Warsaw Uprising, a heroic fight against brutal German terror, was full of saints, says author

WARSAW, Poland (OSV News) — The Warsaw Uprising that broke out 80 years ago, on Aug. 1, 1944, was the biggest organized resistance fight in occupied Europe against the deadly German regime during World War II.

The uprising was also full of saints and the Catholic Church played a major role in the freedom fight, a Polish book author told OSV News.

Poland, to this day a majority Catholic country, was invaded by Germany on Sept. 1, 1939, the date that marked the start of World War II. The occupation regime of the following five years was characterized by violence, resettlement and genocide.

Fed up with the brutal occupation, thousands of poorly armed insurgents fought in the cut-off city before being forced to surrender after 63 days of heroic resistance: 200,000 Poles were massacred and the city, the Polish capital once dubbed the Paris of the North, was turned into rubble.

“The church played a major role in the uprising,” Agata Puscikowska, author of “Saints 1944: ‘You Will Love,'” she told OSV News. “It is an often neglected fact — that the church was present in the uprising in people who heroically assisted the fighting city and saved lives, and fought for freedom from brutal suppression,” she said.

“Probably everyone, even in the U.S., heard about the Primate of the Millenium, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski,” she continued. “But who knew he was a resistance fighter in 1944?”

Declared blessed in September 2021, then-Father Wyszynski was a young chaplain of the fighters, bearing the code name “Radwan III.” At one point during the uprising, chased by Germans, he had to seek shelter in Laski — a school for the blind located north of Warsaw, founded by a blind religious sister, Mother Elzbieta Róza Czacka, who was declared blessed along with Cardinal Wyszynski.

“Primate Wyszynski is most known by his resistance against communism,” Puscikowska said. “But the six years of his presence in the Polish World War II Resistance and rescuing fighters during the uprising: assisting in operations, blessing those dying — is something that formed him as a priest.”

“It’s the uprising that prepared him for being the unbroken Primate of the Millenium and spiritual father to St. John Paul II,” she added.

Warsaw turned into commemorative mode Aug. 1 to mark the 80th anniversary of the uprising with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier asking the Polish people for forgiveness during observances.

Hundreds of young people participated in the commemorations, assisting the veterans.

“The emotions are huge,” 100-year-old Barbara Tyszkiewicz-Tokarska, who was among the uprising’s iconic “sanitariuszki,” or nurses, told Polish media Fakt Aug. 1.

“I am so happy that so many young people greet us here,” she said of the commemorations. But recalling her life 80 years ago, she said, “I witnessed young boys dying in my arms. It was horrific. But I also participated at the wedding (of two insurgents) at St. Elizabeth’s Sisters (convent). The boys were singing.”

“Warsaw Uprising is like D-Day to us,” Puscikowska told OSV News. “Even though the uprising fell, so many young fighters were ruthlessly killed by the Germans and Warsaw was flattened, we still remember it as a victory. Because by taking up the fight we saved something much more precious than material things — Polish dignity and Polish soul.”

“Warsaw insurgents showed how to take care of freedom, security and peace,” said Bishop Wieslaw Lechowicz of the Military Ordinariate of Poland, during the July 31 commemorative Mass in Warsaw.

A majority of those fighting were Catholics. Accounts of their steadfast faith are well documented by historians, and religious memorabilia from that time are displayed in museums.

“May we, with God’s help, keep faithful to those values that kept the heroic Warsaw Insurgents alive and did not allow them to accept lawlessness, the trampling of human dignity and slavery,” Bishop Lechowicz said in the presence of the Polish president, defense minister and other officials during Mass.

Listing Catholic heroes of the Warsaw Uprising, Puscikowska said the first who come to mind are countless religious sisters. “They were often sworn-in members of the Home Army,” she said.

“About a thousand nuns took part in the uprising. Some were doctors or nurses. Sisters cooked for the fighters, they baked bread for the starving population of the city completely cut off from supplies. Entire convents were buried under rubble of German bombing. This heroism needs to be remembered,” she said.

Uprising chaplains were a crucial part of Home Army squads, Puscikowska said.

“They rescued people, celebrated Mass, they were active in hospitals and they buried the dead,” she said.

One of the chaplains of the uprising was Blessed Michal Czartoryski, a Dominican priest. Born Jan Czartoryski to one of the most noble Polish families of the time, he was a prince turned monk as he entered the Dominican seminary in 1927.

On Aug. 1, 1944, he came to Warsaw’s Old Town for a scheduled medical check and that’s where “Godzina ‘W'” or the “The ‘W’ Hour” — code name for the start of the uprising — caught him. He immediately volunteered to be chaplain of one of the Home Army squads.

Jan Chmielewski, soldier of the Powisle Squad, remembered Father Czartoryski’s Mass on Aug. 15, 1944, 15 days into the uprising: “Warm words of encouragement winged us and mobilized us to make the greatest sacrifices, we felt like one big family, fighting for our livelihood and dignity.”

When the Sródmiescie district fell after a month of fighting, fellow soldiers asked Father Czartoryski to take off his white Dominican habit and flee along with civilians.

He refused and said he would stay with seven wounded fighters unable to walk.

Eleonora Kasznica, an uprising fighter, recalled, as cited by the Polish Dominican Order: “I remember how he gently smiled and said that he would not remove the scapular and that the wounded, who are completely helpless and immobile in their beds, would not be abandoned.”

The wounded were killed in their beds, according to witnesses. Blessed Czartoryski was shot outside.

“Seeing that he wore his clerical garb, a white Dominican habit, the Germans said he is ‘the biggest bandit,’ shot him and then burned the bodies of his and other insurgents,” Puscikowska said.

“He was a real prince born to a noble family, he chose to die with his people,” she said.

In her book she recalls thousands of ordinary Catholics in Warsaw in 1944 who “saved others by a piece of bread, a hideout place, or simply a smile,” she said.

Her book’s subtitle is “Bedziesz milowal” — “You Will Love” — famous words of Blessed Cardinal Wyszynski.

“That’s what church people did during the Warsaw Uprising,” Puscikowska said. “They loved others.”

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