Sirens wailed across the Polish capital Saturday as elderly veterans and thousands of ordinary people held emotional commemorations of an ill-fated World War II revolt against the Nazi German occupiers.
At 5:00 pm (1500 GMT) -- the exact time the Warsaw uprising was launched on August 1, 1944 -- traffic drew to a halt and pedestrians stopped to observe a minute's silence.
A huge crowd also flocked to Warsaw's main military cemetery to lay flowers on the graves of those who died in the 63 days of bitter street fighting, which sparked brutal Nazi reprisals ...
The 1944 uprising was led by the Home Army -- commanded by Poland's London-based government-in-exile -- which secretly deployed around 50,000 fighters in Warsaw.
It was part of a series of Polish revolts behind German lines as a Soviet offensive drove back the Nazis.
Against overwhelming odds, the poorly-armed Home Army began preparing as early as 1940. It hoped to take the entire city in 1944 but could only seize pockets.
Around 18,000 Polish fighters died in the revolt, and some 17,000 Nazi troops. Around 200,000 civilians were massacred, or killed by crossfire and bombing, as the Nazis took Warsaw back street by street.
The Home Army capitulated on October 2 when Germany agreed to treat its members as prisoners of war rather than execute them as "bandits".
The Nazis expelled Warsaw's remaining 500,000 inhabitants and razed the city ...
The Allies didn't treat them much better, handing them over to the Soviet Union for another 40 years of subjugation.
