One of the most outstanding literary encapsulations of the Warsaw Uprising is by the poet and novelist Miron Białoszewski, who survived the uprising as a civilian. In his book A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising, he shares a world of basements, gates, courtyards, makeshift kitchens and communal living quarters. ‘In this world, values are reversed: a home becomes the most dangerous place, while basements become flats, churches and hospitals,’ wrote critics after reading his memoir.
During the uprising, the life of Warsaw’s inhabitants moved underground – it was where people perished and where children were born. The only time they came out for air was to try to secure sustenance, which became increasingly difficult each day. They dug for potatoes under German fire, they drew water from wells, waiting in long queues despite bombs going off overhead. Mothers found themselves in tragic circumstances, as their milk would dry up due to stress and malnutrition. For many, goat’s milk proved to be a lifesaver. ‘I always said that Warsaw should put up a statue of a goat. There are statues of generals, but people forget the fact that goats saved the lives of so many children,’ said Olgierd Budrewicz, a writer and Warsaw history scholar. Białoszewski’s A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising is deliberately non-literary, having been written in spoken language. The author explained: ‘I wanted people to know that not everyone was shooting, I wanted to write about the everyday life of the uprising.’
Film director Jan Komasa created another contemporary, yet very real depiction of the uprising in the arts. His film, simply titled Warsaw Uprising, was the world’s first feature film edited entirely using documentary footage. Interestingly, the Polish underground state did not only train soldiers. It also organised secret courses in photojournalism and directing. The idea behind it was to document Nazi crimes in Poland, including those which took place during the Warsaw Uprising. ‘The cinematographers entrusted with this task quickly realised that they were participating in something that was beyond what they could have imagined – they suddenly found themselves in a post-apocalyptic world. They understood that their role was to document this apocalypse and to save the footage at all costs,’ explained the filmmakers. Some of the tapes were wrapped in rolls of paper, others were placed inside car parts, covered with airtight lids and wrapped in tar paper, and then hidden in the basement of a tenement house. They were unearthed in 1946. It was these materials that Komasa would use in his film.
One of the major challenges of creating a film like this was colourising black-and-white archival footage. ‘Before beginning the process, we created a reference database of several thousand photographs of weapons, armaments, uniforms, equipment, civilian clothes, signs, different types of pavement and flagstones,’ explain the creators.
In the film’s striking, extraordinarily moving frames, we see the authentic tragedy of the insurgents: we see civilians herded in front of German tanks to be used as human shields; we see the bodies of dead children; we catch a glimpse of a wedding of two insurgents; we watch a lone liaison officer running down a street under German fire. We see real people who laughed, cried, loved and died during the uprising.
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