruti Militari were stripped of the dates commemorating the Constitution of May 3 (1972) and the Polish-Bolshevik War (1920). Instead, the Grunwald Cross was added, which was a communist order awarded to those who had fought the German occupiers. The pre-war tablets naming battle sites where changed to tablets commemorating “The Polish Army in its fight against fascism and Hitlerism”.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier preserved among the rubble

Photo: The Warsaw Rising Museum

Chapter V

The great absence

Chapter V

1945 - 2022

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