One of the first novels dealing with the subject of the uprising was the book W Rozwalonym Domu (In the Demolished House) by the Catholic writer Jan Dobraczyński, describing the struggle of [boy and girl] scouts. The fact that the Red Army idly observed the drama of the city from across the Vistula River made the Warsaw Uprising especially inconvenient for the post-war Polish authorities. There were writers, however, who presented these events to the liking of the communist authorities. In Bohdan Czeszka’s 1948 Pokolenie (Generation), the uprising was presented as a ‘general disorder’, a political ruckus, a cynical game played by irresponsible and power-hungry leaders. One of the heroes of the novel, a soldier of the People’s Army, says:
The gentlemen from London have brewed up a lousy beer. They don’t care about Warsaw, about the people […] They will throw everything, everything into the fire to save their trough, their money, so as not to allow anyone in our country to raise their heads.
Kazimierz Brandys also sketched a caricatured image of the uprising's commanders in his novel Człowiek Nie Umiera (Man Does Not Die, 1951).
The second wave of works thematically related to the uprising appeared on the wave of the October thaw. In 1956, Jerzy Stefan Stawiński published the short stories ‘Godzina “W”’ (The ‘W’ Hour) [a code for the intended beginning of the uprising at 5pm on 1 August 1944, ed.], ‘Węgrzy’ (The Hungarians) and ‘Kanał’ (Sewers), which became the basis for the screenplay of Andrzej Wajda’s 1957 film. The following, among others, also appeared during this period: Opowiadania Różne (Various Stories, 1957) by Jerzy Pytlakowski, Pejzaż Dwukrotny (Double Landscape, 1958) by Lesław Bartelski, Autoportret z Rubinem (Self-Portrait With a Ruby, 1959) by Zbigniew Florczak. In this period, the most important work about the uprising is Roman Bratny’s novel Kolumbowie: Rocznik 20 (The Columbuses: The Generation of the 1920s), written in the years 1955-56, published in 1957.
By 1989 it had come out in 23 editions and had the status of mandatory school reading. It was additionally popularized in 1970 by a television series directed by Janusz Morgenstern. The author of Kolumbowie was a contemporary of his heroes, the first generation raised in a free Poland. His novel is a portrait of a generation, an image of the underground milieu. The second volume of the novel contains one of the most complete literary images of the Warsaw Uprising – from the thrilling first days, through the growing weariness and weakness of both the uprising’s units and the civilian population, to the tragic finale. Literary scholar Zbigniew Jarosiński wrote the following about Kolumbowie:
The novel is mediocre in terms of literature, and the fate of the participants in the uprising fits too easily within the framework of a youthful, bold adventure in which it’s always someone else who dies. That being said, in its third and fourth volume, it was the first, and for a long time the only, literary piece that attempted to depict the repressions and harassment suffered by young people in the Home Army after the war.