World: Warsaw: Deathly Stillness

From Moscow last week came a description of Warsaw, as seen by a recent visitor to the Praga (east) side of the Vistula, where the Red Army’s advance halted more than three months ago:

“Warsaw has a deathly stillness. In the whole panorama from Poniatowski Bridge to Kierbedz Bridge (both wrecked) there was not a single sign of human life. The buildings are not all flattened—some walls stand, but they are shells. The Prudential Insurance skyscraper (twelve stories) had lost its tower and one could look right through holes from one side of the building to the other. Only one church could be seen standing: the Wizytek on Cracow Street. There was not a trace of St. Alexander Church in the Square of the Three Crosses, or of the famous Holy Cross Church.

“North of Kierbedz Bridge there appears to be nothing left at all. There was no vestige of the Royal Palace — just empty space where it was. The Old City is a heap of ruins and Zoliborz, the residential suburb, is entirely destroyed.

“Warsaw is dead, and yet it seems that the rubble must be captured some time. Even the ruins seem to be waiting for something.”

Last week neither the Russians nor the Germans said anything about some thing happening or about to happen on the Warsaw-Vistula front. The Germans alone told of something happening in the Latvian pocket above Riga. Berlin said the Red Army had “sacrificed tens of thousands of men” to gain one penetration.