"There were no children in the Uprising — this is false propaganda," says Leszek Żebrowski, 1 of the most crucial independent researchers of the independency underground. In his lecture, the historian shows how around the Warsaw Uprising a full layer of politically useful myths grew: about "children thrown into the slaughter", about insurgents "walking with their bare hands" and about "the crimes of commanders" who allegedly caused a riot against the will of the inhabitants. Żebrowski, based on documents, takes these myths apart 1 by 1 — and recalls that propaganda around the Uprising has been a tool of current politics for decades.
* Source: Leszek Żebrowski, "Falsze propaganda around the Warsaw Uprising", Channel Cursed TV."
Who is Leszek Żebrowski
Before we go to the lecture, we should remind you of who is giving it — due to the fact that in a dispute over the communicative of the speaking authority it matters. Leszek Żebrowski is Warszawiak, an economist by education (he graduated from the Faculty of economical Sciences of the University of Warsaw), and a historian from passion and achievements. War and conspiracy were not for him the subject of a textbook: his father, Franciszek Żebrowski, was an officer of the Armed Forces and National Army. Thus, the ethos of the underworld of independency came out of the house.
Żebrowski is considered a pioneer of technological investigation on the National Armed Forces and National Military Organization — the national stream in the Polish underground, for decades in the Polish People's Republic covered by censorship and slander. He was 1 of the first to begin to reconstruct the fact about these formations and about the "soldiers cursed", co-editing the fundamental survey "Soldiers cursed. Anti-communist underground armed after 1944". From 1992 to 2002, he worked in a managerial position at the Office for Combatants and Repressed Persons. He is the author of many books, including "Fight for fact and History", "Red Poison" or the monograph of the Świętokrzyska NSZ Brigade.
He performs at meetings organized by the Institute of National Memory, publishes in the "IPN Bulletin", is simply a frequent guest of Radio Maryja, tv Trwam and tv Republic. As of 2017, recordings with his participation appear on the channel "Leszek Żebrowski – Kklęci TV". Critics from the liberal-left camp are uncontested to him — but it is hard for him to deny what is most precious in the historian: the basis of claims on sources and the courage to say uncomfortable things. It is this attitude that makes his lecture on the Insurgence of material, which cannot be removed from the touching arms.
"False propaganda" — what is the recording about
The starting point of the lecture is simple but uncomfortable observation: a image of the Warsaw Uprising, which functions in the general public consciousness, is mostly not a faithful evidence of facts, but a propaganda construct. The structure built first by communists, and today, according to the historian, is maintained and exploited by the environment, which, for various reasons, is afraid with weakening Polish national memory.
Żebrowski is not the enemy of the Rising, on the contrary. His lecture and accompanying book "Warsaw '44. Blood and Glory" (with a meaningful subtitle about propaganda around the Uprising "as a tool of old and contemporary politics") is simply a defence of soldiers and the city against the misuse of their memory. The historian distinguishes between 2 things that are commonly incorrect in public debate: criticism of decisions about the outbreak of the Uprising and slandering the insurgents themselves. Under the appearance of the former, he says, the second frequently sneaks in. Let us look at the 3 myths that are disarmed in the lecture.
The First Myth: “Children in the Rise”
The strongest-sounding conviction of the full lecture is: "There were no children in the Uprising". They request to be understood precisely, due to the fact that the point is in this precision. Żebrowski does not deny that there were young people in the fighting Warsaw, including teenagers. He denies something else — a widespread image in which the children with a weapon in their hand were the fighting force of the revolt, “throwed to slaughter” by heartless commanders.
Historical fact is this: The uprising was fought by soldiers of the Home Army — in the vast majority of adults, in their 20s, sworn in and trained in conspiracy. The youngest — the Scouts of the Grey Orders — served as a ministerial servant: in the Scouting Field Post they spread letters, were liaisons, bishops, paramedics, helped with kitchens and extinguishing fires. It was a real, frequently heroic service — but it was not a kid soldier fight. The National Army did not include children in assault troops and did not "send them to death".
So why is the image of "children in the Rise" so durable? due to the fact that he's politically useful. In the communist version, it served to accuse the AK Command and the "London gentlemen" of the criminal sacrifice of the youngest. In the contemporary version, sentimental, it flattens the emergence to a moving tale of innocent victims, taking distant the dimension of the conscious, soldierly decision of adult men to fight for freedom. In both cases, Żebrowski proves, the story of "children" replaces the fact: that it was a fight of a regular, contravened army, alternatively than a tragedy of defenseless children.
This misunderstanding was symbolized by the monument of the small Insurrectioner — a boy in besides large a helmet and besides large shoes. As a tribute to the boy scout service of the youngest, he is full on the scene and moved rightly. The problem begins when, out of exception and out of auxiliary service, the regulation and essence of the sedition — erstwhile a “little insurgent” dispels an adult AK soldier with a weapon in his hand. Żebrowski does not honor children who truly died in a burning city — as victims of German terror, not as being thrown into the storm of an "arm of children". Only proportions and fact are called upon: adults led the uprising.
Second myth: "They walked with their bare hands"
The second mutilated story is the image of an insurgent without a weapon — a boy who throws himself at tanks “with a bottle of gasoline and a rosary” due to the fact that the commanders sent him to his death. This image, repeated in publishing and pop culture, is expected to propose that the Rising was a suicidal madness in advance.
Ribrowski straightens out: insurgents had guns. Yes, and that is something to be honest about — the National Army was dramatically unarmed at the time of the explosion; firearms were adequate for any soldiers, the remainder waiting for it to be captured in the enemy. But "unarmed" is not the same as "defunct". The insurgents had weapons from underground warehouses, produced them in underground workshops (famous device guns "Błyskawica" and "Sten"), mass-gathered in Germans, and in September received drops from the West. They even captured armored weapons — the battalion “Zośka” took over and turned Panther tanks against Germany. For sixty-three days it was a fight of a regular army, not a desperate crowd consequence with bare hands. The story of the “undefensive” — like the story of the “children” — serves 1 purpose: to depict the slaughter as meaningless slaughter, and its commanders as criminals.
