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The Battle was being fought from one house to another. For the German officer Hasso Krappe this was a new type of warfare.

"My division moved on constantly under the fire coming from houses," says Krappe. "We couldn't see people shooting at us. As we found out, the Polish resistance movement were civilians with red and white armbands. Some had uniforms. Some even had German uniforms and German steel helmets. Imagine how it feels if somebody if someone shoots at you from the window and you know this person stands inside the room but you can't see anything. It was a very uncomfortable situation."

Hitler's response to the Warsaw uprising was unequivocal. Every inhabitant of the city was to be killed, and every house blown up or burned down.

Hospitals emerged wherever there was the space for them, though supplies were very scarce.

Hanna Niedzielska-Kepinska recalls, "They were lying on the floors. They were lying on the steps. They were mostly burnt from the tank and they really - there was nothing we could do. There was absolutely nothing we could do. When you entered the hospital, the stench was terrible of rotting flesh, so they were just dying like, like flies. And this is where the Germans shot them all when they entered."

Krzysztof Zanussi was 5 years old during the Uprising but his memories left a deep impression on him.

"I was five years old and we got to the hospital, and it is very close to the centre of Warsaw, and we didn't know that this hospital was under control of the Ukrainian forces, of General Vlasov. They were allies of Hitler's and they were extremely cruel and they were killing people, and I have seen it as a child many times. They were killing patients. They were killing wounded people, and I remember them cutting women's stomachs on the maternity ward, and my mother was trying to prevent me from seeing children who were taken from - but I have seen the dead bodies of infants thrown on the floor."

The Nazis began to attack from the skies, pounding Warsaw mercilessly with its most modern and most deadly weapons.

"One of the worst, really frightening, were the use of rockets," says Andrzej Slawinski. "Germans had a multiple eight rocket launcher. First of all, you heard a dreadful noise, this - a few seconds afterwards there was an explosion. Boom. You were hit by a rocket, which contained an early version of napalm. That means everything burnt, even the asphalt in the road burnt."


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