The message of “Operation Tempest” and the Warsaw Uprising was clear: Polish people want to decide for themselves and they do not accept replacing one occupation with another.

Elżbieta “Ela” Redkowiak remembered this August afternoon very well. “You could hear the gunshots and you could feel the joy that it had finally started and that we were in a free Poland” - she recalled years later. “I remember that someone put a white eagle on the third floor of our tenement house. Everyone started clapping” - she recalled.

On that day, 1 August 1944, Redkowiak, 19 years old at the time, reported for an assembly in Złota Street. She took part in the Warsaw Uprising as a nurse. There were many other people just like her, who had just taken their final high school exams. “The youth [...] were eager to fight”, “Ela” later admitted.

Not only young people waited for that day with hope. Despite the fact that in 1939 the Polish Army was not able to stop a double invasion - at first from the Germans and then from the Soviets - Polish people never accepted losing their country. On 27 September 1939, while Warsaw was still fighting, the conspiratorial Service for Poland’s Victory was established - “with the mission of continuing the fight to maintain independence and the integrity of the borders”. The work of Service for Poland’s Victory was continued by the Union of Armed Struggle, which in February 1942 was renamed to the Home Army.

The efforts of the Polish Underground State - a unique phenomenon in occupied Europe - were aimed at preparing a general uprising. It was to commence at the moment of the collapse of the Reich's power. However, in 1943, after the defeat of the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad and Kursk, the scenario that German occupation would be replaced by Soviet domination, was becoming more and more probable. It would be same Soviets who had sided with Hitler, taken half of Poland’s territory and started a wave of murderous terror.

In this case, on 20 November 1943, general Tadeusz “Bór” Komorowski, Home Army Commander-in-Chief, gave orders to start “Operation Tempest”. The plan was to engage in combat with the retreating Germans and to manifest to the approaching Soviets the sovereign rights of the Polish Republic.

“Operation Tempest” started at the beginning of 1944 in Volhynia, where the 27th Infantry Division of the Home Army was bravely fighting the Germans. In July, as part of Operation “Gate of Dawn”, the Home Army captured Vilnius together with the Soviets. Later, that same month Lviv was also freed from the Germans. However, everywhere a similar scenario took place: the Soviets quickly removed the Polish flags and disarmed the Home Army units. Many officers were imprisoned and regular soldiers were forcibly conscripted into Berling's communist Army.

The Warsaw Uprising was the last, dramatic attempt to regain Polish independence. Despite it being planned to last only a few days, after over two months of fighting marked by extreme passivity of the Soviets and only symbolic help from the Western Allies, it eventually resulted in failure. Despite many casualties and the destruction of this proud city by the Germans, the whole of Poland still remembers this heroic uprising.

Even after 80 years from the outbreak of the uprising we can still meet its participants and listen to their stories, When in the sirens marking “W” hour sound once again this year, let us pay tribute to those who stood up for free Poland.