The 3rd Myth: "It was the crime of the commanders"
The third, deepest layer of propaganda concerns the decision to detonate itself. According to her, the Uprising was a crime or at least a criminal mistake of a fistful of officers who, contrary to reason and against the will of the inhabitants, "throwed the city upon the stake." In this narrative, Poles — the command of the AK and the government in exile — are to blame, not those who truly condemned Warsaw to its doom.
Żebrowski turns that position around. First, he recalls that the decision to fight was not in vain or contrary to people: the moods in occupied Warsaw in the summertime of 1944 were militant, and the desire to deal with the retreating occupier — universal. "People wanted this" — it was not a war declared by the staff to bored civilians, but an detonation accumulated for 5 years of resistance. Secondly, and most importantly: the real culprit of the defeat was not the command of the Uprising, but russian betrayal. It was the Red Army that stopped over the Vistula River and watched the city bleed out for 2 months; it was Stalin who called the insurgents troublemakers and for weeks blocked the Allied aircraft's right to land. The transfer of blame from the Soviets to Poles, as the historian argues, is the heart of the full propaganda operation. The communists had to burden the "reactive" underground to hide the function of their protector.
Propaganda as a tool for politics — old and modern
The top value of the Żebrowski lecture is that it does not treat these myths as random mistakes, but as a coherent tool. After 1944, the communist power needed to take the Uprising and the National Army moral legitimacy—because it was a competitive legitimacy against the imposed force of the "people" state. Hence decades of slander: the AK as a "smelling dwarf of reaction", commander as criminals, insurgents as victims of their own recklessness. At the same time, PRL's propaganda blew the marginal participation of the communist People's Army, attributing to her the merits she did not have.
The arsenal of this propaganda besides included the other of slander — possession. The Communist People's Army, a tiny formation and in the Uprising playing a marginal role, was elevated to the rank of 1 of the pillars of combat by the PRL propaganda. Streets were given the names of her “heroes”, her participation in the textbooks was blown, and it was not said that the decisive fight was led by the National Army — the same 1 that was besides defamed. This mechanics — simultaneously slandering actual heroes and exalting false ones “ Żebrowski describes as a classical catch of government memory.
The thing is — and that is the most stinging 1 present — that many of these films have survived the fall of communism. Żebrowski points out that the strategy “Insurrection as a senseless crime of commanders” returns regularly in mainstream publishing whenever it is essential to settle Polish “megalomania” or “nationalism”. The historian does not hide who he is arguing with — he calls without a uncertainty any texts of the liberal press pashquila for the Uprising. His message is clear: who repeats past slanders, whether consciously or not, continues the work of communist propaganda. Memory of '44 again becomes a field of current politics.
A silent crime: what happened to insurgents after the war
There's a chapter in this communicative that PRL's propaganda had to hide most profoundly — due to the fact that it exposed the actual face of "people" power. Soldiers who survived the Uprising and returned to the country were not considered heroes by the communists. They were treated as enemies. The safety camera pursued ex-accidents and insurgents, subjected them to interrogations, imprisoned them, tortured them, and murdered any in the casemates of the safety Office.
This destiny shared the best. Jan Rodowicz "Anoda" from the battalion "Zośka", the hero of the Uprising, died in 1949 in the hands of UB. General August Emil Fieldorf "Nil", head of the Kedyw of the AK Headquarters, was executed after a fake trial in 1953. Thousands of others passed through prisons and camps. This is the "curse" whose survey Leszek Żebrowski devoted his life: the nation was first robbed of independence, and then from memory of those who fought for it. The propaganda of the defamatory Uprising was so not an academic mistake — it was a shield for the real crime on its participants.
"The conflict for Truth" — The Method On Which This Basis
The strength of Żebrowski is that it does not dispute emotions, but a document. His achievements — from the monographs of the National Armed Forces, through studies on the anti-communist underground, to books specified as "Fighting for fact and History" or "Red Poison" — are the systematic alignment of propaganda films with archival archives: orders, reports, case files, witness relations. Where propaganda operates with a slogan, it reaches for its source.
This method is besides applicable to the uprising dispute. erstwhile Żebrowski says that “there were no children,” that “the insurgents had a gun” or that the Soviets were to blame for the defeat, he does not give a public court — he refers to material that anyone can check. Hence, his lecture is worth proceeding in its entirety: not as another voice in the media war, but as a lesson in reading past from sources, not from propaganda leaflets — old and present.
Why this is crucial for national memory
One might ask: why present crush copies of phrases from years ago? Żebrowski's answer is hard and correct. A nation that allows an alien or hostile communicative to describe its own past loses control — and with it any identity. If the image of the Uprising as a "child slaughter" which "in vain" was created by the "irresponsible commanders", then the top armed act of occupied Europe will be a informing against patriotism. This is what the historian warns about.
Therefore, the lecture and book “Warsaw '44. Blood and glory" are not an attack on the Rising, but his defense. Defensive against 2 extremes at once: against slander, which makes the heroes of criminals, and from a candy story that takes distant the seriousness of a soldier's decision. Żebrowski asks for full fact — to talk of both blood and glory; both drama and meaning. This attitude is worthy not only of the historian, but besides of the Pole.
We encourage you to watch the full lecture above and to scope for the source. In the national memory dispute, the most effective weapon remains the paper — and it is on it that Leszek Żebrowski bases his fight for truth.
National diary Edition
