WARSAW - THE LOST CITY

17th January 2017

On 17th January 1945  Soviet soldiers enetered to Warsaw which was completely destroyed by Nazis. It was a terrible time but luckily nowadays Warsaw is well-developed city.

After the 

German Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 began World War II, central Poland, including Warsaw, came under the rule of the General Government, a German Nazi colonial administration. All higher education institutions were immediately closed and Warsaw's entire Jewish population -- several hundred thousand, some 30% of the city -- herded into the Warsaw Ghetto. The city would become the center of urban resistance to Nazi rule in occupied Europe. When the order came to annihilate the ghetto as part of Hitler's "Final Solution" on 19 April 1943, Jewish fighters launched the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Despite being heavily outgunned and outnumbered, the Ghetto held out for almost a month. When the fighting ended, almost all survivors were massacred, with only a few managing to escape or hide.

Warsaw Uprising was a struggle by the Polish Home Army to liberate Warsaw from German occupation before the Red Army could take over.

By July 1944, the Red Army was deep into Polish territory and pursuing the Germans toward Warsaw. Knowing that Stalin was hostile to the idea of an independent Poland, the Polish government-in-exile in London gave orders to the underground Home Army (AK) to try to seize control of Warsaw from the Germans before the Red Army arrived. Thus, on 1 August 1944, as the Red Army was nearing the city, the Warsaw Uprising began. The armed struggle, planned to last 48 hours, went on for 63 days. Stalin gave orders to his troops to wait outside of Warsaw. Eventually the Home Army fighters and civilians assisting them were forced to capitulate. They were transported to PoW camps in Germany, while the entire civilian population was expelled. Polish civilian deaths are estimated at between 150,000 and 200,000.

The Germans then razed Warsaw to the ground. Hitler, ignoring the agreed terms of the capitulation, ordered the entire city to be razed to the ground and the library and museum collections taken to Germany or burned. Monuments and government buildings were blown up by special German troops known as Verbrennungs- und Vernichtungskommando ("Burning and Destruction Detachments"). About 85% of the city had been destroyed, including the historic Old Town and the Royal Castle.

On 17 January 1945 -- after the beginning of the Vistula--Oder Offensive of the Red Army -- Soviet troops entered the ruins of Warsaw, and liberated Warsaw's suburbs from German occupation. The city was swiftly taken by the Soviet Army, which rapidly advanced towards Łódź, as German forces regrouped at a more westward position.

MOVIES (OR FRAGMENTS) USED: 'WARSZAWA 1935' - TRAILER 1 & 2 BY NEWBORN 3D STUDIO, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYLfEI..., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ea_3... , AND 'CITY OF RUINS' BY Director Damian Nenow and The Warsaw Rising Museum, http://playpoland.org.uk/index.php?na...

I would like to believe it never happens again..