At 5:00 p.m. on Aug. 1, 1944, the underground Polish Home Army launched an uprising to liberate Warsaw. For the Polish capital, which had endured nearly five years of brutal German occupation, the moment of liberation was at hand. German forces were in retreat as the Red Army reached Warsaw's eastern suburbs. What followed was one of the most heroic actions of the war, and a cynical display of Soviet perfidy.

The Polish underground was anti-communist, and loyal to the Polish government in exile in London, which the United States and Britain recognized. The Soviet Union, however, backed a Polish communist minority. Nevertheless, as the Red Army neared Warsaw in the last days of July, it broadcast radio appeals to Warsaw's inhabitants to rise up and expel the common German enemy.

The Home Army's objectives were to liberate the capital and assert the claim of the government in exile as the legitimate Polish government. Polish success was contingent on the continued advance of the Red Army, units of which had already crossed the Vistula River both north and south of Warsaw. However, once the uprising began, the Soviet advance inexplicably halted. For the next 63 days, the Poles fought a furious urban battle with German forces, which had regrouped and counterattacked.

The Soviets rejected Allied appeals to assist the insurgents. They also refused to grant permission for Allied planes flying relief missions from bases in Western Europe to land on nearby Soviet air bases for refueling. And when the Soviets, in the very last days of the uprising, did drop supplies, they mocked the Poles, dropping supplies without parachutes.

The human consequences of the uprising were staggering. Some 200,000 Poles perished and, after the Home Army capitulated, the remaining 800,000 were deported to German concentration camps. Adolf Hitler, enraged by the resistance, ordered the Polish capital destroyed. When U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower visited Warsaw in 1945, he remarked that he had not seen another European city so destroyed. About 95 percent of the city lay in rubble.

German troops crushed the uprising, but responsibility for Warsaw's human and physical destruction rests with the Soviet Union, which ruthlessly abandoned a fighting member of the Allied coalition. The effectiveness of the Home Army as a fighting force was ended, and the way opened for the imposition of a communist regime upon postwar Poland. As the historian and diplomat George F. Keanan noted, the halting of the Red Army at the outskirts of Warsaw was "the most arrogant and unmistakable demonstration of the Soviet determination to control Eastern Europe in the postwar period" and "no one in the West had the slightest excuse for ignoring its lessons."

Its lessons, unfortunately, were ignored. In 1945 at the Yalta conference, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill conceded Eastern Europe to the Soviet sphere of influence, damning these nations to 45 years of Soviet rule.

The memory of Soviet inaction during the summer of 1944 haunts Polish-Russian relations. In 1994, Polish President Lech Walesa, in a gesture of conciliation, invited the German and Russian presidents to attend the 50th anniversary commemoration of the uprising. Roman Herzog of Germany accepted, but Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia declined. Although, the invitation was sent early, Yeltsin claimed it reached him too late to be placed in his official calendar.

The late Stan Blejwas was a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, and served on the board of the United States Holocaust Memorial.

Congressional Resolution 125

Whereas August 1, 2004, marks the birth anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, when against seemingly insurmountable odds and extreme hardships, Polish citizens revolted against the Nazi occupiers in Warsaw, Poland, in one of the most heroic battles during World War II;

Whereas the Warsaw Uprising was a part of a nationwide resistance against the Nazi occupation, was started by the underground Home Army, and lasted 63 days;

Whereas the Polish resistance, many of them teenagers, while heavily outnumbered and armed with mostly homemade weapons, fought bravely against the German soldiers and lost approximately 250,000 civilians and troops;

Whereas to punish Poland for the uprising, the Nazis systematically razed 70 percent of Warsaw, including monuments, cultural treasures, and historical buildings;

Whereas the heroism and spirit of the Polish resistance are an inspiration to all peoples in their pursuit of liberty and democracy and are evident today in Polish contributions to the global war against terrorism and the more than 2,300 Polish troops currently deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom; and

Whereas the heroic undertaking of the Polish underground represents one of the most important contributions to the Allied war effort during World War II and remains venerated in the Polish consciousness, even for the generations born after it ended: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the United States Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That Congress recognizes the 60th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising during World War II which will forever serve as a symbol of heroism in the face of great adversity and the pursuit of freedom.

Passed the Senate July 21, 2004.