70th Warsaw Uprising anniversary
Sirens sounded throughout Warsaw at exactly 5:00 p.m. on Friday, the exact time of the August 1, 1944 outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising against the city's Nazi occupants to mark the insurgency's 70th anniversary.
As the sirens continued, traffic stopped throughout the city for a minute of silence in tribute to the uprising's fighters and victims. Also the Polish Sejm (lower house) commemorated the anniversary with 70 seconds of silence.
On Friday morning at Warsaw's Powazki military cemetery President Bronislaw Komorowski accompanied by his wife, uprising veterans and their relatives, laid flowers at the tomb of general Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, in 1944 commander in chief of Poland's Home Army resistance force which organised the insurgency.
At 5:00 p.m. Bronislaw Komorowski attended an anniversary ceremony at the cemetery's Gloria Victis memorial. Also present were Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Warsaw Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, Warsaw metropolitan bishop Kazimierz Nycz, parliamentarians, General Zbigniew Scibor-Rylski, chairman of the Warsaw Insurgents' Association and others.
In the evening the president was scheduled to attend further ceremonies at the Warsaw Insurgents' Cemetery in the Warsaw district Wola.
Source: prezydent.pl; PAP