President pays tribute to victims of Warsaw Uprising 'genocide'

Marking the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, the largest resistance operation in German-occupied Europe during World War II, Polish President Andrzej Duda laid flowers on Thursday at a plaque to 2,500 Poles murdered during the so-called Wola Massacre. President Duda said that the Wola Massacre, the mass killing of around 50,000 inhabitants of Warsaw's Wola district during the Warsaw Uprising, was a great genocide that was not talked about during the communist era, adding that the "enormous suffering of Warsaw residents" required special commemoration. "It is difficult to imagine today, but such was the reality then; it was the price that Warsaw paid for striving for freedom," Duda said. "They certainly deserve that we remember them and that we honour this place and pay tribute to those who gave their lives so that Poland could again be free."