Thunderstorm :

end World War Two.

May 1975 will mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of
nazi Berlin to the Soviet Army, and the end of the Hitler

~ scourge. In the months from January to May 1942, the Soviet
Army fought its way from the Vistula River in Poland to the
heart of Berlin, where its soldiers placed the Soviet flag atop
the fascists’ Reichstag. From time to time during the parallel
months of 1975 the Tribune will publish articles com-
memorating that victorious advance which brought to an

By OLEG STROGANOV
APN Political Correspondent
The first to open fire were the

heavy guns of the Ist Ukrainian
Front commanded by Marshal
Ivan Konev. It was on Jan. 12,
1945..A few hours later, Mar-
shals Georgy Zhukov and Kon-
stantin Rokossovsky ordered the
artillery of their fronts to join
in an unexpected, for the Ger-
mans, thunderstorm in January
on the middle reaches of the Vis-
tula River. Then the armies and
corps of several fronts started
to move westwards, sweeping
the enemy away.

The Ist Byelorussian front,
which was advancing on War-
saw, also included the Ist Army
of the Polish Armed Forces.
Even when the Kosciusko Divi-
sion was being formed near Rya-
zan on the Oka and later while
crossing the Dnieper and Bug
Rivers, Polish soldiers dreamed
of drinking from their Vistula.
The road to Berlin and the ulti-
mate victory lay through that
difficult obstacle — through the
complete liberation of Warsaw.

That happened on Jan. 17,
1945.

Kracow Liberated

The next day the banners of
the Soviet Army and the white-
red-flags on Poland were waving
above Kracow, on Jan. 19 over

The German army left Warsaw in ruins. This. article describes
in details the work of rebuilding the city and the aid provided by
Poland's allies. Top photo is Warsaw’s Royal Castle Square in 1945.
Bottom photo taken at the same spot shows the Square rebuilt

some years later.

Lodz, on Jan. 22 over Olsztyn, -

on Jan. 27 over Katowice .. .
and on Jan. 31, Soviet tank bri-
gades and Polish infantry divi-
sions, which had operated far to
the north-west of Warsaw, start-
ed pitched battles for Poland’s
return to the- Baltic, crushing
the German Pomorze defences.

The Germans had understood
that the loss of Warsaw would
mean the loss of all Poland for
them and the collapse of their
hopes to keep so-called “‘Leben-
sraum” in the East. As for the
Polish emigre camp in London,
its claims on Warsaw soon em-
erged as criminal and adventur-
ist costing Warsaw’s population
250,000 lives.

_ Treacherous Order

Faced with the inexorable fact
of history, when the people
proclaimed their power on the
first freed Polish territory in
Chelm and Lublin on July 22,
1944, the London camp panicked
and a week later sent to their
representatives in the Warsaw
underground a treacherous order
to. start an uprising in the capi-
tal. If Warsaw had been cap-
tured in the way planned in Lon-
don, it would have refurbished
the “Londoners”’ prestige and
provided an opportunity for
various sorts of political com-
binations and _ hostile acts

THE FALL OF BERLIN-30 YEARS AGO

over the Vistula |

The city of Kracow was liberated ‘on Jan. 17, 1945. Our photo shows the people of the newly-freed city
welcoming the soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army.

against the Polish Committee of
National ‘Liberation and the lo-
cal people’s councils led by the
Polish Workers’ Party. ;

The actual liberation of War-

saw began on Sept. 14, 1944.
But from the East, not the West.
On that day Soviet and Polish
units captured the part of War-
saw situated on the right bank
of the Vistula, Praga. Then fol-
lowed four months of heavy
fighting with attempts at cross-
ing the Vistula directly and
helping the bleeding capital,
with involved flanking manoeuv-
res that did not bring success
until Jan. 17, 1945.

I worked in Warsaw later as
a Soviet correspondent and
made many friends there. They
will never forget those memor-
able days.

The First Steps

“What were the first measures
taken by the new authorities of
Warsaw when its right-bank
part was liberated?’ I asked en-
gineer Jerzy Majewski, mayor
of Warsaw, “Where was the
People’s Council of the capital
then, and what was it doing?”

