Frommer's Review
This relatively new museum, with its hands-on exhibits and high-tech imagery, has emerged as one of Warsaw's main tourist attractions. The museum, housed in a former transformer station for the trams, is a large and confusing space to navigate once inside. Try to follow the arrows on the suggested route, but don't despair if you find yourself ambling from one display case to another. Everyone else is doing the same.
A little history will help you to get your bearings. On August 1, 1944, at precisely 5pm, the commanders of the Polish insurgent Home Army, loyal to Poland's government-in-exile in London, called for a general uprising throughout the Nazi-occupied city. The Germans, at the time, were in retreat on all sides, having suffered reversals on the Western front, in France and Italy, and in the east, at the hands of the Soviet Red Army. By the end of July that year, the Red Army had moved to within the city limits of Warsaw and was camped on the eastern bank of the Vistula in the suburb of Praga. With the combined forces of the Home Army and the Red Army, it seemed the right moment to drive the Germans out and liberate Warsaw. Alas, it was not to be. The first few happy days of the uprising saw the Polish insurgents capture pockets of the city, including the Old Town and adjacent suburbs. But the Germans resisted fiercely, and the Red Army, for reasons that are not entirely clear to this day, never stepped in to help. The resistance lasted several weeks before Polish commanders were forced to capitulate in the face of rapidly escalating civilian casualties. Thousands of Warsaw residents died in the fighting and the subsequent reprisal attacks by German forces. The uprising so infuriated Hitler that he ordered the complete annihilation of the city. In the weeks following the uprising, Warsaw's buildings were listed in terms of their cultural significance and dynamited one by one. Some 85% of the city was eventually destroyed. As for the Russians, the accepted theory is that they viewed the Polish Home Army as a potential enemy and preferred simply to watch the Germans and Poles kill each other. To this day, many Poles have never forgiven the Russians for this decision.
The museum charts the full course of the uprising starting from the German invasion in 1939, through life in occupied Warsaw, and the events of 1944 and their aftermath. Don't miss the harrowing documentary films shown on the upper floors, with English subtitles, that tell the story from the inside. They were made by Polish journalists during the occupation and were shown in Warsaw cinemas while the fighting was going on.
Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without
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