FORGETTING OUR DISGRACE:

Poles remember an uprising as the world starts to forget (Jan Cienski, July 30 2004, Financial Times)

Poland is preparing tomark one of the most important days in its history: the Warsaw uprising against the Germans 60 years ago this Sunday.

The uprising was doomed by German counterattacks that killed 190,000 civilians, by the Soviet Union's refusal to send its nearby armies to join the fight and by America's and Britain's inability or reluctance to help. Warsaw fought alone.

Today, Poland is more or less alone in commemorating a rising all too often confused elsewhere with the 1943 uprising in Warsaw's Jewish ghetto.

Historian Norman Davies, author of Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw, says: "We like to see the success stories of the war and the idea that one of our allies lost its entire capital city through the failure of the coalition to work together is not welcome news."

President Bush should have gone.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 30, 2004 3:26 PM