“The first Warsaw People’s
Council arose illegally, during
the occupation, on Feb. 19,

1944. The decisive role in it was

played by Communists, members
of the capital’s underground or-
ganization of the Polish Work-
ers’ Party. They kept up the
morale of the population by
word, action and personal ex-
ample. While obtaining food,
medicines and arms for the popu-
lation and launching bold opera-
tions against the nazis, they also
worked on plans for the restora-

| tion and construction of the ca-
_ pital of the free,

independent

i homeland that would ‘belong to

; the people.”

_ On the first day after the lib-
eration of the right-bank part

| of Warsaw, a new city adminis-

| tration began to be set up, and

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1975—Page 6

on Sept. 28, 1944 the surviving
deputies of the City People’s
Council met for their first ses-
sion. It was in the half-wrecked
building of the regional railway
administration, not far from the

Vistula, which was “still under
almost direct fire from German
artillery on the Western bank.
The monument to Soviet-Polish
comradeship-in-arms now stands
near that building.

“I recall,’ said Majewski,
“how I cleared broken brick and
stone rubble in Praga as a mem-
ber of youth teams among peo-
ple of my generation who ar-
rived there from all parts of the

‘liberated territory of Poland.

Trains rolled from the east along
hastily-restored railway tracks
beside us. Chalked on the coach-
es were the words: “Moscow
and Leningrad for Warsaw,” and
“Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia
and Lithuania for Poland.”

Sixty thousand tons of grain
was sent free to the Poles by
the governments of these. four
constituent Soviet republics.
The people of Warsaw rejoiced
over the first 10 Soviet motor
vehicles sent to their council,

_over the first tramway line open-

ed with the help of combat en-
gineers and the first smoking
factory chimney. Soviet: help
kept increasing. -As an engineer
who graduated from the War-
saw Polytechnical Institute in
1953, Jerzy Majewski especially
appreciates the assistance. of
his Soviet friends, engineers and
architects, who directly helped
with the plans for restoring the
city, with the painful and joy-
ous work of bringing it back
to life, with the building of
blocks of flats, districts and
neighborhood areas.

Warsaw Revived

*~On May 8, 1945, on the eve
of Victory Day, -the Silesian
workers in Katowice established
the first civil committee for re-
viving Warsaw, later transform-
ed into an all-Polish organiza-
tion — The Public Committee
for the Restoration of the Capi-
tal. It not only had the credit
for collecting personal and col-
lective contributions to the
money fund, but also for afford-
ing every citizen of People’s Po-
land and every Polish patriot
abroad an opportunity of finding

specific ways and forms of ex-
pressing his love for Warsaw.

Thirty years of liberated life .

have made Warsaw a modern
European capital, with its origi-
nal face harmoniously blending
the charm of antiquity, the some-

what naive but fundamental:

style of construction in the
early post-war period, the pre-
sent scope of work and magni-
ficent plans for the future. It
took Warsaw a quarter of a cen-

tury to restore its full pre-war ~

population of almost 1,500,000.

_But now the space it occupies is

three times as large. In addition
to the restored housing, War-
saw has built enough new flats
to form another city like itself.
This means that its people are
now living in.better and more
spacious rooms. There is more
light, air and greenery in the
capital.

Four Awards

Anyone who has been to the
Warsaw town hall must have
seen, in a special niche next to
the entrance, the sparkle of four
high awards given to the Polish
capital. The first two are mili-
tary ones: the Cross of Grun-
wald and the Order of Virtuti
Militari —
staunchness in the struggle
against the nazi invaders. The
third, with contours of a Picasso
dove, is a gold medal with the
following incription: “Awarded
to Warsaw by the World Peace
Council for its outstanding con-

tribution to the promotion of &

peace among peoples.”

And the last decoration of the
capital is a labor one ...a

purple ribbon encircles eight —

golden sheaves of wheat ears,
with a worker raising a red ban-
ner in the centre against an
azure background. This is the

country’s highest decoration —

the order of the Builders of Peo-

ple’s Poland. It serves ‘to mark ~

Warsaw’s great role in building
socialism and is a recognition of
what has.been done by its work-
ing class and other inhabitants
to raise it from the ruins and to
make it more beautiful than ever
before.

i T--Reol-a-hel-ct

‘for héroism and

“AO svete ses = Eo eco ese we nweerss.

ar -

—
_