DESCRIPTION:
Van Cliburn, piano - Chopin: Etude in A minor, Op. 25, No. 11, RCA Victor 1961

NOTE: On August 1, 2014 passes the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupiers of Poland during the 2nd WW. Warsaw Uprising was the cry of dying Poland, to prove that her love for freedom and power of life still continues. It was also a desperate attempt to salvage Poland from the fate that had been designed at a conference in Tehran during the so-called Big Three meeting on 1st Dec 1943, when decision was made by Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill's about post-war fate of the Polish Republic – which was to become a Stalin’s "territory of influence " . In fact, it was a betrayal of Poland - an ally of the West during WWar 2. Tehran Conference decided about taking away the half of the prewar Polish territory – including Wilno and Lwów – and delivering it to Stalin. This betrayal of Poland encouraged Hitler to carry out unbridled massacre of the Polish capital city, when on 1 Aug 1944 Warsaw Uprising broke out. The carnage of Warsaw that followed, is without an equal in the modern history. 3rd Reich’s furious revenge took form of a complete annihilation of the rebel city with all its inhabitants – such was the personal order of Adolf Hitler, given to all German military powers, which at that time stationed in the city. The massacre of insurgents - mostly young people and children - took over 20 000 people and of civilians - 200 000. The material substance of the city - streets, old buildings, monuments, priceless collections, reached 95%. Special commando composed of German criminals led by gen. Dirlewangler - also a psychopath - was sent to Warsaw with orders to "calm down" the city – meaning, they can rob, burn, rape and kill every Pole who they want and how much they need. One of bloodiest examples of such activity was so-called "pacification" of densely inhabited part of Warsaw called Wola - which had been made within 3 days, ranging from 3 Sept 1944 – and which acquired 50 000 executions giving an unimaginable number of 16 000 killed every day. Piles of dead men formed the heaps height of 3 feet and stretched on the length sometimes up to 30 meters on both sides of the streets of Wola. People and insurgents who sought refuge in urban canals, fleeing from one district to another and carrying children, the disabled and wounded, were burned with flame throwers, gasoline poured into the sewers or torn with granades thrown into the manholes. So died one of the most popular actresses of pre-war cinema in Poland, Ina Benita and her child. The city was burned house after house, with people inside, without respect to Red Cross signs. During 63 days of the heroic struggle, the once most jolly East European metropolis, full of theatres, restaurants, cabarets, was turned into a ghost city. When the collapse of the Uprising was signed in Oct 1944, the remnants of Warsavians were grouped in columns, which marched out of the city to the concentration points, from where the boxcars took them to Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

This terrible tragedy had yet another background. The Red Army, which in its march to Berlin has reached in Aug 1944 the outskirts of Warsaw - got Stalin’s order to stop on the line of Vistula river and let Hitler finish his job. Those of insurgents or civilians, who tried to swim across Vistula seeking rescue on the other band were greeted by the Soviets by the machine guns. Warsaw was to die.

Stalin's secret plan was not only to annihilate the city, but also begin the spiritual degrdation of the nation. Germans were allowed to complete their bloody job – doing it, in fact, for Stalin. But Warsaw’s tragedy was not only the work of these two: Not less responsible were Churchill and Roosevelt, authors of the Tehran meeting…For Poland, the effect of those events continue until now. Polish gene pool has been permanently depleted – when destroyed was the ancientelite. Also, destroyed was the spiritual and political center of the 1000-years old nation. Half of its territory, containing the most precious heritage of Polish chivalry history, has been torn off. The entire families from the old gentry were murdered or forced to leave, their archives seized and used to implement after 1945 the trained agents from Russia, pretending the survivoirs of the historical Polish families. One of such examples of that well-known Stalin’s tactics to spiritually degrade the captured nations, was so called “Polish” postwar marshall Rokossowski - bearing the name of Polish nobility, while being a purebred Russian communist. The sad picture of effects, the war losses and 50 years of communism had made in the Polish identity, is now the character of so-colled “Polish way to capitalism”: when greed has dominated the people’s race to enrichment and appropriating of material goods at all costs has become a virtue.