POLAND: Janina Badecka is Poland's unlikeliest poster girl. She was 18 when she slipped away from home, unnoticed by her mother, and hurried to the gathering point for volunteers, writes Derek Scally in Warsaw
It was August 1st, 1944, and she was in such a hurry that she had brought nothing to eat or drink. All she had in her hand was a bandage and some plasters for the wounds she expected to sustain in the coming days. After five years of Nazi occupation, the battle to free Warsaw was about to begin.
Ms Badecka agreed, along with other survivors of the uprising, to pose for posters that now hang all over Warsaw with the headline: "And me? Would I go?" Tomorrow at 5 p.m. is the 60th anniversary of the so-called W Hour when 40,000 soldiers of the Polish Underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) began their fight against the Nazis.
Though outnumbered and underarmed, the AK went into battle, expecting support from the approaching Red Army within a week. But the Soviet air force abandoned its air attacks and 50,000 Red Army soldiers camped across the Vistula, away from the city centre. The ensuing battle was bloody and brutal; the SS conducted mass executions of 60,000 civilians in the first week alone. After the capitulation on October 2nd, more than 200,000 people were dead, 300,000 were forcibly expelled from the city, with 150,000 sent to forced labour camps, and a further 50,000 sent to concentration camps.
By October 6th, Warsaw was a ghost town with huge areas already in ruins. On Hitler's orders, what remained of the city was blown up. Only on January 17th, 1945, did the Red Army march in to liberate its ruins.
In the next decades, the Warsaw Uprising was an ideological battleground for Soviet authorities who dismissed it as a foolhardy, trivial enterprise. Memorial services were, out of necessity, low-key, and a memorial in Warsaw was only permitted in 1984. After decades of suppression, only now are the wounds of the uprising being allowed to heal.
The greatest trauma for Poles remains the fact that despite its huge wartime contributions to its Allies, such as in the Battle of Britain, Poland stood alone in its greatest hour of need. That fact, later glossed over in Western history books, forms the central thesis of historian Norman Davies's Rising 1944: The Battle for Warsaw, which will be released tomorrow in a Polish edition.
The suspicion and resentment that linger in Warsaw this weekend are largely thanks to two German organisations. The "Association of the Expelled" (BdV) is campaigning for a museum for the millions of ethnic Germans expelled from their homes. Poles accuse the BdV of wanting to put war victims and perpetrators on an equal footing.
Meanwhile, another group, the "Prussian Trust", plans to file a provocative €9 million compensation claim against the Polish government on behalf of expelled families who lost property in the east. German politicians have distanced themselves from the organisation and have given repeated assurances to Warsaw that the claims are baseless.
Relations between Poland, France and Germany, driven forward by the Weimar Triangle in the 1990s, have soured over the Iraq war and the pro-war "Letter of Eight" signed by Poland. French President Jacques Chirac alienated the entire Polish nation with his remark that the signatory countries had "missed a good opportunity to shut up".
Meanwhile, the wrangling over future vote weightings in the European Union and Warsaw's "Nice or Death" negotiating strategy overshadowed Poland's EU accession on May 1st.
At tomorrow's remembrance ceremony all eyes will be on the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schröder. He won widespread praise last month for his well-judged D-Day anniversary speech, seeing the victory of freedom in defeat. Mr Schröder told journalists later that, sitting on the podium at the D-Day ceremony, he never felt more lonely in his life. Tomorrow could be another lonely day.
But if relations with Germany are difficult at the moment, then relations with Russia are poisoned. No senior Russian officials were invited to the ceremonies and the Russian ambassador in Warsaw caused a furore this week after penning a letter saying that "the memory of the heroes of the rising and the fruits of our common victory are sacred".
Survivors were outraged, saying it was historically deceptive to say the Red Army co-operated when they waited a kilometre away, across the River Vistula.
"It's sad but predictable," said Mr Lech Kaczynski, the mayor of Warsaw. "I hope this letter is loud and clear enough to make people think that Russia has in no way changed."
This weekend Varsovians remember their dead in a city that was resurrected from the ashes. Around the busy streets they are confronted with the posters posing the provocative question: "And me? Would I go?"