Exactly 70 years after the end of the fighting, on 3 October 2014 at 5:00 p.m., the opening of the exhibition will take place at the Municipal Cultural Centre in Zgorzelec. It will be opened by the director of the Wrocław Gallery, renowned photographer Jan Bortkiewicz.
The original photographs from the uprising, taken by outstanding photographers Stefan Bałuk, Sylwester Braun, Tadeusz Bukowski, Wiesław Chrzanowski, Jerzy Tomaszewski and Józef Jerzy Karpiński, served as the models for the large-format works comprising the exhibition—a kind of documentation of the unimaginable scale of the uprising’s tragedy today: the enormity of the sacrifices, the dramas of those who survived, and the unprecedented, planned and barbaric destruction of a city in European history.
The photographs, which are the undeniable strength and value of this exhibition, naturally do not fully convey the heroism and drama experienced by the insurgents. The mood changed quickly and radically, from the euphoria of W-Hour (1 August, 5:00 p.m.) to the black despair of capitulation (3 October). In the relatively short period of 63 days of armed revolt against the German occupation, more than 200,000 people died in Warsaw. It was a huge wound inflicted on the body of the Polish nation, painful and irreparable to this day.
Remembering the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 is an important duty for us—contemporary Poles. After years of silence and distortion, we are beginning to rationally analyse this important and, at the same time, deeply tragic period of our recent history. Today we agree that we owe memory and respect to everyone who gave their lives in the uprising, while assessments of the decision to launch it and of the consequences of the Warsaw Uprising should be left to historians. The exhibition will be open until 30 October.
Marek Żytomirski, Municipal Public Library in Zgorzelec/ii