Warsaw’s rise from the ashes of war has been as spectacular as it has been well-documented. Rebuilt in an incoherent mesh of styles, it is perhaps this imbalance and sense of urban muddle that has helped lend the city its intoxicating energy: 70s panel blocks and post-modernist pearls brush shoulders with colossal Socialist Realist landmarks and soaring skyscrapers from the modern age.
But peering underneath this patchwork quilt, a different Warsaw awaits.
The Germans charged with razing the Polish capital after the 1944 Warsaw Uprising approached their task with zeal, but as methodical as they were, the sheer size of the task doomed them to fail. While vast swathes of the city were left as a smoldering heap of rubble, thin shards of the pre-war capital survived. Scarred but standing, these hardy remnants act as a bridge to a different time.
The Walls of Warsaw
The intensity of the fighting is evidenced via the bullet holes and shrapnel scars that pit many of Warsaw’s pre-war buildings. So widespread was the combat, these bruises are prevalent in every corner of Warsaw: from Żoliborz in the north, to Mokotów in the south, Wola out west, and Praga in the east. In the case of the latter, the relatively late regeneration of the Praga quarter has meant that the district provides particularly rich pickings for visitors walking streets such as Jagiellońska and Sprzeczna.
Through much of the 90s, 00s, and beyond, the bullet holes of Warsaw were enthusiastically and summarily covered whenever buildings underwent renovation. Now, amid growing public outcry, they are finding protection. For instance, at Wilcza 72 one sees a beautifully restored tenement but with a large patch of pockmarks preserved underneath a sheet of glass.
One could argue, however, that of Warsaw’s facades, none are more striking than that at Mazowiecka 11A. On a street better known for its nightlife lies a triple-span, arcaded portico peppered with bullet holes. The street was targeted by insurgents due to the location of the German labor office (on the corner of Kredytowa) and was seized after two attempts on the opening day of the Warsaw Uprising. Most of the damage that can be seen today at 11A occurred when the Germans counter-attacked with tanks on August 22.
It is not just the walls that bear the marks of war, but even Warsaw’s railings. Though often harder to spot, examples are rife and include those found at Różana 63, Karowa 20, Rozbrat 26, and Targowa 74. Arguably, the most famous of them all can be spotted lining the printing house at Sanguszki 1. For four weeks, the Wehrmacht battled to regain control of this hulking building, with veterans likening the experience to Stalingrad: the bullet-ripped railings corroborate these accounts.
Healing
Beginning in 2015, artist Paweł Czarnecki has since decorated several of Warsaw’s disfigured facades with discreet ceramic band-aids hinting at the healing power of time. These can be found, among other places, on Bielańska 10, Hala Mirowska, Zamoyskiego 27, Naruszewicza 10, and Mazowiecka 11A.
The artist says he aimed to draw attention to “the places that look like the war ended yesterday.” In all, Czarnecki has “dressed” 47 locations in Warsaw in this way. “I want people who live here to not just treat Warsaw as a place of work or a place to sleep or party; I want them to look deeper, to learn its history,” he adds.
Symbols of Resistance
In 1942, a competition was covertly held to find an emblem signifying Poland’s resistance to the occupation. Won by a scout named Anna Smoleńska (who later died in Auschwitz), her entry depicted the letters P and W, standing for Polska walcząca (“Fighting Poland”). The logo, with the letters mounted on each other in the form of an anchor, was widely adopted by the underground and found itself daubed on the city’s walls to express the nation’s indomitable spirit.
In an outburst of patriotic fervor, such graffiti became even more pervasive when the Uprising was launched. One can see a surviving example at Filtrowa 57, a short walk from the elegant tenement from which the order to start the Uprising was issued (Filtrowa 68). However, an even better example sits inside the Norblin development in Wola, a former metalware factory recently transformed into a swanky retail and gastronomic hub.
Defining Landmarks
A handful of buildings warrant “hero” status, and no nutshell summary of the Uprising can be made without referencing the ferocious floor-by-floor combat that took place in the battle for Warsaw’s telephone exchange on Zielna 39. Close by, the Prudential skyscraper on Plac Powstańców Warszawy 9 withstood all the Germans could throw at it, its sturdy steel skeleton refusing to topple despite being hit with over 1,000 shells.
Looking at both of these buildings now, one would never guess just what they’ve been through. The same cannot be said of the former National Bank at Bielańska 10/12. Operating as the Occupation Bank of Issuance during the war, this megalith was no stranger to action. It played a central role in the biggest heist in Nazi-occupied Europe when, in 1943, Poland’s Home Army masterminded a raid on a cash-carrying convoy coming from the bank that netted them 106 million złotys. However, the bank’s war did not end with this.
Vacated by the Germans on August 3 and 4, 1944, it became a key Polish redoubt. Strafed by the Luftwaffe on August 5 and 18, it was later surrounded, forcing its defenders to flee via the sewers. After the war, most of the immense structure was pulled down, though for many years the surviving west wing was touted as a possible location for the Rising Museum. Today, office buildings have been joined to the lumbering carcass of the former bank, but those looking carefully can still spot elements such as the door of a safe on one of the upper floors.
Other landmarks are less prominent and survive only in the most skeletal of forms. A case in point is a small fragment of one of the walls of the Franaszek paper factory on Wolska street. About 6,000 people had sought shelter in the plant’s warehouses, and these were all killed during the Wola Massacre, the Uprising’s most bloodthirsty chapter.
Fallen Glory
According to local legend, if the figure of King Zygmunt III Vasa falls from his column in Castle Square, Warsaw will fall as well. This proved the case in 1944, when a single tank round sent the pillar crashing to the ground on September 1. A little over a month later, the city capitulated.
