“The Righteous Insurgents ’44” Exhibition

The anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising is not only an opportunity to look at this rebellion in terms of historical analysis, but it is also an opportunity to learn about its participants and their moving and inspirational stories. The Warsaw insurgents can and must be looked at from many perspectives. We choose our own – focusing on those where, apart from the insurgent experience, we can take pride on their help given to Jews condemned to extermination by the occupier – the exhibition’s organisers.

Władysław Bartoszewski, Mieczysław Fogg, Tadeusz Gebethner, Zofia Kossak and Irena Sendler are just a few selected figures of the Polish men and women who have been honoured with the title of Righteous Among the Nations. Their stories are included in the Ulma Family Museum’s exhibition. These differ greatly – in age, gender, social background, political views and interests. However, as the organisers of the exhibition state:

Despite this, it is not difficult to see some common denominators – a loyalty to universal values, nonconformity, commitment and responsibility. The presented biographies are stories of a dual fight. The first was the direct struggle against the German occupier, carried out on the barricades of the rising Warsaw, in intelligence units, at radio stations, in factories, and in field hospitals. The second was the fight against the occupier, clandestine and secret, which took place at the walls of the ghetto, in hideouts that became a shelter for exterminated Jews and in offices organising false identity cards. And both fights were a sign of concern for disadvantaged fellow citizens and for homeland. Both were carried out with a sense of helplessness, anger and an omni-present fear. In any case, the real price for opposing the ongoing harm was death. In the background, it still remained Poland which had been devastated during several years of occupation and was still struggling with the Nazi and Soviet enemy.

The exhibition is presented in two languages – Polish and English. It can be viewed until 3rd October, the 75th anniversary of the capitulation of the Warsaw Uprising, at the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II in Markowa as well as on Krakowskie Przedmieście in Warsaw (in front of the Resursa Obywatelska Palace).

Róża Zawadzka’s Story

To mark the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, we have prepared a story, from the collection of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, about Róża Zawadzka – a Home Army liaison soldier and co-worker with Irena Sendler, who rescued Jewish children by leading them out of the ghetto and placing them in safe shelters on the “Aryan side”. She perished in September 1944 during the Warsaw Uprising. View the memories of Róża Zawadzkia’s daughter, Ewa Wańkowicz: