Schroeder pays tribute to Warsaw resistance

GERMAN Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder yesterday honoured Poles who fought Nazi occupiers in the doomed Warsaw Uprising 60 years ago, acknowledging the “immeasurable suffering” Germans inflicted on their neighbours.

Mr Schroeder, the first German chancellor to attend an uprising anniversary, faced a delicate mission in atoning for the brutal crushing of the two-month revolt, which ended with 200,000 residents dead and most of the city systematically destroyed by the Nazis.

“I consider it a great honour to me personally to have been invited and a big-hearted gesture to my country, which brought such immeasurable suffering over the Poles with the war it started,” Mr Schroeder said after talks with Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka.

Mr Schroeder, US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott were to jointly pay tribute to the Warsaw fighters later Friday at official ceremonies with Polish leaders.

Remembrance of the unequal 63-day battle against Nazi troops by Poland’s Home Army resistance movement and civilians - even children - provoked an outpouring of patriotism in Poland during the biggest commemorations to date.

Red-and-white Polish flags fluttered from balconies and buildings in Warsaw, which was rebuilt after being destroyed by the Nazis after the uprising collapsed to prevent its use by the approaching Soviet army.

After the city’s defeat, the Germans imprisoned fighters and expelled civilians, many of them to concentration camps.

In contrast to the communist era, Poles now could also bitterly recall in public that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s Red Army stood by on the east bank of the Vistula river while the Germans brutally quashed the uprising.

Mr Powell expressed “admiration for the spirit that kept freedom alive during those terrible days of World War II”, drawing an allusion to Poland’s support of the war in Iraq and its military presence there.

“Freedom costs lives, but freedom is important,” Mr Powell said after talks with Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz.

“We must now stand with the people of Iraq as they try to build better lives for themselves.”

In Italy, Polish-born Pope John Paul II paid tribute in remarks to Polish pilgrims at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. “I bow my head and render honour to the heroes of the capital, Warsaw, who took up the struggle against the occupier for freedom and sovereignty for the homeland,” he said.

Ageing veterans gathered yesterday in the Polish capital to lay flowers and sing patriotic songs in the Warsaw neighbourhoods where they rose up on August 1, 1944.

Relations with Poland’s western neighbour have vastly improved since the collapse of communism in 1989 ended Europe’s division.

On May 1, Poland joined Germany in the European Union. But a dispute has flared over Germans who lost property in Poland when their forebears were expelled or fled after the Nazi defeat in WWII.

Mr Schroeder gave his strongest assurance yet that his government will oppose individual claims by Germans for restitution.

The Polish government says the issue is closed.