A new column was erected in 1949, but the previous one (which replaced the original in 1887), was left lying to the side of the Royal Castle. It remains there to this day, a shattered testimony to the war.
Tending the Wounded
On an otherwise salmon pink wall at Tamka 45, one patch of the building’s frontage remains gray and unpainted save for a red cross emblem circled in the middle. Although reasonably large, it is so unobtrusive that most pedestrians pass by without giving it a second thought.
The logo denotes the presence of a first-aid dressing station that was opened in 1939. Five years later it reprised this function, serving as a field hospital while simultaneously doubling as the HQ for the 8th “Bicz” Home Army Group.
Weapons of War
Visitors to Warsaw’s Old Town are quick to fall under the spell of the area’s charming alleys and quiet cobbled side streets. It is down one of these, running up the flank of St John’s Cathedral, that one finds a strip of caterpillar tracks embedded into the Cathedral’s wall.
The accompanying plaque wrongly identifies these as belonging to a Goliat, a remote-controlled mine carrier that was used to devastating effect during the Uprising, including in the environs of the Cathedral.
In actuality, though, the tracks belonged to a Borgward IV, a radio operated explosives carrier. Some historians believe this to be the sole remnant of a Borgward that was captured by the Home Army on August 13. As hundreds of locals gathered to admire the unusual bounty, it exploded killing at least 300 people.
Charred Relics
Few areas suffered more than Warsaw’s Old Town, but this is hard to imagine when walking its quaint rebuilt streets today. However, for tangible traces of the devastation, St Martin’s Church on Piwna street provides a haunting insight.
Founded in 1353, but later reconstructed in the 18th century, it was heavily damaged in the fighting. During the area’s clean-up, though, a half-destroyed sculpture of Jesus was discovered in the rubble and now this incomplete work hangs mounted on the wall.
Bloodstains of the Uprising
Of the more macabre sights to ingest, a small number of buildings have bloodstains dating from 1944. The best-known of these can be found in the stairwell of the Museum of the Earth at Na Skarpie 27. Suspicions that the dark patch on the stone floor was human blood were confirmed in the late 1970s by forensic scientists, and nowadays the shadowy nook containing this grim find has acquired the hallowed feeling of a shrine. This point is accented by a somber plaque dedicated to the unknown soldier and the general air of contemplative stillness.
Other bloodstains have been treated with less solemnity and can be found, for instance, inside the Staszic Palace, in the stairwell of the apartment block at Oleandrów 3, and in the foyer of the ZNP teachers’ union on Smulikowskiego street. Appearing as dark splotches, without knowing any different one would assume these stains were nothing other than carelessly spilled chemicals.
The Fallen
To know Warsaw one must explore its courtyards – here lie the city’s biggest secrets. An example of this is found deep inside Bracka 5, where a horizontal glass case has been installed on the wall to safeguard lettering that reads: “Antek Rozpylacz is now buried in Powązki Military Cemetery.”
Killed in action while attacking the nearby Cafe Cristal on August 8, resistance fighter Rozpylacz (whose real name was Antoni Godlewski), was initially buried in this shadowy backyard.
On the first anniversary of the Uprising, his body was exhumed and transported to Powązki. As a way of notifying his friends and loved ones, his mother left the aforementioned inscription on the wall.
Escape
Warsaw’s warren of sewers were utilized to maximum effect by the insurgents. With so much of the city split into pockets of resistance, the underground passages allowed messengers, medics and combatants to move from one area to the next.
As the Uprising reached its conclusion, the city’s dank subterranean tunnels were used to evacuate districts such as the Old Town. On the corner of Krasińskich square, a tablet on the walls references one of the manholes used by the 5,300 Polish troops that escaped the Old Town on September 1 and 2.
Making the City Safe
Estimates differ slightly, but most generally agree that when the Germans finally left Warsaw it was buried under 20 million cubic meters of rubble. On the left side of the city, approximately 85% had been destroyed. To compound the situation, German military engineers had planted around 45 tons of explosives and mines. Long after the war ended, scores continued to die because of these booby traps, and many recognize these unfortunates as the final victims of the Uprising.
Making the city safe was a Herculean task, but it was a challenge to which Polish sappers rose. Their efforts are remembered not just by a brutalist monument in the capital’s Solec area, but also on many walls – to mark areas that had been cleared, facades were often painted to announce “min nie ma” (“there are no mines”), or words to that effect. Some of these inscriptions still exist, and examples can be found at Narbutta 3A, Grójecka 41 and Piękna 1B.
From the Ruins
Often likened to “a symbolic tomb”, the Uprising Mound (Kopiec Powstania Warszawskiego) on Bartycka street in the south of the city was created in the 1960s and was guided by the vision of architect Stanisław Gruszczyński.
It was he who campaigned for a commemorative hill to be created from the rubble of the Uprising, and this was eventually realized following his death. “Millions of hands have touched this rubble,” Gruszczyński once said. “Thousands of Polish people existed between these bricks. These remains, this rubble, should be treated as relics.”
For decades, this wish went unheard and the 35-meter mound was treated with anything but love. Becoming an unofficial rubbish tip, it wasn’t until 1994 when a giant Uprising anchor was placed at its summit that it began to assume a place in the public’s heart.
Last year, it underwent further, more significant cosmetic surgery which resulted in the introduction of a lapidarium filled with objects recovered from the ruins. Zig-zagging metal walkways were set above the dense vegetation, and informational boards and scenic trails slashed into the hill. Sprinkled with shattered masonry, today the paths and stairwells that ribbon this mound promise a serene yet touching journey into the past.
